Myths of the Rune Stone
Page 9
Main Street’s expulsion was a highly secretive affair. Those who asked at the library had been told for some time that the book was not in favor among the best people because it wasn’t altogether fair to the small town. But the demand was insistent and the library board finally authorized the purchase of a few copies. Then one dark night the copies disappeared.13
Many of these articles accused the people of Alexandria of taking Lewis’s novel “too seriously.”14 Not even Alexandria’s neighbor, Sauk Centre, refrained from heaping ridicule. An article in the Sauk Centre Herald stated that Alexandria was simply “jealous” of all the publicity that Sauk Centre had received. Alexandria’s public library director, Gustav A. Kortsch, publicly denied that Lewis’s book had been banned; he maintained that the library had received a defective copy and had returned it to the publisher.15 The damage, however, had already been done. Alexandria appeared to outsiders as having lived up to Lewis’s depiction of small-town residents as defensive and paranoid. Unfortunately, unlike Sauk Centre, Alexandria and other small towns in western Minnesota were not able to turn Lewis’s critique of small-town and rural life into a cultural benefit. They had little to gain from endorsing his book because they could not claim Lewis as a native son. These communities would have to find other means to rehabilitate their civic image and boost the local economy.
Bjorklund’s Dream: Erecting a Monument to America’s True Founders
American civil religion has been inscribed into the American landscape through the construction of monuments, museums, and war memorials. Although the largest concentration of the nation’s sacred monuments and sites is in eastern cities such as Washington and Philadelphia, civic leaders from across the country integrated their own spaces into American narratives. On July 4, 1927, Gen. John J. Pershing laid the cornerstone for the Indiana War Memorial in Indianapolis, “consecrating the edifice as a patriotic shrine.”16 In 1927, carving began on a South Dakota mountainside that was to be transformed into a monument dedicated to U.S. presidents. Dubbed “America’s Shrine of Democracy,” Mount Rushmore became a sacred civic site accessible to millions of Americans in the middle of the country.17
Also in 1927, a group of western Minnesotans started their own campaign to construct a monument of national significance. In the spring of that year, a local pharmacist named Edwin T. Bjorklund awoke from a dream in which he saw a tall monument to the Kensington Rune Stone surrounded by a large crowd marveling at its enormity. The monument rose so high that it could be seen from towns throughout western Minnesota, as far as sixty miles away. Bjorklund said he also heard “an eloquent speech” given by a defender of the historical authenticity of the rune stone. According to local accounts, Bjorklund got out of bed in the middle of the night and went directly to his drugstore to begin work on making the dream a reality.18 Soon after, on a local radio broadcast, Bjorklund shared his vision for erecting his monument, which would measure more than two hundred feet tall. Following his radio appearance, the Alexandria paper reported that “great excitability and enthusiasm has prevailed among the people of Kensington and throughout Douglas County.”19
In May 1927, Bjorklund marshaled this collective zeal into a rally to promote the monument’s construction. The June rally was held at the Nils Fahlin farm, located just two miles to the east of the rune stone “discovery” site, to officially kick off the fund-raising campaign.20 Bjorklund opened the event by leading the crowd estimated at five thousand in the singing of the patriotic hymn “America the Beautiful.” Throughout the day, several speakers addressed the crowd, emphatically connecting the sacred value of the artifact to the identity of local residents. Congressman Ole J. Kvale “paid a glowing tribute to the Scandinavian people who developed the northwestern United States.” Playing up the theme of ethnic nostalgia, he stated that “observing the traditions of the forefathers was not a distraction to being good Americans.” To the contrary, he argued, it actually intensifies their patriotism and makes them better citizens.21
Hjalmar Holand was a central figure at the rally and delivered a speech in defense of the historical authenticity of the Kensington Rune Stone. Holand at first refused to allow his beloved artifact to be displayed at the rally for fear that it might be stolen. His fears were assuaged when two World War I veterans dressed in full battle gear and carrying rifles agreed to guard the stone throughout the day’s festivities. Local papers noted that the two veterans, Gilbert Hanson and John Ecklund, were from the “Lost Battalion” of the First World War, a U.S. military unit caught behind German lines that suffered heavy casualties. Hanson and Ecklund were among the survivors. Their presence next to the stone may have been intended to evoke the image of the Norse travelers as also having been “behind enemy lines” while they suffered Indian attacks.22 Rally attendees were able to file past the guarded rune stone, which was mounted on a platform. The enthusiastic speeches and the dramatic method of display had the effect of raising the sacred value of the stone in the eyes of many attendees, as evidenced by an essay written by a local seventh grader:
The Kensington Runestone is undoubtedly of much more importance than the Plymouth Rock, which hundreds of thousands of people go to see yearly just because it is the rock on which the Pilgrims stepped when they landed on the Atlantic coast three hundred years after the Norsemen left the Runestone. The stone itself is an object of great importance . . . I think everything possible should be done to promote the building of the Runestone Monument.23
In short, the Oscar Lake rally marks the beginning of when the Kensington Rune Stone became widely recognized as a sacred regional symbol.
Civic promoters built on the momentum of the rally by forming the Runestone Foundation.24 Board members included residents from nearly a dozen small towns scattered across western Minnesota. Boosters of this civic project boasted of the project’s significance:
This Runestone Park and monument project is said to be the biggest undertaking launched by any Scandinavian body in the United States of America, and the Runestone state park and tower when completed will be one of the rarest and most uncommon architectural constructions in the state, and thousands upon thousands of tourists will visit the historical site yearly. It will point a gateway to the beautiful lake region district of Minnesota and Douglas County, where future generations will see this fitting memorial to commemorate the sturdy Vikings who left this evidence, the Kensington Runestone in the visit to Minnesota in 1362.25
That summer, plans for the monument from a Minneapolis-based architectural firm were unveiled in the local newspapers. The monument was to include a two-hundred-foot square shaft with a circular foundation of columns to be constructed at its base. The interior of the foundation would include a room, forty-six feet in diameter, to provide a permanent home for the Kensington Rune Stone and “other articles of ancient origin.”26 With the construction projected to cost an estimated three hundred thousand dollars, newspaper articles assured readers that letters had already been received offering donations: “Enthusiasm is in great evidence not only in Minnesota but in adjoining states.”27 The committee planned to start the following September with an effort to approach “every Scandinavian in four states” to make a contribution of one dollar per family member.28
Olof Ohman and war veterans stand next to the Kensington Rune Stone display at a monument fund-raising rally near Oscar Lake in 1927. Courtesy of Douglas County Historical Society.
The peculiar design of the monument gives a clue to its symbolic intentions. The square shaft is an obelisk and the design bears striking resemblance to one of Robert Mills’s design proposals for the Washington Monument from 1845.29 It is not known why this particular design was chosen for the Runestone Monument, but there are some possible explanations. The Washington Monument commemorates the founding father of the United States. So the choice of the obelisk design for the Kensington Rune Stone monument likely demonstrated that the fourteenth-century Norsemen were the real founders of America.30The monument design also re
sembled the plans for a new skyscraper called the Foshay Tower, which was being constructed in Minneapolis that same year. Civic boosters like Bjorklund may have hoped the monument would help their rural hometown to be associated with the prestige of Minnesota’s largest urban center.31
Many of the persons associated with this monument project, including Bjorklund, were members of Masonic lodges. The man behind the Foshay Tower was also a prominent Freemason, as were most businessmen of this era. One early rune stone observer argued that the “AVM” in the Kensington inscription is actually “AUM” and would indicate the markings of a Masonic symbol.32 As Wahlgren observed, the term “AUM” is familiar among Freemasons because it is noted in their manuals as a reference to “God” in the religions of India.33 Whether or not Freemasons recognized the Kensington Rune Stone as a particularly Masonic symbol is not known. However, fraternal organizations such as the Freemasons have been characterized as “a form of institutionalized civil religion” with the aim of cultivating morality among their members. Masonic literature has frequent references to God as transcendent over the nation and the source of civic virtue. The preoccupation with the nation’s founders is well documented. Masonic doctrine upholds George Washington as a moral exemplar of “devotion to God and country” and the revolutionary period is characterized as a golden age of U.S. history.34
Masonic themes occur in the monument promotion rhetoric in the months following the summer rally near Ohman’s farm. At an Alexandria gathering in late 1927, orations delivered by several dignitaries extolled the sacred role that the rune stone should play in the identity of the region’s residents. The governor of North Dakota, Arthur G. Sorlie, maintained that the monument should not be viewed as a cost but as an investment to build a Midwestern tourist destination that would rival the historic sites in eastern cities like Philadelphia and Boston.35 Together with South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore, the monument to America’s Norse founders in Minnesota could draw visitors to a region often overlooked by tourists traveling to national parks in Wyoming and Colorado. One civic promoter said that the view from on top of the new monument would be as “interesting to the eye as the Rocky Mountain scenery to the west.”36
A well-known Norwegian-American Lutheran minister from Minneapolis, Rev. J. A. O. Stub, gave a speech arguing for the cultural and religious importance of the Kensington Stone. The inscription, said Stub, commemorated the first time that Swedes and Norwegians had been brought together for a common purpose. Even if the artifact eventually proved to be a hoax, he said, bringing modern Scandinavians together to work on a common civic goal was a worthy endeavor. He pointed to Leif Eriksson and other Norseman of the Middle Ages as exemplars of the “industry, thrift, bravery and a willingness to sacrifice” that help the immigrants to become American.37 He implored the crowd to consider the “higher things of life,” such as maintaining their cultural traditions, and warned his listeners not to become preoccupied with the pursuit of wealth.38
Holand followed the moral exhortations of the minister with some of his own. In his afternoon speech, he repeated his standard linguistic and archaeological arguments for the authenticity of his beloved artifact, but he particularly emphasized noble purposes behind the Norse explorations of North America. Whereas Christopher Columbus was motivated by selfish commercialism, he said, Paul Knutson was a Christian missionary motivated to seek a new home and explore undiscovered lands. Holand argued that the Kensington Rune Stone was the most significant historical artifact in the United States, far more valuable than Plymouth Rock.39
The Runestone Rally in Alexandria must have made quite an impression on local business leaders, because in February 1928, a group of ten businessmen, led by the Alexandria attorney and local historian Constant Larson, paid $2,500 to Hjalmar Holand to take possession of the rune stone. The Commercial Club of Alexandria soon announced that it had purchased an old bank building on Broadway to house its offices and to become “a real civic center where public meetings of all sorts can be held.” Club members said that the building would be an appropriate place to display Holand’s artifacts and Indian relics that, at the time, were stored at the library.40 Over the next few years, the rune stone traveled to towns throughout western Minnesota accompanied by Constant Larson and his daughter Lorayne. The stone was also brought to the Minnesota State Fair to represent Douglas County at its display booth.41
Following the purchase of the stone by the Alexandria businessmen, it was generally thought that it would remain in Alexandria until there was enough money to construct the monument on the Ohman farm. The details of the fund-raising campaign are not clear, but the monument was never built. Contemporary observers attribute this to a loss of project funds during the bank defaults of the Great Depression.42 However, the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce had already made plans to keep the stone in the city of Alexandria prior to the start of the Great Depression. An August 1929 news article announces the installation of a custom-made six-foot-high iron-and-glass display case for the rune stone in the Chamber of Commerce building.43
Bjorklund clearly wanted the artifact to return to the Ohman farm near Kensington. He was quoted as promising Olaf Ohman’s wife: “Mother, you are going to see this stone once more and a high monument shall be erected on your farm to your honor.”44 Holand did not share this commitment to keep the artifact at the Ohman farm. His primary interest was to generate funds to further his research, and the businessmen of Alexandria were the people with the money at the right time and place.45
The list of people who invested in the purchase of the Kensington Rune Stone demonstrates that by 1928 it was no longer an artifact of significance to Scandinavian Americans alone. A newspaper article noted that the first person to put up money was Philip J. Noonan, “an Irishman.” Also in the list of names are persons evidently of German and English descent.46 Thus, by 1928, the Kensington Rune Stone had become valuable to a diverse cross section of the community.47 This is also reflected in the shift from the use of the term “Kensington Rune Stone” to “Kensington Runestone.” The melding together of “rune” and “stone” reflects an Anglicizing of the term and indicates a shift away from the exclusively ethnic connation of the artifact.
However, the purchase of the stone by a group of businessmen should not lead observers to conclude that these men were only concerned with economic profit. The rhetoric at the fund-raising rallies indicates that monument promoters recognized that the artifact would bestow prestige on the region. The rhetorical juxtaposition of Plymouth Rock with the Kensington Rune Stone was not only a strategy to promote tourism; it was a claim of national origins. The date on the rune stone inscription proved that American history began not on the East Coast, but in Minnesota, the heart of the continent. In the same issue of the local newspaper that announced the sale of the stone, there was an editorial that spoke to issues of civic identity among Alexandria residents:
We frequently hear the complaint voiced by younger residents of Alexandria that they are fed up with the small town and that they long to get out into the world and do things and enjoy life to the fullest. We suppose that only experience can teach them the disappointments the outside world holds in store for many of them. Those of us who have gone through the same thing can sympathize with the boy who isn’t satisfied with his hometown. But we know that opportunities in it are far greater than they were a generation ago and happiness and contentment are greater than in the places into which they want to drift. We have the auto, the radio, the picture show the same as the large cities and along with them we have something that the big city is short on, and that is genuine sociability and the friendship of those about us. We may not live as “fast” as they do in the big cities but we are due to live a little longer.48
The editorial goes on to acknowledge that not all of the town’s young people can be expected to find successful careers there, but “those who do take advantage of opportunities and find a life-work here are not going to regret it in later years. There’s still
a chance to amount to something in the old home town.”49 The editorial reflects lingering resentment over the impact of Lewis’s novel on the image of small-town life.50 However, civic leaders creatively responded to external criticism of their community by articulating a new sacred regional identity. No matter what outsiders said, the Kensington Rune Stone inspired a new public narrative that asserted the significance of the small town in the American story.
Even though the monument was never built, the promotional efforts during this time period facilitated the apotheosis of the Kensington Rune Stone. The campaign events functioned as civic religious rituals that generated feelings that Émile Durkheim might refer to as “collective effervescence”:
Swept away, the participants experience a force external to them, which seems to be moving them, and by which their very nature is transformed. They experience themselves as grander than at ordinary times; they do things they would not do at other times; they feel, and at the moment really are, joined with each other and with the totemic being.51
Local residents embraced the rune stone as their totem, projecting their aspirations and vulnerabilities onto it. The sacred value of the artifact is further illustrated by the civic leaders’ concerns about leaving the stone unattended. One local resident expressed fear that the relic would be defaced or destroyed unless it was guarded continually.52 After the stone was purchased by the Alexandria businessmen, some suggested that it be put on display in front of the Alexandria city hall where it could be seen by the public. However, they also argued that it would have to be installed behind an iron fence so it would not be “harmed by souvenir-hunters and vandals.”53 Finally, Chamber of Commerce officials decided on an even more secure approach: to store it in the old bank vault in the basement of their building. The stone resided primarily in this inner sanctum for the next two decades, an indication of the fragility of the civic self-esteem it generated.