Kensington Runestone
A 200 pound slab of greywacke cut with runes and the date 1362, pulled out of a Minnesota field in 1898 by a Swedish immigrant who said he found it clamped in the roots of an aspen. Runologists called it a forgery within a year. A state historical committee called it genuine in 1910.
Field Guide Entry
Olof Ohman was clearing land near Kensington in the fall of 1898 when he pulled up an aspen and found a slab of greywacke held in its roots, about 200 pounds of it, cut with runes on the face and along one edge. His 10 year old son Edward was with him. The inscription describes a party of 8 Goths and 22 Norwegians on a journey west from Vinland, says 10 of them were found "red with blood and dead," and closes with the year 1362.
Copies went out to scholars within months. In 1899 Olaus Breda at the University of Minnesota and George Curme at Northwestern both read the language as modern Swedish dressed up in runes, and said so in print. That should have settled it.
The runologists and the geologists
It did not, because the geologists disagreed with the linguists. A Minnesota Historical Society committee took the stone up in 1909, and its chair, the state geologist Newton Winchell, reported in 1910 that the weathering on the carved surfaces was consistent with centuries in the ground. The Smithsonian put the stone on display in 1948. Hjalmar Holand, a Norwegian American writer who acquired it from Ohman, spent 50 years arguing for it and is the reason most people have heard of it at all.
Ohman never made money from it. He was accused of carving it, was questioned more than once, and died in 1935 without confessing and without profiting.
Weathering and the date
Scott Wolter, a geologist, examined the grooves in the early 2000s and argued that mica in the carved surfaces had degraded in a way that takes at least 200 years, which would put the carving well before Ohman was born. Henrik Williams, professor of runology at Uppsala, has spent two decades on the inscription, reads its language as 19th century, and has criticized both camps for arguing from what they want to be true.
Nobody has produced a carver. The dialect, the rune forms, and the punctuation have all been traced to 19th century Swedish sources, and the stone has never been shown to have been anywhere except that field.
Visiting Information
The stone is the centerpiece of a museum that also holds a reconstructed 1860s fort, a replica Viking ship, and the Douglas County historical collections. Summer admission from April 1 through October 31 is $10 for adults, $9 for seniors and veterans, $7 for students, and $25 for a family, dropping by a couple of dollars in winter. Doors are open 10am to 4pm Monday through Saturday, and the outdoor Fort Alexandria exhibits are summer only.
The Ohman farm is now a county park at Kensington with its own visitor center and a marked discovery site, free and open 8am to 10pm. Pairing the two is worth the drive, since the museum holds the object and the park holds the hole it came out of.
Big Ole, a 28 foot Viking statue, stands a block from the museum and takes about 5 minutes.
Field Gallery
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