Myths of the Rune Stone

by David M Krueger

  Starting in the 1950s, Protestants and Catholics in western Minnesota increasingly found common ground in using the Kensington Stone to confront other threats to American religion and identity.90 During the “fifties revival” of religion in the United States, Catholics and Protestants began to embrace a common “Christian” identity to help distinguish American culture from “atheistic Communism.” Bishop Bartholome’s jeremiad that the United States was becoming a pagan nation was one that was increasingly shared by a variety of Christian leaders. As we shall see in the next chapter, the rock extracted from Ohman’s field would continue to serve as a touchstone for constructing a local civil religious identity.

  Chapter Five

  Immortal Rock

  Cold War Religion, Centennials, and the Return of the Skrælings

  We vow Christianity shall not perish there in our day! We shall proclaim . . . a crusade to the West!

  —King Magnus in Margaret Leuthner’s Mystery of the Runestone

  The 1950s was a decade marked by a religious resurgence in the United States. Between 1951 and 1961, membership in religious congregations grew by 31 percent, outpacing population growth, which was only 19 percent during the same period. During the 1930s, a mere 29 percent of Americans believed that religion had an increasingly strong influence on their communities. That number catapulted to 70 percent in 1957.1 Also in 1957, 96 percent of Americans identified with a religious tradition, even if they did not belong to a congregation.2 During this time period, American culture was saturated with religious symbols and rhetoric. Americans could watch The Ten Commandments at the movie theater and turn on their televisions to see the Catholic bishop Fulton J. Sheen and the Evangelical preacher Billy Graham deliver exhortations to repent from sin and take up the cross of Christ.

  This religious revival has been attributed to a variety of factors, including postwar prosperity, the baby boom, and new mass-media forms that created religious celebrities and propagated their messages. Historians of American religion have also noted U.S. policy makers’ keen interest in fueling this revival as a way to confront the threat of “atheistic Communism.” On Flag Day in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a law that added the words “under God” to the nation’s Pledge of Allegiance. In his speech that day, Eisenhower emphasized that “reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future” served to “strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace and war.” Historian T. Jeremy Gunn observes that following his speech, Eisenhower toured a nuclear bomb shelter used to defend against a possible attack from the Soviet Union.3 According to Gunn, American political leaders during the 1950s endeavored to distinguish the United States from the Soviet Union by articulating what he calls an “American National Religion.”4 In addition to exalting American military supremacy and the virtues of capitalist free enterprise, this national religion emphasized God as “a first line of defense” against the Soviet Union. In addition to adding the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, policy makers stamped the phrase “In God We Trust” on the nation’s currency in 1955 and adopted it as the national motto in 1956. Also during this period, stone monuments were placed in civic sites throughout the country to honor the Ten Commandments.5 These public endorsements of religion led many Americans to view national piety as a bulwark against the nation’s enemies.

  The area around Alexandria, Minnesota, was also swept up in the religious fervor of the early Cold War period. 1958 was a particularly robust year for public expressions of the Christian faith in the region. For local residents, the year was doubly significant as it was both the centennial for the founding of the city of Alexandria and the statehood of Minnesota. Throughout the summer tourist season, the local newspaper printed full-page advertisements sponsored by the Alexandria Ministerial Association. One ad depicts a scene of Christ hanging on the cross and the caption exhorts the viewer to “got to church Sunday and kneel once more before the Cross of Calvary.”6 That same summer, a camp near Alexandria sponsored by the Assemblies of God Church set an all-time attendance record of four thousand.7 A Family Rosary Crusade sponsored by the Catholic diocese brought an estimated fifteen thousand to the Douglas County fairgrounds. One newspaper article reported that “all roads leading into Alexandria were jammed” prior to the event and additional seating had to be added to accommodate a crowd that far exceeded the seating capacity of the grandstand.8

  The building shared by the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce and the Runestone Museum, circa 1962. The Viking ship replica was likely the one used for the Runestone Pageant. Courtesy of the Douglas County Historical Society.

  The Kensington Rune Stone, and the religious expedition it symbolized, figured prominently into the local centennial celebrations.9 The Chamber of Commerce succeeded in raising adequate funds to build a “fitting and permanent home” for the city’s sacred civic artifact. The city kicked off its tourist season in June 1958 with a ceremony to dedicate the new Runestone Museum. A detachment of National Guard troops greeted Minnesota Governor Orville L. Freeman at the city airport and escorted him in a military-style parade to the museum, where he delivered a dedication speech before a crowd of war veterans, businessmen, clergy, and other local citizens. Although the governor’s speech primarily emphasized the economic benefits of the museum to the local tourist industry, this civic ceremony once again visually juxtaposed military symbolism with the rune stone artifact. At a Kensington Rune Stone monument rally in 1927, National Guard members from the First World War’s “Lost Battalion” stood guard over the stone, equating their battle behind enemy lines with the Norsemen who gave their lives in skræling country. In the context of the Cold War religious fervor in 1958, it is likely that locals, once again, saw the artifact as a suitable symbol of bravery in face of the nation’s powerful enemies.

  A portrait of Hjalmar Holand seated next to a depiction of the Norsemen inscribing the Kensington Rune Stone is on display in the Runestone Museum of Alexandria. Photograph by the author.

  In a speech before the local Rotary Club, one rune stone enthusiast expressed pleasure that the artifact had been “resurrected from the dungeon that it had occupied so long.”10 The relic had spent much of the past two decades stored in the old bank vault in the basement of the Chamber of Commerce building, while a replica was displayed in the lobby. Although the actual artifact had been sequestered from public sight in its underground bunker, its religious significance had been promoted for some time. In 1955, the civic organization acquired from Norway a copy of the King Magnus document that Hjalmar Holand claimed was the genesis of the Norse expedition to North America. A local newspaper article reiterated Holand’s claim that the purpose of the royal expedition was to restore the missing Greenland colonists back to the faith to prevent Christianity from perishing.11 Chamber officials displayed this document prominently in the front window of their building. Often the first stop for tourists visiting Alexandria, the Chamber display clearly left the impression that the city of Alexandria had deep Christian roots.

  Other civic venues also touted the religious significance of the rune stone. During the centennial festivities, the local newspaper published a series of special editions dedicated to local history, highlighting testimonials of longtime residents and their remembrances of the early settlement of the region. The edition dedicated to the role that churches played in county history also prominently featured the story of the Kensington Stone. Minneapolis attorney Maugridge Robb wrote a lengthy article about “Douglas County’s most famous relic,” summarizing Holand’s standard arguments for the authenticity of the Kensington Stone.12 Robb’s personal religious affiliation is not certain, but he calls on his readers to remember the true motivation of the fourteenth-century Norse explorers, “who came not in search of gold or commercial preferment, but for the glory of God and the salvation of man.” Knutson’s expedition was commissioned by King Magnus to return to the Christian fai
th a “lost colony of backsliders” in western Greenland, who had succumbed to “the hostility of the aboriginal Eskimos.” As Knutson’s men traveled into the heart of North America to find them, the Norse missionaries were confronted with the Indians’ “savage practices”:

  Between the Viking lines we can hear the whoops and see the onrush of the savages, their copper torsos gleaming in sweat and paint, the feathers of the eagle streaming from their scalplocks . . . We can shudder with him who wrote what he saw. “Red with blood and dead.”

  In the face of such opposition, Robb praises the Norse Christians’ attributes that he thought were noblest, characterizing King Magnus as a “fanatically militant Catholic” who was “alive with zeal to spread the gospel.” Robb admires a faith that could “convert unbelievers at sword’s point if necessary.” The inscribed prayer “Hail Mary save us from evil” testifies to the “deep spiritual character of these men.” The story of the rune stone, he proclaims, is an “imperishable account of a real, personal and horrible tragedy—an immortal voice speaking as eloquently as Homer.” Their Christian presence on the Minnesota landscape cannot be missed because “their trail is blazed as definitely as the concrete highways which today parallel their route.”13 In the same centennial edition, the motif of white survivors telling of past Indian massacres is also evident in the article “An Army Scout Tells the Story of Gen. Custer’s Last Stand.” In yet another article, an early pioneer gives an account of the “Sioux Outbreak of 1862” and describes life inside the walls of the stockade, where early Alexandrians found refuge from the “savage foe,” who lurked just outside.14

  Vikings in the streets of Glenwood, Minnesota, circa 1962. Courtesy of the Douglas County Historical Society.

  The specter of savage Indians hostile to the Christian faith was juxtaposed with expressions of Cold War anxiety. In the same newspaper edition is an announcement about a three-night civic history “spectacle” held during the centennial celebrations. The ninth and final scene of the performance was titled “The Atomic Age: Is This the Beginning or the End?” The strength to confront these apocalyptic threats is trumpeted in a Father’s Day advertisement that calls for local men to strengthen their character through church attendance and daily Bible reading. Character development was necessary, the ad claimed, to cultivate good, democratic citizen leaders who could “handle the affairs of the state in these perilous times.” Like other church ads during the summer of 1958, this one was sponsored by local “patriotic individuals and business establishments.”

  A rune stone enthusiast writing some years later makes even clearer the association between Christian sacrifices of the past with the national threats of the contemporary age. A Wisconsin nun paralleled the Soviet arsenal with the Indian threat, and appealed to the inscription to ask for God’s protection from a nuclear holocaust:

  What is the message on the stone for us of the atomic age? It is a prayer of the brave but frightened men, “AVE MARIA, SAVE US FROM EVIL!” the first words of the Hail Mary, the last words of the Our Father. The evil they feared was whatever terrible people had left their companions “red with blood and dead” (probably scalped.) . . . It is also a pointer for us, who live under an atomic cloud as they lived in terror of the unknown Indians, what we should do and say. AVE MARIA, SAVE US FROM EVIL.15

  Similar to Robb, Sister Dorcy lauds the “militancy” of the fourteenth-century Norse explorers: “The Norsemen in the Viking age were uncommonly handy with a battle ax, and we tend to class them as barbarians, raiders, plunderers, robbers. But this message on the stone also tells us that once converted to Christianity, they became very militant Christians.”16 Sister Dorcy’s declaration that the Christian faith and militarism were interdependent resonates well with Cold War claims that religion served as a “spiritual weapon” to fight the global scourge of Communism.17

  The Birthplace of a Christian Nation

  Robb’s claim that the trail of the Christian Norsemen in Minnesota is as obvious as modern concrete highways anchors Alexandria as the birthplace of American Christianity. Other rune stone enthusiasts echoed his assertions and the artifact played a role in the public debate over the inclusion of a cross on the seal commemorating the Minnesota state centennial. In 1958, Rev. J. C. K. Preus, director of Christian education for the Evangelical Lutheran Conference, argued that the state’s centennial commission “had ample reason for making the cross a part of the centennial emblem” because “the Christian Church had been securely planted on Minnesota soil many years before the state of Minnesota came into being.”18 Preus was weighing in on a debate that took place a year earlier between a coalition of civic and religious groups and the centennial commission. Samuel Scheiner, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota, along with representatives of several churches and the American Civil Liberties Union, asked the commission to remove the cross, stating that its inclusion implied the exclusion of non-Christians from being considered Minnesotans.19

  Other religious Minnesotans vigorously defended the commission’s decision to include the cross. Catholic Archbishop William O. Brady wrote in a local Catholic publication that “Jews should not feel the cross was an affront” and he promised that as archbishop he would “defend Jews in times of persecution.” He went on to say that “atheists, agnostics and the ACLU had no business protesting the cross . . . because they were not present when Minnesota was founded. ‘If today’s pressure removes the cross from the emblem that marks the past, tomorrow’s pressure will attempt to tear it from our church and our homes.’”20 Despite the efforts of the protesters, the centennial commission voted to retain the cross.

  It is not known if Archbishop Brady called on the Kensington Rune Stone to bolster his claim that Minnesota was originally Christian, but Reverend Preus certainly did. In his article, Preus describes the Viking explorers as “men of religion” whose “earnest prayer” recorded on the stone was the first uttered by “white men” in the state.21 Preus recognized the utility of the artifact to proclaim the United States to be a Christian nation and Minnesota to be a Christian state. For those claiming Christianity to be America’s original religion, the Kensington Rune Stone wielded significant symbolic power.

  In addition to substantiating claims that the United States was a Christian nation, rune stone enthusiasts such as Laura Goodman Salverson considered the controversial artifact to be a symbol of the Christian faith. In her novel Immortal Rock: The Saga of the Kensington Stone, published in 1954, Salverson’s imaginative rendering of the Paul Knutson expedition paralleled the defense of the rune stone with a defense of the Christian faith.22 Her assertions resonate with Holand’s rhetorical flourishes. Holand referred to the artifact as a stone that was once “rejected” but had later been “resurrected” thanks to his research efforts. Chapters 3 and 4 in A Pre-Columbian Crusade to America employ these terms to frame his historical narrative about the first decade after the stone’s discovery. The rejection–resurrection motif bears a resemblance to New Testament depictions of Jesus Christ. Luke 20:17 refers to Jesus as “the stone which the builders rejected.” It cannot be proven that Holand intended this subtle juxtaposition of the Kensington Rune Stone and the Christ figure, but his rhetorical choice would have surely been noted by many Christians, particularly conservative Protestants with a high level of biblical literacy. Holand had spent his younger years among Seventh-day Adventists and he knew intimately the language of Evangelicalism. Although he rejected denominational religion for himself, embracing a form of nature-based spiritualism, he greatly expanded popular support for his artifact by framing it in a narrative of a Christian crusade. However, the cords binding this symbiotic relationship between the Kensington Rune Stone and the Christian faith would begin to fray under the weight of historical and scientific criticisms from the academic establishment.

  Published in 1954, Laura Goodman Salverson’s novel Immortal Rock dramatized the Knutson expedition to Minnesota.

  Runestone Show
down: Wahlgren’s The Kensington Stone: A Mystery Solved

  Holand and other enthusiasts had been remarkably successful in persuading the public of the veracity of the Kensington Rune Stone. A 1963 poll conducted by the Minneapolis Tribune indicated that 60 percent of Minnesotans believed that Vikings were the first European visitors to Minnesota.23 Viking mania was so widespread that the state’s professional football team became known as the Minnesota Vikings.24 The publication of Erik Walhgren’s book The Kensington Stone: A Mystery Solved in 1958 slowly began to chip away at public confidence in the stone, and with it the sacred civic narrative fueling its popularity. Wahlgren, a linguist specializing in Scandinavian and Germanic languages at the University of California, Los Angeles, consolidated the evidence against the stone in his book. He relied heavily on the rune stone criticisms of the researcher Johannes A. Holvik. Holvik had written dozens of newspaper articles and letters on the topic, but had never published an extended academic treatise on the topic. According to Wahlgren, Holvik shared with him his “vast file on the subject” and he commended Holvik for his “generosity” in sharing his research.25