Myths of the Rune Stone
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—Hjalmar Holand, Westward from Vinland
The events surrounding the unearthing of the Kensington Rune Stone and its immediate aftermath are contradictory and hotly debated. As the story is traditionally told by area residents, a Swedish immigrant farmer named Olof Ohman was hard at work during the late summer of 1898 cutting down trees on his farm near the town of Kensington, Minnesota. Ohman and his sons were using a winch to pull tree stumps out of the ground in order to prepare a new field for cultivation. Tangled in the roots of one tree was a large, gray slab of stone, which they struggled to pull out of the ground.1 Ohman’s ten-year-old son Edward noticed strange chiseled markings on two sides of the stone after he had brushed off some of the dirt with his cap. Ohman called his neighbor, Nils Flaaten, a Norwegian-American farmer who was working nearby, to come and view the curiosity. In signed affidavits from 1909, Flaaten and Ohman testified that the inscription had an ancient and weathered appearance.2 They carried the stone back to Ohman’s farmyard, thinking it might be of historical importance. Some of Ohman’s neighbors suspected that the stone might be a marker for buried treasure and a swarm of locals descended upon Ohman’s farm with shovels in hand.3
Although no treasure was found, numerous area residents viewed the stone with curiosity after Ohman permitted its display in the window of the First State Bank in the nearby village of Kensington.4 Local residents, primarily of Norwegian and Swedish descent, concluded that the symbols were similar to those found in illustrations of runic inscriptions in Scandinavian history books. Bank cashier and Norwegian immigrant Samuel A. Siverts made a copy of the inscription and sent it to Professor Olaus Breda, a Scandinavian linguist at the University of Minnesota, in January 1899. A month later, the stone was shipped to Professor George Curme, a linguist at Northwestern University in Chicago.
In February 1899, a local newspaper reported that Professor Breda concluded that there were “internal evidences in the inscription that it is not authentic.” The chief of these, he says, is that “the inscriptions seem to be a jumble of Swedish and Norwegian in late grammatical forms and here and there English words, but all spelled in runic characters. They are not old Norse.”5 Professor Curme was also skeptical of the runic inscription for similar linguistic reasons. Additionally, copies of the inscription were analyzed by scholars in Oslo, Norway. The conclusions of Christiana University professors Gustav Storm, Sophus Bugge, and Oluf Rugh were published in the Minneapolis Tribune in April 1899: “The so-called rune stone is a crude fraud, perpetrated by a Swede with the aid of a chisel and a meager knowledge of runic letters and English.”6 Following the initial scientific assessments and the negative publicity that followed, public opinion of the stone as an authentic medieval artifact quickly faded. To the disappointment of many, it was returned to Ohman’s farm, where it sat in obscurity for more than eight years. As one enthusiast described it, the rune stone served as a stepping stone for Ohman’s granary and provided “a tolerable place to straighten nails and rivet harness straps.”7
Leif Eriksson and the “True” Discovery of America
To most observers, it was no coincidence that a rune stone purporting to be from the fourteenth century was unearthed in the field of a Swedish-American farmer in a region heavily populated by recent immigrants from Sweden and Norway. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, these immigrants were prolific producers and consumers of historical literature about Viking travels in North America prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the West Indies in 1492. The early presence of Vikings in North America demonstrated that Swedes and Norwegians belonged here. Writing in 1900, the Norwegian-American poet Franklin Petersen said, “Because we are reminded of the sagas of old and are proud of the land we forsook. Can it be that the blood of the Vikings still flows in our veins like a still-running brook?”8 Historian Odd Lovoll uses the moniker “Cult of Leif Eriksson” to describe the widespread enthusiasm for all things Viking.
The Kensington Rune Stone is thirty-six inches long, fifteen inches wide, about six inches thick, and weighs just over two hundred pounds. Courtesy of the Douglas County Historical Society, Minnesota.
Rasmus B. Anderson (1846–1936) was the first widely known writer to promote the myth of Viking discovery in his book America Not Discovered by Columbus published in 1874.9 In this book, Anderson attempted to educate both Norwegian immigrants and other Americans about Norwegian literature and mythology, while challenging America’s foundation myths by demonstrating that Scandinavians played a vital role in the origins of the United States.10 According to historian Orm Øverland, immigrant writers have often used “homemaking myths” to convince both fellow immigrants and the dominant society that they belong in America. Immigrants use “foundation myths” to claim that their ancestors were the first or among the first Europeans to explore and settle in North America. “Blood sacrifice myths” are used to demonstrate that an immigrant group has made sacrifices for the host nation in some way, especially in times of national crisis. Ideological homemaking myths describe how a particular ethnic group had already embodied certain central components of American ideals before arriving in the United States. All three of these myths can be found in the writings of Rasmus B. Anderson.11
Born in Wisconsin to Norwegian-born parents, Anderson was a professor of Scandinavian languages at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He reinforced the widely shared notion among some New England historians of his day that Vikings had explored North America and even settled as far south as New England.12 Using the Vinland sagas as his primary source material and writings by nineteenth-century New England historians interested in Viking history, Anderson argued that the Vinland spoken of in the Norse sagas was located off Narragansett Bay in modern-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Anderson offered two pieces of archaeological evidence to support his claim: the Dighton Rock, a large boulder with a number of supposed runic markings inscribed on its surface near Fall River, Massachusetts, and a stone tower near Newport, Rhode Island, purported to have been built by medieval Norsemen.13 The dominant historiography of the day identified New England as the geographic birthplace of the future United States. If Norwegian Americans were to have a place in the founding narrative of America, the presence of their ancestors had to be inscribed into this landscape.
Stone tower in Newport, Rhode Island, circa 1899. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Photograph Collection.
Anderson made his case that contemporary Norwegian Americans deserved a measure of gratitude because their ancestors made numerous sacrifices in founding America. He portrayed the Norsemen as preparing the way for the Pilgrims by bringing Christianity to the Indians and argued that Leif Eriksson’s brother Thorwald died at the hands of Indians in a self-sacrificial attempt to settle Cape Cod.14 Anderson also argued that the Norse spirit of sacrifice was still alive in the nineteenth century, as evidenced by his fellow Norwegian immigrants’ willingness to give their lives in the Union army during the Civil War.
Anderson appealed to the American elite by arguing that Scandinavians were the source of America’s democratic ideals. He noted that one of England’s most significant rulers, William the Conqueror, had descended from Norsemen who invaded Normandy in 912.15 When William invaded England in 1066, he brought with him the democratic ideals of Norse culture that would come to have a major influence on English society. Anderson claimed that the Puritans of seventeenth-century Massachusetts came from parts of England that had been colonized by Norsemen. According to Anderson, the Puritans brought the “Norwegian plant of liberty” with them on the Mayflower to New England, where it took root and thrived in American soil:16
Yes, the Norsemen were truly a great people! Their spirit found its way into the Magna Carta of England and into the Declaration of Independence in America. The spirit of the Vikings still survives in the bosoms of Englishmen, Americans and Norsemen, extending their commerce, taking bold positions against tyranny, and producing won
derful internal improvements in these countries.17
Anderson demonstrated that American society owed a great deal to Scandinavians for their contribution to the most sacred of American institutional ideals.
Playing into the racial politics of the nineteenth century, Anderson argued that Norwegian Americans and Anglo-Saxon Americans shared a common heritage. His writings are likely affected by the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Know-Nothing movement during this period. Know-Nothingism promoted the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, which had as its source Teutonic or Germanic blood. As one historian observes, Anderson was not content to have Scandinavian Americans just be accepted as white; he believed they were true Anglo-Saxons as differentiated from immigrants originating in other parts of Europe.18 Anderson did not challenge notions of Anglo-Saxon superiority; he wanted Norwegians to be included with them and share their privileges.19
Anderson’s writings produced a Norwegian-American mythology that both glorified the virtues of Norwegian-American immigrants and praised the cherished values of the host country. His aim was to get Anglo-Americans to recognize Scandinavian immigrants as close family members who could share the exclusive privileges that belonged to a people of a superior race. Considering the contributions of Norwegians to American history, Anderson argued for the inclusion of Norse history in public education and hoped for a day when the great Viking explorers Leif Eriksson and Thorwald would become household names.20 Anderson experienced some success in this regard. Working with a handful of New England historians, he initiated a movement that created a monument to Leif Eriksson in Boston in 1887. In later years, statues of Erikson were installed in prominent public spaces in Chicago, Seattle, and Duluth, and in front of the Minnesota state capitol in St. Paul. As a historian, Anderson was criticized by his peers. Scholarly reviews in both Europe and the United States of America Not Discovered by Columbus were generally negative. Most of them characterized his work as ethnic propaganda devoid of academic merit.21 Not surprisingly, Anderson was praised in the Norwegian-American press and his work was widely read by Scandinavian Americans in Minnesota.22
Building an Immigrant “Sacred Canopy”
Myths about pre-Columbian Viking visitors to North America not only helped bolster immigrant social power, they also served to satisfy a variety of cultural longings for immigrants. New arrivals from Sweden and Norway came from countries where the Lutheran church largely monopolized religious and social life. Every citizen was registered by the government through the local parish church. Parishes were the means through which civic life, cultural life, and religious life were held together. Sociologist of religion Peter Berger would describe this as a “sacred canopy” that maintained social cohesion and provided a shared system of meaning.23
Upon their arrival in Minnesota and other parts of America, the immigrants had to come to terms with living in a much more diverse religious marketplace.24 The Lutheran church was no longer the dominant religious institution, and immigrants were subjected to recruitment by Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, Mormons, and Catholics. In such a pluralistic environment, Scandinavian immigrants lost the overarching system of meaning that had once framed their lives. The immigrants were now faced with a bewildering array of religious options that divided their fellow countrymen not by a local parish, but by denominational preference. Even within a denomination like the Lutheran church, there was no guarantee of unity. Norwegian Lutheran churches, in particular, were split into multiple factions divided by differing views on doctrine, worship preferences, polity, and the minister’s leadership style. This exemplifies what historian Odd Lovoll describes as Norwegian Lutheranism’s “tradition of disharmony.” 25
There were other sources of social fragmentation for immigrants in Minnesota. Norwegians often came from rural villages and towns that were both physically and culturally isolated from one other.26 The geographic isolation of Norway’s fjords and valleys shaped communities with a strong sense of local identity. When Norwegians came to Minnesota, they settled in areas represented by persons from a variety of local districts or bygds. For the first time, they encountered Norwegians with different dialects and customs. For many Swedes and Norwegians, the disorientation of immigration and the ensuing religious and social fragmentation stimulated a need to construct a new sacred cosmos.27 Through the dissemination of Viking discovery narratives, ethnic boosters such as Rasmus B. Anderson constructed what can be called an ethnoreligion, which met the various social and psychological needs of his immigrant peers.
Ole Rølvaag, in his 1927 novel Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie, tells the story of a Norwegian immigrant family struggling to establish a homestead in Dakota Territory during the 1870s. Rølvaag uses the novel’s main characters, Per Hansa and his wife Beret, as contrasting figures of how immigrants experienced their new life in America. Per was a boundless optimist who thrives in the face of pioneer life’s numerous challenges. He dreams of building his own kingdom on the prairie by providing a prosperous future for his family. Beret, by contrast, is overwhelmed by homesickness and desperately wants to return to her native Norway. The isolation of pioneer life drives Beret into a state of depression and, later, madness. Her only solace is a small chest containing various artifacts that reminded her of home.
Cover of O. E. Rølvaag’s 1927 novel, Giants in the Earth. Courtesy of Special Collections and Rare Books, University of Minnesota Libraries.
The contrasting immigrant desires to establish roots in America while retaining symbolic connection to the home country resonates well with Thomas Tweed’s characterization of immigrant religion as “dwelling” and “crossing.”28 An ethnoreligion based on the myth of pre-Columbian Viking visitors to North America addressed the twin immigrant concerns embodied by Per Hansa and Beret Hansa. In terms of dwelling, Rasmus B. Anderson’s promotion of the Dighton Rock and the Newport Tower can be seen as a strategy to establish a sacred ethnic map, which situated Norwegian immigrants prominently in the larger American narratives about the history of the nation.29 Viking enthusiasm also draws upon human and suprahuman forces to overcome obstacles and cross boundaries. Vikings became exemplars of a heroic way of life and provided immigrants with “an irresistible symbol of pioneer boldness.”30 The possibility that the ancestors of Swedish and Norwegian immigrants had the fortitude and strength to traverse oceans that other Europeans could not boosted the confidence of Minnesota farmers who faced market fluctuations, drought, and grasshopper plagues. Viking enthusiasm enabled Scandinavian immigrants to build a symbolic bridge to their heritage and homeland. It helped them to alleviate feelings of isolation and homesickness, knowing that other Swedes and Norwegians had long ago traversed the American landscape. In short, myths about Viking forebears tempered loneliness, alienation, and social fragmentation by providing an imagined community.
Fertile Ground for a Midwestern Viking Hoax
Rasmus B. Anderson’s mythologized landscape had one limitation. Anderson’s Norsemen had only left their mark on New England. Most Swedish and Norwegian immigrants had established their homes and farms more than a thousand miles to the west.31 In Douglas County, where the Kensington Rune Stone was unearthed, Swedes and Norwegians were by far the dominant ethnic groups, although Germans also had a sizable presence. The counties to the west were more heavily Norwegian and the counties to the east were dominated by German Catholics.
In the late nineteenth century, it is evident that Scandinavian immigrants in this region were seeking signs that their ancestors had prepared the way for their new life in the upper Midwest. In 1887, Danish historian Gustav Storm took Anderson’s writings to task, claiming that Norsemen “in the eleventh century had never been within the present boundaries of the United States.” As Wahlgren observed, “such an assertion created tremendous ill-will in Scandinavian-American circles.”32 Several scholars have argued that a particular word used in Storm’s text directly inspired an immigrant or immigrants to produce the inscribed stone in Ohman�
��s field. The word opdagelse or “discovery,” used multiple times in his text and also in press accounts, is also a key word in the Kensington Rune Stone inscription. In the context of this potent ethnoreligious milieu, inscribing the runic message would be a way to reassert Nordic pride in the face of academic attacks on the historicity of Viking discovery narratives.
Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 served as another possible inspiration for the Kensington Rune Stone inscription. In 1880, a Viking Age ship called the Gokstad was unearthed in Norway. This archaeological find provided a model for the construction of a replica ship called the Viking. Norwegian crew members sailed the Viking from Bergen, Norway, to the Chicago lakefront via Newfoundland, the Hudson River, the Erie Canal, and the chain of Great Lakes.33 The ship arrived in mid-July 1893 to the Exposition, which commemorated the four hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of North America. The sailing expedition was a demonstration that Norwegians had the ability to sail across the Atlantic many years before Columbus. Replicas of Columbus’s ships were also part of the celebration but they were plagued with mechanical problems. As Iver Kjaer observes, “they had been unable to cross the Atlantic on their own, and they even experienced difficulty in sailing on Lake Michigan.”34 The superior performance of the Viking was a source of great pride to Scandinavians and Scandinavian Americans. Details about the voyage reveal peculiar similarities to the story told in the Kensington Rune Stone inscription. One scholar observes that the Viking ship had to be towed from New York City to Chicago. The length of time was fourteen days, which could have a connection to the reference to fourteen days in the runic inscription.35 Also, there were thirty-two men on the ship. Thirty men are mentioned on the Kensington Stone.