Robert: Hey guys. I know I have been a little distant in communications but I have been doing quite a bit of research on the archaeological evidence of the Norse in North America. In studying the Kensington Runestone I have only found material that negates its authenticity. It has been a subject of controversy for over a century now and it all started with a man named Olof Ohman. Ohman was a Swedish immigrant and a farmer in Minnesota and, in 1898, he claimed to have found the runestone entangled in tree roots while clearing a field on his farm . There are a few translations of the inscriptions on the stone but the most common one is:
                                      
                            "8 Swedes and 22 Norwegians on exploration journey from Vinland westward. We had camp by 2 rocky islets one days journey north from this stone. We were out and fished one day. After we came home found 10 men red with blood and dead. A VM save from evil. Have 10 men by the sea to look after our ships 14 days' journey from this island. Year 1362." 

    The first scholar to investigate the stone was a man by the name of O.J. Breda. He believed the stone to be a hoax. He brought the stone to the University of Minnesota to Professor George R. Carume. Upon further investigation by Carume, he also believed it to be a hoax. Breda and Carume noted incorrect runes and words from the wrong era as proof of their hypothesis. After word of this the Kensington locals began looking for more Viking relics but found nothing. The stone was returned to Ohman.
     
     In 1907 a social historian named Hjalmar R. Holand became neighbors with Ohman and noticed that the locals were more interested in discussing the runestone rather then the trials of settler's life. So Holand began his investigation. By 1908 he published his first article on the stone and since has been one of the only proponents of its authenticity. 


    In 1908 the Minnesota Historical Society set up a committee to study the stone. On April 21, 1910 the committee agreed that the stone was authentic but needed to be analyzed by a specialist. They consulted professor Gisle Bothne, who was successor to Breda.
    
   Bothne believed the stone to be a fake and so invited John A. Holvik, who also believed it was a fake, onto the committee. And so beginning a rivalry between Holand and Holvik that will last the rest of their lives.

   After a while, Holand attempted to sell the stone for $5,000 to the Historical Society but was denied. He then tried to get money to transport the stone to Europe for further study, but the society would not fund this. So, in 1911 he paid out of pocket to take the stone to runologists in Europe. Every runologist he visited dismissed the runes as forgeries. Holland only noted this trip in one obscure article and otherwise tried to omit it for all his other works. He still would not believe that the stone was a fake and he criticized the runologists for not believing.

    Meanwhile, the Minnesota Historical Society published their final report on the subject of the runestone in 1915 declaring the inscription as fraud. However, the committee that the Historical Society formed to study the stone contradicts this conclusion. The Committees final statement of their report reads, "after carefully considering all the opposing arguments, the Museum Committee of this Society and Mr. Holand, owner of the stone believe its inscription is a true historical record.” For the next 20 years all is quiet on the subject.

    In 1932 Holand published a small book called The Kensington Stone. According to author Stephen Williams who commented on this work in his book Fantastic Archaeology published in 1991, the book is said to have been "filled with imagination, pride and a little research but no objectivity."The public was swayed by the book at this time especially since there was no one voicing opposition.

In 1948 a letter surfaced from J.P. Hedberg of Kensington to Swan J. Turnblad, editor of the Minneapolis Newspaper. The letter was dated January 1st, 1899 and asks for help with the translation of the runes. However, the written inscription had many problems that did not appear of the stone. This suggests that the letter was a first draft rather then a copy of the stone. The letter sparked an investigation of Ohman's past and many thought he created the stone himself. Ohman enjoyed reading, especially books about his homeland of Sweden and its history. Ohman had a friend by the name of Sven Fogelblad, who was educated and well read on scholarly works. Together they had more then enough information to create the runestones.
    
    In 1968 Theodore Blegen found the missing field notebook of the geologist of the Historical Society Committee with the initial observations of the roots from which the stone had been removed. The notebook provided evidence for the recent placement of the stone and, as a whole, was detrimental to the Vikings in Minnesota theory.

    An interesting theory surfaced thanks to Dr. Ole D. Landsverk, professor of Physics and Math and Alf Monge, who both believe that the rune inscriptions are authentic cryptograms.

    As of the 1990s there has been no further evidence of Vikings in Minnesota. However, discrepancies in the Ohman/Holand story have surfaced. The date of finding the stone is questionable, the Aspen root's dimensions(4” or 10” in diameter making the root either 10 – 30 years old or 70 years old – if the tree was 10 – 30 years old the stone could have been deliberately placed under the roots), if the inscriptions were done before or after the stone was removed from the soil(the original geologist noted the chisel marks were fresh and unweathered). Currently the “H” put on the rock by Holand and the rune chisel marks have the same amount of patina, which indicates they are equally weathered and therefor carved at the same time(though there was a claim that the runes had merely been chiseled again so after discovery to make it easier to read) and some of the words used are similar to colloquial Scandinavian( a combination of Norwegian and Swedish used in the northern Plains in the mid 1800s). Also the story on the stone relates directly to a massacre in the mid 1800s of ten Scandinavians at Norway Lake, MN which occurred while the rest of townspeople were at Church and it also relates to the amount of time taken to tow a reconstructed Viking ship from Yonkers, NY to Chicago(14 days) for a celebration in 1893.

     In a video produced by the BBC, this story ended with deathbed confessions of the Frank Walter Cran, the son of one of Ohman’s friends and of Ohman’s son, Edward. They said that Ohman and his friends had created the stone “to fool the educated ones” (Williams 1991:206). The credibility of these confessions is questionable but does provide Hollywood conclusion to the question of whether or not Vikings were in Minnesota.

  

    Sorry for the length of this post but this is all the information I have collected about the Kensington Runestone thus far. I am still searching for an objective paper on the subject as well as one written from the perspective of a modern proponent of its authenticity. 

-Robert Muller