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Story of the Runestone
In the fall of 1898, Olaf Ohman, a Swedish farmer, living near Alexandria, Minnesota, found a large flat stone imbedded in the roots of an aspen tree he dug up. His little son, stooping to dust it off so that he might sit on it, saw some strange carvings on it. The stone was taken to the farm home of Ohman where the marks on the stone were cleaned out. To everyone’s amazement a long inscription on the face of the stone and on one edge was found. The stone is a native rock called graywacke and measures 31 inches long, 16 inches wide, and 6 inches think. It weighs 202 pounds, so it must have been chiseled out on the spot.
The stone was brought to the small village of Kensington about four miles away, and was exhibited in the window of the local bank. Thus it was soon identified as the “Kensington Runestone” from the name of the village, and because the inscription was in “runes,” as the characters used by the Northmen were called.
The stone at once aroused a great deal of controversy as to its authenticity. The inscription was not completely translated, however, until H. R. Holand of Ephriam, Wisconsin, a well-known Norwegian scholar and historian, became interested in it, secured possession of the stone from the finder, and began devoting his time to research as to its genuineness. His translation is now accepted both here and abroad and reads as follows:
8 Goths and 22 Norwegians on
exploration-journey from
Vinland over the west We
had camp by 2 skerries one
days-journey north from this stone
We were and fished one day After
We came home found 10 men red
with blood and dead Ave Maria
Save from Evil
The following three lines appear on the edge of the stone:
Have 10 of our party by the sea to look
after our ships 14 days-journey
from this island Year 1362
We now know that about the year 1355 Magnus Erickson, the King of Sweden and Norway, sent out an expedition under the command of Paul Knutson to go to Greenland to assure that the Christian religion would not perish there. It is believed that the King had received word that the people of the settlement in Greenland had immigrated to the mainland and lost their religion. The King probably received this information from John Guthormson, a prominent politician of the time, who had come from Iceland. This ship arrived in Norway about 1348.
Speculation says that when Knutson’s expedition to Greenland found the Western settlement deserted it went on to Vinland. There were no Greenlanders there, so the expedition looked for them on the shores of Hudson Bay. From there they came down to where the stone was found. Some members of the Paul Knutson expedition returned to Norway in 1363 or 1364. The party on 10 that were left with ships waited in vain for over a year for the explorers to come back down the Nelson river to Hudson Bay.
In corroboration of the story told by the stone, various Scandinavian implements of the 14th century have been found in the vicinity of the route the party must have taken to reach the place where the stone was found. These implements are three battle axes — one of which is a “beard” ax, a firesteel, and a spearhead. These articles are pictured and the stories of their finding and verification are given in Holand’s books, The Kensington stone, Westward from Vinland, and America 1352-1365.
The Kensington Runestone is now on exhibit permanently in the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota, having been secured from Mr. Holand in 1928 by a group of Alexandria business and professional men.
In 1932 after two trips to Europe where he did extensive research work in 26 museums in six countries, Mr. Holand published his book The Kensington Stone. From page 137 forward, the book goes into this discussion very fully and quotes such experts as Gathorne-Hardy, Hovgaard, Nansen, and Fossum as concurring in the opinion stated by Holand, “That an ordinary ‘daghrise’ represented a unit of distance of approximately 75 miles.” The word “daghrise” means day’s journey and was an expression used by those in the expedition not referring to the distance they traveled each day in going from Hudson Bay to where the stone was found; and one day’s journey to Cormorant Lake where the ten men were killed. It is not to be supposed that the men actually measured these distances but made the statements as estimates.