Vikings in America (22 page)

In effect we have two possible views on the Kensington Runestone, both of them stretching credulity. Most commentators have seemed reluctant to set them out with the boldness that is required. For either the Runestone is one of the greatest forgeries ever, or it rewrites history.

The first view is that the Kensington Runestone is a fake. However, if this is so it is a linguistic
tour de force
produced with enormous skill by a linguist of genius. It was certainly not written by Ohman. He was not particularly well educated, did not have access to the reference books available, was not trained in philology, had not learned Old Norse, and had no access to the scholarly community in European universities where some work on Old Norse was being conducted. Ohman didn't write this text. Perhaps someone else wrote it – yet even assuming the forger to be an academic, a scholar of Old Norse and Swedish philology, perhaps a professor at Copenhagen, Oxford or Cambridge, it is very hard to believe that anyone in the late nineteenth century had the linguistic knowledge to produce this text. Additionally, there are problems with the concept of burying the inscription for at least 20 years before Ohman found it – which means that the forgery was created even earlier, when knowledge of the language was even less developed. The idea that the Runestone is a forgery is in its way every bit as problematic as the idea that the Runestone is genuine.

Though I am a philologist specialising in Old English and Old Norse I could not produce from scratch a forgery with language approaching the quality of the Runestone, and there are but a handful of people today who could attempt such work. Scholarship has advanced since the late nineteenth century and today's academics have far better information to guide them, yet it would still be a difficult task. Were I to make the attempt I would seek the one sure way of minimising errors. I would wish to copy a genuine text as far as possible, and make as few changes to it as possible. Perhaps in this
methodology is a possible solution. Rather than claiming almost impossible linguistic skills for Ohman, or whoever else the forger might be, it seems possible that an argument could be constructed on the lines that the Runestone is a modern copy – with minor changes – of a runic text found somewhere else. For this we need to suppose a genuine fourteenth- or fifteenth-century model which was copied by the forger, and adapted to make reference to Vinland. The scenario would be that Ohman had access to the text of a real Swedish runestone that was a memorial to a completely different expedition, for example perhaps a Swedish runestone recording an expedition from Sweden to the east, and that he made some small changes in substituting the place name ‘Vinland', and changing the directions. With this hypothesis we have a mechanism for explaining the high quality of the language – it is copied from an original. The great problem with this idea is that no such original is known. Had it existed it would itself have been one of the longest Swedish runestone inscriptions, and we would expect to know about it. Perhaps we should consider that Ohman could have put together two or three shorter inscriptions, which might explain the juxta-positions of the Kensington Runestone text – though in this case none of these originals have survived. In order to make the idea of a copy work we have to suppose one or more originals which have since been destroyed, without having been previously noted by antiquarians, and therefore leaving no trace. This again is implausible. Runic inscriptions were studied throughout the nineteenth century, and it is unlikely that a major inscription would not have been commented on. Additionally their solid construction – basically a slab of rock – discourages wanton destruction. Notwithstanding this, something along these lines has to be assumed if we are to argue that the Kensington Runestone is a forgery. As a scenario we have Ohman becoming acquainted with the text of one or more Swedish runestones, subsequently lost without trace, and taking much time and care in producing his fake Runestone, which was a copy with small modifications of this original. Then he buried it for some years in order to weather it – at least 20 – dug it up, and presented it as real. The prank was premeditated and took very many years to implement. As he made no money from the Runestone his motive seems not to be profit. Indeed the only motive that has ever been advanced is that it was a prank to discredit the academic community – though why Ohman should be interested in such a thing has not been set out.

Perhaps a re-examination is needed of the alternative possibility that the Runestone is genuine. Amazingly, European archives provide a perfect
context for the Runestone. In 1354 Paul Knutson was authorised by the Swedish King Magnus Eiriksson to make a missionary voyage from Sweden to Greenland because the Greenlanders had renounced Christianity and returned to paganism. Behind this proselytising zeal there was also a commercial motive, for because the Greenlanders had renounced Christianity they had also stopped paying their tithes. The voyage took place, with a mixed Swedish and Norwegian crew, and including a priest to help in the process of reintroducing Christianity to the Greenlanders. The expedition took ten years, returning in 1364. There is no contemporary extant account of the voyage, though several sources mention that an account did exist, now lost, written by Jacobus Cnoven. A letter dated 1577 from cartographer Gerardus Mercator to John Dee – Queen Elizabeth I's most prominent man of learning – gives a précis of this account, specifying that the voyage went to Greenland and lands beyond, returning with just eight men alive.

Within the story of the Knutson voyage a context could be found for the Kensington Runestone. A ten-year voyage of exploration to Greenland and lands west could conceivably have followed an established Viking route to Kensington. Furthermore the Kensington Runestone, therefore, has a different function from runestones in Sweden. There the most common function of a runestone is to commemorate a dead person when there is no body. Typically a runestone might say that someone died on a Viking trip, and usually gives the name of the person who set up the stone. The Kensington Runestone does not do this. The ten dead are not named, or otherwise identified (perhaps they could have been identified as a named person's followers or crew of a specific ship). The rune writer does not name himself. The reference to eight Goths and twenty-two Norwegians at first sight seems almost pointless. The geography is strange. West from Vinland implies that the Vikings have travelled west from the Atlantic seaboard, though no-one could conceive of this journey taking just 14 days overland (and Ohman would have been aware of pre-railway-age pioneers who had made the journey, and known it was much longer). The geography only makes sense if a vast area of what is now the eastern United States was termed Vinland and an equally vast area – today's Midwest – was termed the land west of Vinland. This suggests substantial Viking exploration of the interior of North America. Possibly the Runestone is part commemorative of the ten dead, part a land claim. By setting up a dated monument the Vikings are establishing their presence – though it would be reasonable to expect a named person to be mentioned. Perhaps we are seeing a Runestone
used without the pagan mysticism that would accompany their use in Sweden, and that in this new guise we have a much longer and more prosaic stone, utilising a slightly different set of runes to those found in Swedish runestones of the same period and a slightly different vocabulary. The year 1362 is late for a runestone. Norwegians and Swedes did still use runes, but they also used the Latin alphabet. The great strength of the runic alphabet is that it is made of straight lines only, and is much easier to carve into stone than the curves of the Latin alphabet. Perhaps a context for the Kensington Runestone is to be found not in runic inscriptions, but in Latin inscriptions of the period. This would contextualise the length, the dating convention and the use of precise detail. Realistically, we just don't know.

If the Runestone is genuine, it rewrites history. And the implications of this rewriting are too great. The most recent linguistic assessment of the Kensington Runestone (2004) comes from Sweden's University of Uppsala. A joint statement has been prepared which bears the names of both Richard Nielsen, the foremost advocate of the view that the Runestone is genuine, and Henrik Williams, Professor of Scandinavian Studies at Uppsala, a philologist and sceptic. The statement notes that a consideration of the language presents problems both for identification with the fourteenth century and with the nineteenth century. After several paragraphs of scholarly hedging the statement issues its final and definitive conclusion: the Runestone ‘requires further study'. This should perhaps be the last word on the subject. Yet there is more.

In December 1998 the Runestone underwent a physical examination by a geologist. Save for a cursory examination in 1910 this was the first real geological examination. The process proved protracted. Scott Wolter, a forensic geologist who had established a reputation as a professional witness, was commissioned to carry out the examination. He chose to compare the stone with the effects of weathering on incised surfaces of old gravestones made of the same stone. A cut surface on this type of slate contains some pyrite which can be seen under a microscope, and which degrades through time. The cuts in the Kensington Runestone show no pyrite at all – though a newly made scratch on the Runestone shows the expected pyrite. The question is, how quickly could the pyrite degrade to nothing? Exposure to the air is not sufficient to cause the degradation, so the process has not happened since 1898. Rather, it is a process caused specifically by contact with soil. Wolter's conclusion is that the stone must have been buried for a minimum of 200 years to cause the degradation observed. There is no way
of determining a maximum period of burial. Wolter draws attention to ice scars on the back of the stone which are many thousands of years old, but remain sharp like the carved runes. If Wolter's findings are accepted, then he has effectively proved the Runestone to be genuine. The area around Kensington Minnesota was first settled by Europeans in 1858; a runestone in local stone carved, according to Wolter's dating, prior to 1698 cannot be a forgery. At the time of writing the University of Uppsala is repeating Wolter's test. Consideration is being given to the idea that the test itself is at fault.

Had this stone been unearthed in Sweden with a comparable inscription it would have been accepted as genuine. The language is simply too good for there to be any likelihood for it to be a forgery. Its location in America means a higher standard of proof is needed. In the light of an apparently sound geological test stating that it is genuine, I feel unable to discount this artefact. Yet I am reluctant to accept it as genuine either.

Leaving aside the Kensington Runestone, there are plenty of Viking finds associated with Minnesota. All must be treated with great caution. Anyone who cares to search for ‘Viking' in the art and antiquities section of eBay will find on any day a few small Viking artefacts for sale. Typically these are small metal objects – strap ends, brooches, pins, lead weights – many found in eastern England. Usually they are metal detector finds, sometimes being sold by the finder, sometimes by a coin or antiques dealer. The provenance might be given as a county, sometimes as a village. If the items are genuine, and most are, no-one ever doubts the claimed provenance, though most have been collected outside the archaeological context of a professional dig, and often without a witness to the finding. We know the Vikings were in England, and small Viking finds from England are common; there is no difficulty believing that the belt buckle which the finder says is from Norfolk really is from Norfolk. Over the years, Minnesota has produced its own haul of small, ‘Viking' artefacts. They have been found by individuals outside an archaeological context, and because they are said to have been found in America rather than Europe they are all considered to be fraudulent. The assumption is that the individual has acquired a genuine Viking item from Europe, and claimed to have found it in Minnesota, and perhaps this scenario is an explanation for many of the finds reported. However, it would only take one genuine, contextualised find to satisfy the scholarly community of the Viking presence in Minnesota.

At Cormorant Lake, Becker County, Minnesota, three rocks have been found with a man-made, triangular hole through them. During the Viking
Age such rocks were fashioned to take a wooden spar and form an anchor. Were such rocks found in a known Viking context, they would be accepted as Viking anchor-stones. As with all stone objects there are considerable difficulties in dating, and we are without an objective date for these curious stones. In the absence of such a date it has been asserted that they were made more recently, for an unknown purpose.

Until such time as a Viking object is found in Minnesota in the course of an archaeological dig it would seem that no evidence of Viking presence there will be accepted by the scholarly community. The standard of proof presently required is very high indeed – perhaps rightly so – and while items claimed to be from Minnesota are being shown to be genuine, it is asserted that they cannot satisfy proof of provenance.

There is slender evidence that the Vikings reached Victoria Island in the Canadian High Arctic. Victoria Island is another enormous island, the world's ninth largest island and only slightly smaller than Great Britain. That even today few people are aware of its existence, even in Canada, is testimony to its remoteness. The population was numbered at 1,309 by the 2001 census, almost all living in the two widely separated settlements of Cambridge Bay and Ulukhaktok. There is little clarity on population levels at earlier times, but it is likely that the population was once higher, and that there were several or even many other settlements.

The island was known to late nineteenth-century explorers, who named it after Queen Victoria, and at that time whalers engaged in some trade with the native Inuit. However, the first lengthy visit by a European to the island is as late as the winter of 1905–06 when a Dane, Christian Klengenberg, made an extended trading visit. Klengenberg made extraordinary reports about the Inuit he encountered on Victoria Island, stating that many of them had blue or grey eyes, fair hair and fair skin. While his stories were published in the Canadian press, little general notice was taken of them. For the first proper description of the people of Victoria Island we are indebted to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who visited over the years 1908 to 1912.