Myths of the Rune Stone
Page 19
1. Westward from Vinland
1.The Kensington Rune Stone is thirty-six inches long, fifteen inches wide, about six inches thick, and weighs 201 lbs., 7 oz. See Kehoe, The Kensington Runestone, 3.
2.Holand, Westward from Vinland, 110–12.
3.Ibid., 97.
4.Holand claimed that “thousands” of residents viewed the stone (Westward from Vinland, 97). Theodore C. Blegen questioned Holand’s claim that the artifact was even put on public display and points to the curious lack of local media coverage as evidence (The Kensington Rune Stone, 42).
5.“A Stone Bearing Runic Inscriptions,” Alexandria Post News, February 23, 1899, 1. This article was also published the previous day in the Minneapolis Journal.
6.Wahlgren, The Kensington Stone, 9.
7.Holand, Westward from Vinland, 99.
8.Lovoll, The Promise of America, 7.
9.It should be noted that in the mid-nineteenth century, Columbus was not perceived to have an ethnic identity. Rather, he was an American symbol. Columbus did not begin to emerge as an icon of Italian-American identity until the early twentieth century. See Øverland, Immigrant Minds, American Identities, 63–76.
10.There is a long tradition of marginalized groups in U.S. history making the claim that their ancestors had traveled to North America prior to Columbus. Another example is Ivan Van Sertima’s 1976 text They Came before Columbus. Van Sertima claims that there is evidence that Africans who traveled to North America had a strong influence on pre-Columbian American cultures. See Feder, Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries, 105–10.
11.Øverland, Immigrant Minds, American Identities, 146.
12.New England historians in the middle of the nineteenth century had embraced the notion of pre-Columbian Norse visits to North America decades before Anderson’s book was published. The seminal texts were Henry Wheaton’s History of the Norsemen, published in 1831, and Dane Carl Christian Rafn’s Antiquitates Americanae, published in 1837. These texts mark a significant departure from most scholars of the day, who considered the Norse sagas to be simply legend and devoid of historical value. Rafn claimed that the Vikings had traveled as far south as New Jersey. J. M. Mancini demonstrates that many New England historians and literary producers used Viking history as a means to bolster notions of Anglo-Saxon racial identity over and against newer immigrant groups arriving in the United States (Mancini “Discovering Viking America,” 868–907).
13.Rafn was the first scholar to claim a Norse origin for these artifacts in his 1837 work. Most contemporary scholars attribute the carvings on the Dighton Rock to the work of Native Americans. Excavations of the Newport Tower site in the 1940s yielded evidence that the edifice was constructed during the colonial period. See Williams, Fantastic Archeology, 213–19.
14.See Mancini’s analysis of Anderson’s work, “Discovering Viking America,” 883–84.
15.Anderson, America Not Discovered by Columbus, 51.
16.Øverland, Immigrant Minds, American Identities, 158.
17.Anderson, America Not Discovered by Columbus, 63.
18.Øverland, Immigrant Minds, American Identities, 149.
19.Ibid., 157.
20.Mancini, “Discovering Viking America,” 883.
21.Anderson’s cultural production was also adopted by some Swedish-American writers. The journalist Johan A. Enander used Viking history prominently in his popular historical writings of the late nineteenth century in his Chicago-based newspaper Hemlandet (Homeland) (Øverland, Immigrant Minds, American Identities, 155). In addition to the cultural capital found in Viking discovery narratives, Swedish Americans could claim deep roots in the United States by reminding Anglo-Americans that the Swedes had founded a colony along the Delaware River in the seventeenth century. This may help to explain why Swedish Americans were less prolific in their production of filiopietistic historiography about Viking discovery narratives. See Barton, “Swedish Americans and the Viking Discovery of America,” 61–78.
22.Wahlgren, The Kensington Stone, 123.
23.Berger, Sacred Canopy, 51.
24.In Sweden, it was illegal to be anything but Lutheran until 1860. This is not to say that there were not religious options for persons in Norway and Sweden in the mid-nineteenth century. Mormons, Baptists, and Pietist missionaries were active in Scandinavian countries starting in the 1850s.
25.Lovoll, The Promise of America, 143. Lovoll’s chapter “The Spirit and the Mind” describes in more detail the reasons for the fragmentations among Norwegian Lutherans.
26.See Lovoll, Norwegians on the Prairie, 65–71. This is a central reason why Norwegian immigrants have been more enthusiastic about Viking discovery narratives than Swedish immigrants. Swedish Americans also benefited from their association with the early colonial efforts in North America. Immigrants from Sweden colonized the Delaware Valley in the 1640s.
27.Danièle Hervieu-Léger observes that periods of accelerated social change are often accompanied with appeals to collective memory (Religion as a Chain of Memory, 141.
28.Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, 54.
29.Tweed understands the process of homemaking as the ways that religious people map, build, and inhabit physical and imagined spaces (ibid., 74).
30.Lago, On the Viking Trail, 59.
31.Around 850,000 Norwegians settled in the United States between 1825 and 1928 and an overwhelming majority of them settled in Minnesota. The peak years of arrival were 1866–73, 1880–93, and 1900–1910. See Carlton C. Qualey and Jon A. Gjerde, “The Norwegians,” in Holmquist, They Chose Minnesota, 220. From 1845 to 1930, 1,250,000 Swedes immigrated to the United States and the majority of them arrived in Minnesota as well (John G. Rice, “The Swedes,” in Holmquist, They Chose Minnesota, 248).
32.Wahlgren, The Kensington Stone, 121.
33.This was a typical path of Scandinavian immigration to the Midwest from the mid- to late nineteenth century.
34.Kjaer, “Runes and Immigrants in America,” 26.
35.Williams, Fantastic Archeology, 205.
36.In 1869, a farmer in Cardiff, New York, Stub Newell, unearthed a ten-foot-long stone object in the shape of a large man. Local observers concluded that this was a petrified giant, dating from the antediluvian era mentioned in the biblical book of Genesis. Within days of the discovery, Newell erected a tent over the giant and began to charge money for admission. Hundreds of people flocked to Newell’s farm each day. After a few short weeks, Newell had collected more than seven thousand dollars in admission fees—a staggering sum for 1869. However, the hoax was exposed and the business enterprise soon came to an end. Newell’s cousin admitted that the “giant” was a simply a carved statue made of gypsum.
37.Mulder, “Mormons from Scandinavia, 1850–1900.”
38.Holand, History of Norwegian Settlements, 34–35.
39.Sawyer, The Viking-Age Rune-Stones, 16–18.
40.Gräslund, “Religion, Art, and Runes,” 69.
41.Blegen, The Kensington Rune Stone, 36–39.
42.“The Stone Is Resurrected” is the title of one Holand’s chapters in A Pre-Columbian Crusade to America.
43.See Blegen, The Kensington Rune Stone, 49. Marion John Nelson argues that Holand saw the rune stone in terms of a historical monument that would commemorate Norwegian Americans. Nelson also compares Holand with the Norwegian folk character Askeladden, who is known for picking up mundane and discarded objects. Although his brothers make fun of him, Askeladden uses these objects to win the heart of a princess and half of the kingdom. Nelson parallels this story of Holand picking up the Kensington Rune Stone: an artifact that had been rejected and relegated for use as a step for Ohman’s granary. See “Material Culture and Ethnicity: Collecting and Preserving Norwegian Americana before World War II,” in Nelson, Material Culture and People’s Art among the Norwegians in America, 3–10.
44.Holand, My First Eighty Years, 185–88.
45.Ibid
. The depiction of Ohman as an uneducated but honest farmer would come to be a frequently used trope to glorify Scandinavian farmers.
46.Ibid., My First Eighty Years, 186. That the stone was used as a stepping stone is likely a literary device used in Holand’s storytelling. Ohman’s sons later testified that the stone was stored in the shed and was never used in such a way. See Wahlgren, The Kensington Stone, 191–92n.
47.Just after he acquired the stone, Holand carved his initial “H” on the side. The newly inscribed letter is still visible on the stone today. See Nielson and Wolter, The Kensington Rune Stone, 25.
48.Ibid., 238.
49.Ibid., 239.
50.For many years, Ohman appealed unsuccessfully to Holand to return the stone. Finally, in 1923, Holand sent Ohman a letter explaining that he was trying to get some compensation for all of the money he had spent researching the stone. Holand offered Ohman a rather empty promise to share some compensation with Ohman if he were ever in need. Ohman eventually pursued legal help in making a claim against Holand. However, on his attorney’s advice, Ohman chose not to sue Holand because of the high legal fees associated with suing a resident of another state. Holand remained a resident of Ephraim, Wisconsin. For a more detailed documentation of the debate over the ownership of the Kensington Rune Stone, see ibid., 237–48.
51.Holand, Norwegians in America, 157.
52.Ibid., 3. Holand’s blindness to the complicity of his immigrant brethren with the systemic violence perpetrated by U.S. policy toward Native Americans will be addressed in chapter 2.
53.Holand, Westward from Vinland, 262.
54.Copies of these documents exist but the originals were supposedly destroyed during a fire at Holand’s house in 1934 (Blegen, The Kensington Rune Stone, 58.
55.“University and Educational News,” Science 31, no. 791 (February 25, 1910): 297.
56.Blegen, The Kensington Rune Stone, 72. Wahlgren points to a number of inconsistencies in Winchell’s claims (Wahlgren, The Kensington Stone, 63–64).
57.Blegen, The Kensington Rune Stone, 89.
58.Kehoe, The Kensington Runestone, 8.
59.Nielson and Wolter, The Kensington Rune Stone, 430.
60.Holand had clear aspirations to pursue a literary career. While attending graduate school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he pondered his future plans: “It was a somewhat vague expectation of going to New York and there taking up a literary occupation. It seemed to me that literary people got more out of life than others.” As an aspiring writer, he had disdain for those who wrote about the “commonplace.” He saw the novelist as a true “knight of the pen” who could pursue creative endeavors through fostering an inner life. “When he retires to his den and rubs the Aladdin’s lamp of his imagination, he enters a different world of lovely ladies and heroic men whose conversation sparkles with wit and humor. Or there is the historian who in the profundity of his research meditates only on the high and the mighty of mankind” (Holand, My First Eighty Years, 98–99).
61.The Swedish-born archaeologist Birgitta Wallace researched the numerous artifacts that Holand and other Norse enthusiasts claimed were from the fourteenth century. As of 1982, Wallace claimed that sixty-nine artifacts, allegedly of Norse origin, have been found throughout the Midwest. She concluded that some of the artifacts are legitimate in that they date from the medieval period, but it cannot be verified that they were actually unearthed in Minnesota. However, others are clearly fakes dating from the nineteenth century (Wallace, “Viking Hoaxes,” 64–65).
62.Farmers used dynamite to break boulders into smaller pieces in order to clear land and collect building materials for foundations. As archaeologist Tom Trow has observed, there are hundreds of chiseled boulders scattered throughout the landscape. Holand identified only thirteen to support his theory of a fourteen-day journey. Archaeologists such as Trow have concluded that in the fourteenth century it would not have been possible to travel by a large boat from Hudson Bay to Douglas County as Holand had claimed. The group would have had to use small boats such as canoes that could be portaged over long distances. These boats, says Trow, would not have required mooring stones (Trow, “Small Holes in Large Rocks,” 125–26). In his 1986 book, Wahlgren argues that some of the stones were surveyor markings and others were used to anchor fish traps (Wahlgren, The Vikings and America, 110–11).
63.Holand, Westward from Vinland, 262.
64.Ibid., 266.
65.Ibid., 272. Catlin is known for his theory that the Mandan were descendants of Prince Madoc, a Welsh prince who is said by some to have sailed to North America in 1170. Holand is quick to denounce that theory (275–76).
66.Ibid., 263–64.
67.Ibid., 278.
68.Ibid., 264.
69.Michlovic and Hughey, “Norse Blood and Indian Character,” 83.
70.Evidence from as early as 1893 suggests that some Scandinavian Americans were growing weary of immigrant homemaking arguments. This might be an indication that in some sectors of the immigrant community, homemaking arguments were thought to be increasingly unnecessary. Anderson is portrayed almost as a rambling old coot by the publication Skandinaven. See Øverland, Immigrant Minds, American Identities, 225n33.
71.Wahlgren observed that Holand first said the tree was twenty-five years old in his 1908 book. In a 1910 article, Holand maintained the tree was forty years old and, in his later writings, claimed it was seventy. Wahlgren concluded that Holand had a growing need to increase the age of the tree as his linguistic evidence was challenged (Wahlgren, The Vikings and America, 32). Scandinavian Americans who questioned the Kensington Rune Stone were often portrayed as ethnic traitors. Regarding attacks on Holvik, see Sprunger, “Mystery and Obsession,” 149. Erik Wahlgren also experienced attacks, which he describes in “Reflections around a Rune Stone,” 37–49.
72.Sprunger, “Mystery and Obsession,” 144.
73.Holvik found a copy of the letter that a Kensington resident had sent to the Swedish American Post in 1899. This letter contained a copy that J. P. Hedberg claimed he had made of the inscription. Holvik observed numerous discrepancies between it and the actual rune stone inscription. He concluded that the Hedberg copy was a draft used by the stone carvers. Furthermore, following a visit with Ohman’s daughter, Manda, Holvik discovered that Ohman had owned a copy of the Swedish text by Carl Rosander, The Well-Informed Schoolmaster. According to Holvik, the text would have been a sufficient help in producing a runic inscription and even included the phrase “save us from evil” (ibid., 148).
74.Holvik’s strident attacks on Holand’s scholarship were also fueled by a personal quarrel with Holand when they met in Norway in 1911. See ibid., 142.
75.Ibid., 151.
76.It was the first professional historical society founded by an immigrant group in the United States (Lovoll, The Promise of America, 330).
77.Christianson, “Myth, History, and the Norwegian-American Historical Association,” 64–65.
78.Blegen, “The Kensington Rune Stone Discussion and Early Settlement in Western Minnesota,” 370–71.
79.Holand, Explorations in America before Columbus, 344. Holand includes a reproduction of Anderson’s article in the Minneapolis Journal from June 2, 1910.
80.Ibid., 342. Notably, Holand was a student of Ramus B. Anderson at the University of Wisconsin and even rented a room from him until they had “a falling out” (Nielson and Wolter, The Kensington Rune Stone, 484).
81.Anderson, “Another View of the Kensington Rune Stone,” 414. It is well established that Goths did indeed participate in Viking expeditions.
82.Lovoll, The Promise of America, 118.
83.Matthew Frye Jacobson illustrates how the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 favored immigration from Northern and Western Europe and restricted arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe (Whiteness of a Different Color, 83).
84.Schultz, “‘The Pride of the Race Had Been Touched,’�
� 1265.
85.Lovoll, Norwegians on the Prairie, 229. Coolidge, in earlier writings, praised persons from the Nordic race for their superior ability to become assimilated Americans. He contrasted them with other races that showed evidence of “deterioration” (Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 90).
86.Lovoll, The Promise of America, 303.
87.Bygdelags were Norwegian-American cultural organizations that were popular in the first decades of the twentieth century. Members of a particular bygdelag could trace their ancestry to a particular village or region in Norway. See Lovoll, A Folk Epic, 174–96; Lovoll, The Promise of America, 224.
88.This is an estimated percentage based on the census date recorded in Sletto’s Douglas County’s Immigrants, 22.
89.Øverland, Immigrant Minds, American Identities, 147.