Myths of the Rune Stone

by David M Krueger

Wahlgren’s book asserts that it was more than a coincidence that the stone was found in a Scandinavian immigrant community. The decade of the 1890s was especially “propitious . . . to the manufacture of a rune stone among the transplanted Scandinavians” given the pervasive interest in pre-Columbian Viking travels in North America (121). Wahlgren criticizes the Minnesota Historical Society investigation for not utilizing formal methods and adequate controls. Because of numerous inconsistencies in the affidavits written and signed by Ohman and his neighbors, Wahlgren is convinced that they had been coached before writing and signing their affidavits (48–58). Wahlgren describes the museum committee’s report as a “partisan document” and maintains that its production was driven by “private, promotional interests” (100, 179). Furthermore, the language of the inscription, he says, correlates with the vernacular of the late nineteenth century rather than that of the fourteenth. In conclusion, Wahgren explains the rune stone as follows: “The planting of the Minnesota stone was a clever and understandable hoax with both amusing and tragic consequences, and the Kensington story is an episode in the history of the development of the American frontier” (181).

  Rune stone supporters had been confronted with such assertions before via the writings of Holvik, but there are two assertions in Wahlgren’s book that particularly provoked the ire of the artifact’s defenders. First, he asserts that neither Holand nor any historians had proof that the Paul Knutson expedition to bring apostate Vikings back to the Christian church was ever carried out. Even if a Norse sailing vessel had somehow managed to reach the Hudson Bay, he argues, it would have been almost physically impossible for explorers to travel upstream on the Nelson and Red rivers in the fourteenth century, especially in the fourteen days mentioned in the runic inscription.

  Second, Wahlgren takes direct aim at the credibility of Hjalmar Holand: “Holand is not an investigator upon whom one can rely for competent, impartial, and accurate presentation of the rune stone matter” (83). Without Holand’s efforts, the stone would have “died a natural death long ago” (81). Wahlgren also criticizes Holand’s ignorance of the Norse language and of Latin, which Wahlgren believed was paramount to understanding the medieval sources necessary for the interpretation of the stone’s inscription (84). He further attacks Holand’s character as “devious,” stating that Holand purposefully “distracts and wearies the reader’s critical faculties through an accumulation of irrelevant ‘examples’” (94). For Wahlgren, Holand’s disregard of previous scholarship debunking the stone’s authenticity amounted to a rejection of academia, showing a “complete lack of respect for the purposes and function of the scientific inquiry itself” (96). This contempt proves that Holand was nothing more than a “professional promoter” motivated to seek compensation for his contribution to American history (97).

  Supporters of Minnesota’s rune stone did not sit idly by and allow their sacred artifact to be maligned and the reputation of their revered prophet to be besmirched in this way. The defense of the rune stone only intensified in response to Wahlgren’s book. In 1959, an Alexandria physician and one of the founders of the Runestone Museum was highlighted in a newspaper article titled “Dr. Tanquist’s Testimony: Why I Believe in the Runestone.” During his speech, Tanquist presented his reasons for why he believed the rune stone to be authentic before a group of local residents and visitors from the Minnesota Historical Society.26 Also that year, the Runestone Museum Foundation published and distributed a booklet by Holand summarizing the key arguments for the artifact’s authenticity. Its title left no doubt as to the motivations of Norse expedition North America: “A Holy Mission to Minnesota 600 Years Ago.”

  The strident defense of Holand’s story of medieval Christian missionaries in Minnesota swelled to a crescendo in 1962, during the civic celebrations of the “600th Anniversary of the Runestone.” The Runestone Pageant Play took direct aim at the credibility of academe. “[E]ven though I have a B.A.,” said one of the characters, “I [wrongly] thought Columbus discovered America.” The driving narrative of the pageant centers on Holand, a marginalized “scholar-historian” outside “the isolated ivory towers” of the academy who mentors a young university student researching Norse exploration history. The script exalts Holand as a populist martyr whose “revelations” challenged the academic orthodoxies of the day.

  The Runestone Pageant also attempted to reify the Christian motivations of the Norse explorers in the popular imagination. Widely disseminated during the civic celebration was a comic book titled Mystery of the Runestone, which simultaneously defends the authenticity of the Kensington Rune Stone and the veracity of the Christian faith. The comic book targets a youth audience and embeds the saga of the Norsemen into in an adventure narrative with vivid illustrations. Its author, Margaret Barry Leuthner, was an elementary school librarian, an active member of her Catholic parish, and a vehement critic of anyone who questioned the authenticity of the sacred artifact. Years later, the local press described her as a “legend renowned for her unwavering Runestone loyalty . . . While many Alexandrians wearied of the dispute, Leuthner, like a mooring stone, kept the faith.”27 Like the Runestone Pageant and Robb’s centennial article from 1958, Leuthner emphasized the religious militancy of the Norse explorers, describing them as “Christian Crusaders” on a mission to “preserve Christianity.”28

  The Mystery of the Runestone comic book was written in 1962 by rune stone enthusiast Margaret Leuthner. It was distributed at the Runestone Pageant that same year and at the 1965 World’s Fair in New York.

  Leuthner stays close to Holand’s historical narrative but emphasizes and embellishes certain aspects she deems relevant to young people in the early 1960s. Throughout the comic book, she paints a picture of Christianity ever at risk. To keep the faith from perishing, King Magnus sent Knutson and his men on a mission to find the “fallen ones” in Greenland who “gave up all good manner and true virtues” and “turned to the people of America.” As the Norse missionaries traveled deeper into the heart of the American wilderness, even they faced the temptation to turn from the Christian faith. One of the explorers asks Knutson whether the Norse fire gods from home also resided in these new lands. He is quickly admonished: “Christian men, don’t talk of pagan Gods even in jest, remember our holy mission.” They proceed up a narrow and winding river and arrive at a shallow lake littered with dead fish. “The Dead Sea!?” exclaims one of the Norsemen. “God has led us to our deaths!” Whispers of mutiny begin to spread among some: “Let’s go back. We find no Greenlanders. They were swallowed by this evil place!” At this point, the priest accompanying the expedition says to Knutson, “Paul, the men are uneasy. We now pray for a sign of God’s favor.” Knutson responds, “If I am right, God has granted a sign . . . this is the continental divide . . . we have only to find a river running east to Vinland.”

  The expedition continues eastward and finds a lake good for fishing. Dividing the group into two, Knutson assigns half to stand guard with the boats and half to go fishing. When the fishermen return, they find the “10 men red with blood and dead,” killed and scalped by “Sioux” Indians. This is the scene immortalized by the “Runemaster,” who carved an inscription to memorialize the “10 Vikings who died for Christ on a crusade in the wilderness.” This artifact has survived, said Leuthner, as a monument to the Norsemen’s “courage, resourcefulness and an astounding missionary zeal.” On the final pages of the comic book, Leuthner praises the vigilant “detective work” of Holand the researcher and exhorts her readers to remember that history is made and truth is discovered by “the man who ventures.” The final scene is a pictorial lineup of such heroic American male figures, the first of whom is a Viking, followed by an explorer, a pilgrim, a colonist, a pioneer, a modern man in a business suit, and finally an astronaut.

  Leuthner’s telling of the rune stone story suggests a high degree of anxiety about the state of the nation and the Christian faith. The inclusion of the astronaut in the comic book must be understood in cont
ext of the “space race” between the United States and the Soviet Union at the time. Following the Soviets’ launch of the satellite Sputnik in 1957 and the first human into orbit in 1961, many Americans expressed concern that the United States was losing the Cold War. In 1961, President Kennedy escalated the nation’s efforts by setting the goal of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” In Leuthner’s 1962 comic book, both Holand and the Vikings modeled the courage and scientific inquisitiveness needed to compete with the nation’s modern foes.29 These foes, of course, represented an existential threat to Christianity. The Indian in her narrative symbolizes danger of the atheist, or a religious other at least, who could lure vulnerable young people from the one and true faith. Both the savagery of the Indian and the heroic militancy of the Viking explorer are graphically illustrated in a battle scene depicted on the cover of the comic book. In the scene, a muscular Norseman donning a horned helmet, a shield, and a shiny metal sword lunges toward an Indian falling backwards while swinging a primitive stone tomahawk.

  Exuberant defenses of the faith and local hostility toward Wahlgren reached a plateau of intensity just as America’s religious revival was starting to decline. The percentage of Americans who believed that religion was increasing in influence had declined from a high of 70 percent in 1957 to 45 percent in 1962. By 1965, it plunged even further to 33 percent.30 The rhetoric of harnessing “spiritual weapons” to confront the Communist threat during the Eisenhower years shifted to an emphasis on American economic and military prowess following John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960.31 Two Supreme Court cases further challenged the civic religious consensus by declaring teacher-led prayer and Bible readings unconstitutional in 1962 and 1963. Hollywood’s 1950s love affair with religion also fizzled out during the 1960s. The movie Elmer Gantry, released in 1960, painted a dark portrait of Evangelical religion. The film was based on Sinclair Lewis’s novel by the same name. Similar to Main Street, Elmer Gantry did not portray small-town Midwesterners in a positive light. In both the movie and the novel, rural residents appear as dupes, taken in by a wily huckster evangelist offering salvation in exchange for overflowing offering plates.

  It is not clear if these shifting national trends had any impact on eroding religious attendance in Minnesota, but Leuthner and other civic leaders seemed concerned that future generations were at risk of abandoning the church and forgetting the Christian origins of their community and nation. The Runestone Pageant Play and the writings of rune stone enthusiasts contain a great deal of religious pedagogy used in an effort to perpetuate the Christian faith. The Norsemen are upheld as moral exemplars of what it means to be a good Christian in the mid-twentieth century. Although they faced the temptation to give up their Christian faith, they remained steadfast in the pursuit of their holy mission. Rune stone supporters portrayed the members of the Knutson expedition as morally superior to other early explorers of the Americas because the former were driven by religion and not by greed. These writings laud the Vikings for the militancy of their faith. The Norsemen were willing to put their lives on the line for spreading the message of Jesus Christ in America. In sum, the story of the Knutson expedition teaches that a good Christian in mid-twentieth-century Alexandria is one who is bold, adventurous, steadfast, militant, self-sacrificial, and motivated by spiritual, not material, concerns.32

  Although it might seem logical that the Kensington Rune Stone narrative would have inspired advocacy of Christian missionary work, the rune stone enthusiasts clearly emphasized domestic religious concerns. In the various iterations of the story, King Magnus realizes that he had neglected the spiritual welfare of his Norse colonists in Greenland when he was trying to convert the Russians. The implicit moral lesson is that missionary outreach should not distract the church from maintaining the faith of its own. Even in midcentury Alexandria, the “skrælings,” in whatever form they take, may still be lurking, posing a threat to the survival of a robust Christian faith. Leuthner, in particular, describes the rune stone discovery site as a place of safety and refuge. In her subsequent writings, she argues that Norsemen had lived in a “Christian colony” in the Alexandria area for some four hundred years, having first settled in the region shortly after Leif Eriksson’s expedition to Vinland in the year 1000.33 What Leuthner has done, whether consciously or not, is mythically reconstruct her small town as a bulwark against the threat of secularization. Through her use of the Kensington Rune Stone and her adaptation of Holand’s narrative, she inscribed the local landscape with a religious narrative that offered Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, a symbolic tool to resist the perceived decline of religious fervor. Furthermore, she naturalized her community as an originally and exclusively Christian place, pushing to the margins all those in the community who did not conform to her religious vision. Not long after the Runestone Pageant Play in 1962, Alexandrians would find a hospitable national stage on which to tell their exceptional story.

  Viking actors on Lake Winona during the 1962 Runestone Pageant. Courtesy of the Douglas County Historical Society.

  Giant Vikings and Totemic Anxieties at the New York World’s Fair

  Through the pageant play script, comic book, and other writings of rune stone enthusiasts in the 1950s and early 1960s, locals proclaimed their certainty in the veracity of the artifact and its sacred story. However, as the 1960s wore on, doubts were beginning to take root and western Minnesotans could no longer be certain their region had been visited by Scandinavian Christian missionaries. Minnesotans were never unanimous in their “belief” in the stone, but now they were becoming more divided than ever. Despite doubts about the rune stone’s authenticity, many of the region’s business and civic leaders remained undaunted in their endorsement of the artifact. These savvy entrepreneurs came to embrace the controversy surrounding the stone as a means to generate symbolic and, increasingly, economic benefits for their region. Even if the stone were proved a hoax, they could still identify with a more widely embraced American civic religious claim: the belief in economic prosperity and material progress.34

  In 1965, the Runestone Museum received a request for the sacred artifact to be a part of the Minnesota Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. State exhibits at the World’s Fair had the primary purpose of generating publicity for local businesses, which could in turn translate into increased tourism and economic development.35 The Minnesota exhibit had been part of the fair since it opened in 1964, but owing to mismanagement and a rather uninspiring theme of “Minnesota Brainpower Builds Profits,” it had run deeply in debt and attendance was low. The Midwestern artifact was now going to be the new “focal point of interest” by claiming that Minnesota was the “birthplace of America.” Organizers hoped that this new attraction would reinvigorate interest and persuade the state government to financially bail the exhibit out.

  This change in direction received wide attention in the Minneapolis–St. Paul media, and most of it was negative. A Minneapolis Star editorial encouraged Minnesota legislators to “stand firm” in their opposition to approving funding for the exhibit, implying that the inclusion of the dubious artifact would be an embarrassment to the state. On a WCCO television program broadcast statewide, George Rice, the former Star journalist who debunked the artifact in a series of articles in 1955, also voiced his opposition to the rune stone being sent to New York. Predictably, rune stone enthusiasts in Alexandria were incensed by these remarks—especially the ones from their old nemesis George Rice. However, the strategy for defending the rune stone shifted from efforts just ten years earlier. An editorial by Alexandria resident John Obert says that he does not criticize Rice for doubting the rune stone story; he chastises him for opposing the inclusion of the artifact at the World’s Fair. Obert argues that the authenticity of the rune stone is not what is most important:

  We who are pushing the Runestone exhibit at the Fair are not asking that the controversial artifact be displayed as indisputably authentic. The slogan for the exhibition will
be “Minnesota—Birthplace of America?” The question mark we believe is justified. We do not believe the stone has been proved authentic. But neither do we believe it has been proved a fake. If the purpose of the various state exhibitions at the World’s Fair is to attract as much attention as possible, we can think of no other feature which could attract attention to Minnesota.36

  Throughout most of the artifact’s history, Kensington Rune Stone enthusiasts had emphatically argued for its authenticity. However, by 1965, questions of authenticity were no longer primary, at least not before a national audience. All that mattered was that the storied stone was getting attention, along with its hometown. Civic leaders had successfully co-opted the skepticism of academic critics such as Erik Wahlgren to generate controversy, and hence, interest in their civic totem.

  Local residents eagerly supported efforts to send their beloved rune stone out east. James Stuebner, a representative of the Minnesota exhibit, worked with Alexandrians to arrange the civic artifact’s travel to the World’s Fair. He also solicited their financial help. The Minnesota exhibit was already $225,000 in debt and Stuebner asked the local officials to try to come up with twenty-five thousand dollars.37 Chamber of Commerce officials initiated an intense campaign to raise funds from private individuals and businesses and sold tickets for a special “Runestone Ball.” In several weeks’ time, they raised twenty-three thousand dollars to send their civic totem to New York.38

  To draw attention to the Minnesota exhibit, a large Viking statue, later named “Big Ole,” was built to stand near its door.39 The giant figure stood twenty-eight feet tall and boasted milky white skin, a full, blond beard, and thick, muscular arms and legs. The Viking was well armed. A sword hung from his belt. In his right hand, he held a tall spear, and in his left, a shield with the phrase “Minnesota: Birthplace of America?” A news article emphasized the strength and resilience of the Viking giant: “The statue is made of weather-resistant structural fiberglass . . . weighs four tons and will withstand winds of up to 100 miles an hour.”40 Articles from later years reveal a preoccupation with the Viking’s virility. After an act of vandalism broke off part of his sword, the local paper celebrated its repair with the headline: “Sword (and Esteem) Now Restored: Big Ole Grins to Welcome Summer.”41 Another article notes that Big Ole “has an estimated shoe size of 50.”42 Plans for the exhibition aroused civic expectations in advance of the artifact’s trip to the World’s Fair: “What a break this is for Alexandria,” declared one article, which wildly predicted that more than 18 million people would be exposed to the rune stone story at the World’s Fair.43 An editorial audaciously claimed: “By the end of next summer, we expect Alexandria and the Kensington Runestone will be household words the length and breadth of the nation.”44