The Norseman

The Kensington Stone - Fiction or Historical Truth?

(This article was published by Carl O. Nordling in The Norseman in 1957.)

CAN a language develop independently among a small group of people till it differs considerably from the original one? Of course it can, but how long does it take, would seven years be enough for a manifest change? This is just one of the questions that are posed by the Kensington Stone.

Much has been written about this stone. In Scandinavia it is commonly held a counterfeit; in America opinions seems to be more in favour of its genuineness as a real rune stone carved by Nordic Vikings. The stone was found by a Swedish farmer, Olof Ohman, near the small village of Kensington in Minnesota back in 1898. It lay, engraving downwards, under the roots of an aspen tree upon the slope of a small hill on the outskirts of Ohman's farm. The aspen was probably considerably more than 30 years old when the stone was found. The carving is weathered to a certain extent as though exposed to the elements for a century or half a century at least.

Now, suppose the rune stone is a fake, made by some Scandinavian immigrant in modern times. If this be the case, the circumstances suggest that the inscription was made some time before the 19th century. This itself is a problem, because settlement in Minnesota did not take place until the 1840's. Further, the contents of the inscription demonstrate that the author must' have possessed information published in a book that appeared in 1887, viz. Gustav Storm's Studier over Vinlandsrejserne. In this book it is told that King Magnus, sovereign of both Sweden and Norway, in the year 1355 commanded an expedition to sail to the West in order to search for the mysteriously vanished colonists of Greenland. The Kensington Stone actually tells about a Norwegian‑Swedish expedition to the West and it is dated 1362, two years before the supposed return of the expedition., The relationship seems, too close to be only a random coincidence. So far the alleged counterfeiter has done a good job. But the rest of the contents are so much worse, and so is the language. The author has not used any literary Nordic language from the 14th century, but a mixed composition of old and modern not belonging to any known period. For instance in sentences beginning with “wi” (first person plural) the verb is always used in its singular form, a manner of writing that was adopted in Sweden in the 1940's! The Nordic linguists have thought this modern‑sounding language to be proof enough against the possibility of the inscription emanating from the 14th century.

However, let us for a moment ignore the verbal form and look at the message inscribed on the stone. If this is actually a product of the author's imagination, it must rank among the great works of Scandinavian fiction. In merely 64 words the nameless author shows an uncanny power of entering into the historical period and creating an atmosphere that few historical novels can equal. Like some modernist poet he drops every unnecessary word ‑- and what remains must still have meant hours of hard work in carving the surface of the stone.

These are the words of the Kensington Stone carved in Nordic runes:

8 göter ok 22 norrmen po opdagelsefard fro winland of west wi hade läger wed 2 skjar en dags rise norr fro deno sten wi war ok fiske en dagh äptir wi korn hem fan 10 man röde af blod og ded AVM fräelse af illy / här 10 mans we havet at se äptir wore skip 14 dagh rise from deno öh ahr 1362.

(In literal translation: 8 Goths and 22 Norwegians on discovery trip from Vinland to the west. we had camp by 2 skerries one day's journey north from this stone. we was and fishing one day, after we came home, found 10 man reds of blood and dead, AVM. save from evil. here 10 mans by the sea to look after our ships, 14 day journey from this island. year 1362.)

The word counterfeit is ill suited to this piece of fiction. It contains nothing of plagiarism since it has no prototype among the genuine rune stones. These are in most cases feeble as literary products with their stereotype statements about some person who had the stone erected in the memory of some other person.

Instead of this the writer of the Kensington Stone devotes almost all the 64 words to his story, and what a story! Starting from the fact of King Magnus's order, he makes the king's expedition proceed from Greenland to Vinland and then further west as far as Minnesota, the very heart of the vast North American continent! He leaves to the reader to figure out how this journey was carried out. Then he arranges a sudden cruel death for half the party, and again the reader gets only the very essentials as a basis for his imagination. Dead and red from blood‑that is all. Nothing about fighting, enemies, taking of scalps; we may complete the picture with our own knowledge of such things and our own imagination. After that he shortly says Mass over the dead: ‑‑‑AVM‑‑‑ in Roman letters meaning Ave Virgo Maria. This medieval sentence indicates a certain historical knowledge as well as the following “fräelse af illy"‑‑‑ i.e. “save (us), from evil”‑‑‑ in true medieval Swedish.

All this may be accepted as a likely story from a counterfeiter. All the more unlikely seems the milieu and the geographic data in the text. The author apparently is thinking entirely in terms of ships and the ocean, although he for some reason places his stone in the middle of the mainland as far as possible from any coast. Despite the fact that the place of the stone was a hill surrounded by land he is speaking of the place as an island situated one day's journey from two skerries (i.e. rocky islets). One would think that he regarded 1 the whole district as a sea with scattered islets, but, for his mentioning the " real‑‑‑sea (where the ships lay) as something more distant14 days' journey to be sure. And why 14? Did the unknown writer really think that one could travel the thousand miles between the Atlantic and Kensington in 14 days without modern vehicle? The statement becomes plausible only if we assume that the writer was such an expert in medieval history as to know that the Vikings used to count 12 Swedish miles as one day‑sailing (irrespective of the time actually needed for covering the distance). Kensington is as a matter of fact situated 14 such day‑sailings from the Hudson Bay.

The statement that the place of the stone is an island also becomes plausible, if the author is regarded as an expert in geology as well. In that case he could have realized that the hill really must have been surrounded by water in olden times.

Now, this either completely ignorant or highly skilled counterfeiter could, very well have used Roman figures which were in common use in the 14th century, but he did not in spite of his use of three Roman letters. Instead he used a kind of rune figures, the prototype of which are found in a Latin book by Ole Worm printed in 1643. When the stone was found the contemporary experts did not know these figures‑ and could not decipher them until many years later.

The eminent book‑learning of the author may be striking by itself, but it becomes so much more noteworthy when we consider that the text is teeming with simple orthographic errors. Even though the author may have been ignorant of the medieval Nordic languages (and he was not, since he wrote "fräelse af illy"), no ignorance whatever would explain why he spells "ok” as well as “og”‑‑‑(meaning "and"), "fro” as well as‑‑‑“from”, “dags rise” as well as “dagh rise" ("day's journey” and ‑‑‑“wed" well as “we” ("by"). A counterfeiter certainly writes a draft on paper before he carves the text in the stone, and this elaborate text must have been rewritten many times. Then whence these errors? Did he make spelling mistakes on purpose?

We might as well ask if there really can have been such a calculating and thorough counterfeiter in the 1890's (or before) as this hypothetical modern rune writer in Minnesota. He would have known about King Magnus's expedition in 1355, but he doesn't mention the name of its leader, Paul Knutsson. He doesn't place the rune stone in any likely place near the coast. Admittedly, today Minnesota would be as likely a place for a rune stone as any, since a number of old Nordic finds have proved that this region was visited by Vikings before the time of Columbus, but who could know about that in the 1890's or earlier ? The counterfeiter would also have used rune figures despite the risk that nobody would be able to decipher them and consequently the important date would be lost to the interpreter. He would have prepared the stone in some unknown way so as to get it seemingly weathered and then he would have hidden the stone down in the earth under a tree. There must have been little hope for him that his stone ever should be found and its inscription understood. Then, what was his motive?

When we consider all this, it seems improbable that the alleged counterfeiter ever existed at all. Yet the fact remains that the Scandinavian language of the stone is not the literary language of the 14th century. But suppose now, that the Kensington Stone was made by a member of the Paul Knutsson expedition who had learnt to write. Suppose that this man carved the runes from dictation by the leader of the ten surviving men. The carver had certainly learnt the literary language‑perhaps writing from dictation at school, in which case the teacher may have dictated the words in literary language in order to impress the latter on his pupils. Now, what happens when the carver has to write from dictation in colloquial language‑perhaps for the first time? Probably he writes it down as faithfully as possible. And to what kind of colloquial language does he listen? Certainly not any dialect spoken in Sweden or Norway in 1362. The 30 men had not been at home for seven years. Every day during those years their various dialects of Norse and Swedish had mingled together and formed a peculiar Nordic dialect of its own style, not affected by any correcting influence from radio, books or newspapers.

A counterfeiter could have looked up the words and runes in a book, but a member of the Knutsson expedition in the same situation could only improvise runes and inflections to the best of his ability. In this context the improvisations of the text speak for its genuineness rather than against it.

In spite of the seeming strength of the linguistic evidence, the possibility that the Kensington Stone may be a genuine historical document cannot be completely rejected. However, be it a true report of facts or pure fiction, the inscription is superior to most things of its kind.

The Norseman 25 BELGRAVE SQUARE, LONDON, S.W.l.

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