Myths of the Rune Stone

by David M Krueger

  23.Hughey and Michlovic, “‘Making’ History,” 338.

  24.Other names that were considered include Chippewas, Miners, and Voyageurs. The name “Vikings” was chosen in part to “to recognize the venturesome people who first populated the state” (Dick Cullum, “Minnesota Is Designation of Pro Grid Team,” Minneapolis Tribune, August 6, 1960, 21).

  25.Wahlgren, The Kensington Stone, viii. Subsequent references are given in the text.

  26.“Dr. Tanquist’s Testimony: Why I Believe in the Runestone,” Park Region Echo, July 21, 1959.

  27.Dennis Dahlman, “Leuthner: Runestone ‘a Hoax,’” Echo Press, November 4, 1988.

  28.Leuthner, Crusade to Vinland, 3.

  29.Wolfe, Competing with the Soviets, 93. In 1975, NASA used the name “Viking” for two space probes that were sent to Mars.

  30.Herzog, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex, 172.

  31.Ibid., 183–86.

  32.There is evidence of other local Christian leaders using the rune stone narrative in Christian education. Pastor Maynard Anderson of the Bethlehem Evangelical Covenant Church of Wheaton, Minnesota, invited Viking enthusiast Marion Dahm to speak at his church. In a letter to Dahm, Pastor Anderson encouraged him to include something “of a spiritual nature” in his presentation (letter from Maynard Anderson to Marion Dahm, November 5, 1970, Kensington Area Heritage Society).

  33.Leuthner, Crusade to Vinland, 14.

  34.Gunn describes capitalist free enterprise as a central component of “American National Religion.” The word capitalist was eschewed by many politicians during the 1920s and 1930s. Up until the 1940s, socialism was embraced in a more mainstream way—including endorsement of Keynes’s theory of economics. Milton Friedman and other economists in 1947 began to characterize capitalism as a “moral doctrine.” During the early 1950s, the word socialist became associated with communist and was vilified. Billy Graham taught that Jesus valued private property. “By the 1950s, capitalism and free enterprise were understood by many as a religiously sanctioned economic doctrine that also could be mustered as a weapon of freedom to fight the evils of socialism and communism” (Gunn, Spiritual Weapons, 11).

  35.Lawrence R. Samuel notes the strong commercial orientation of this fair in contrast to previous ones (The End of Innocence, xx).

  36.John C. Obert, “And Which Minneapolis Star Do You Read?” Park Region Echo, March 4, 1965.

  37.“Alex Delegation to Meet Thursday with Gov. Rolvaag, Jim Stuebner,” Park Region Echo, March 16, 1965.

  38.“Runestone Ball Big Success: Another Planned for 1965,” Park Region Echo, May 6, 1965.

  39.The name Ole is pronounced “Oh-lee” and is a stereotypical name commonly used in Scandinavian-American humor.

  40.“Ship Arriving, Runestone Set for World’s Fair Trip,” Park Region Echo, April 6, 1965.

  41.Article by Dennis Dahlman in the Echo Press, June 7, 1996.

  42.“‘Big Ole’ Looks 10 Years Younger,” Echo Press, August 2, 1996.

  43.“Kensington Runestone to go to 1965 World’s Fair,” Park Region Echo, January 12, 1965.

  44.“Editorial,” Park Region Echo, February 18, 1965.

  45.“Runestone Leaves Alex for World’s Fair Trip,” Park Region Echo, April 8, 1965.

  46.“60,000 Inspect Stone in Washington Visit; World’s Fair Opens,” Park Region Echo, April 26, 1965.

  47.Ibid.

  48.Ibid.

  49.“Runestone Attracting Big Attention at Fair,” Park Region Echo, June 3, 1965.

  50.“The Days of the Roaring Mud Baths,” Chicago Daily Defender, April 20, 1965, 14; “What to Look For: A Guide to Exhibits,” New York Times, April 18, 1965, SM55.

  51.“60,000 Inspect Stone in Washington Visit; World’s Fair Opens,” Park Region Echo, April 26, 1965.

  52.“Runestone Leaves Alex for World’s Fair Trip,” Park Region Echo, April 8, 1965.

  53.“Hammergren Off to World’s Fair to Check on Runestone Display,” Park Region Echo, May 6, 1965.

  54.“State Pavilion Closes at Fair; Runestone to Be Brought Home,” Park Region Echo, July 8, 1965.

  55.“Hammergren Returns Kensington Runestone to Alexandria Home,” Park Region Echo, July 22, 1965.

  56.“State Pavilion Closes at Fair; Runestone to Be Brought Home,” Park Region Echo, July 8, 1965.

  57.“Hammergren Returns Kensington Runestone to Alexandria Home,” Park Region Echo, July 22, 1965.

  58.At the World’s Fair, the shield held by the Viking had the phrase “Minnesota: Birthplace of America?” When installed in Alexandria, the question mark was removed and the shield read “Alexandria: Birthplace of America” in the form of a declarative statement.

  59.After the installation of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox in 1937, tourism to Bemidji’s annual parade increased from fifteen thousand to one hundred thousand the next year (Dregni, Weird Minnesota, 12).

  60.Samuel, The End of Innocence, xv–xvi.

  61.Ibid., xv.

  62.Hjorthen, “A Viking in New York,” 10.

  63.Blegen, The Kensington Rune Stone, 4–5.

  64.Ibid., 111–12.

  65.Ibid., 113.

  66.Ibid., 118. Blegen gathered this information from Newton Winchell’s field research notes from 1910.

  67.Wahlgren, The Vikings and America, 132.

  68.Landsverk, Ancient Norse Messages on American Stones.

  69.Gilman and Smith, “The Vikings in Minnesota,” 20.

  70.Nielson and Wolter, The Kensington Rune Stone, 156.

  71.“Viking Homes Buried at Runestone Site? Infra-Red Photos Say Yes,” Lake Region Echo, October 23, 1974, 1.

  72.Leuthner, Crusade to Vinland, 87.

  73.Ibid.

  74.Ibid., 63.

  75.Nancy Piga, “Leuthner: Tapioca Pudding Got Me My First Job,” Lake Region Press, May 20, 1989.

  76.The image of Viking prowess was also adopted by the Minnesota National Guard. The 47th Infantry Division was known as the “Viking Division” and had the motto “Furor Vikingorum.” Specially trained for Arctic warfare, the division served for the duration of the Cold War period from 1946 to 1991. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/47th_Infantry_Division_(United_States) (accessed August 1, 2014).

  77.Dahm also inspired countless other amateur archaeologists, such as Orval Friedrich, who claimed to have found evidence for forty-two Viking settlements and numerous buried Viking ships throughout Iowa and Minnesota (Friedrich, The Great Ice Sheet and Early Vikings, 3).

  78.There had already been at least two excavations at the site. One was an informal excavation carried out by Kensington-area residents in the spring of 1899. The second was led by the Minnesota Historical Society, which carried out a partial excavation of the area in 1964. See Blegen, The Kensington Rune Stone, 135–36n1.

  79.“Viking Homes Buried at Runestone Site? Infra-Red Photos Say Yes,” Lake Region Echo, October 23, 1974.

  80.Ibid.

  81.Leuthner, Crusade to Vinland, 14.

  82.This was likely a “Huey” helicopter that became an iconic symbol of the Vietnam War.

  83.Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 494–96.

  84.Raymond Haberski Jr. argues that the American civil religion during the mid-1970s became “contrite” as Americans wondered whether war, political corruption, and social unrest would lead to moral collapse of the nation (God and War, 99).

  85.As Jonathan Z. Smith observes, sacred spaces are frequently “built ritual environments.” Rituals enable religious adherents to focus their attention on objects or places, a process by which a place becomes sacred (To Take Place, 104).

  86.The linking of present battles to past battles is indicative of what Mark Juergensmeyer would call a “cosmic war.” In Juergensmeyer’s theory, cosmic wars often “evoke great battles of a legendary past, and they relate to metaphysical conflicts between good and evil” (Terror in the Mind of G
od, 146).

  87.Fenn, The Return of the Primitive, 33.

  Conclusion

  1.Interview with Julie Blank, former director of the Runestone Museum, “Runestone Museum; Alexandria, Minnesota,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PJZp9N1-zo&feature=youtu.be (Prairie Public Broadcasting, uploaded February 22, 2011).

  2.The local newspaper reported that five hundred Norwegians and Icelanders traveled to the Runestone Museum in the fall of 2013 alone (Blaze Fugina, “Renovations at the Runestone Museum,” Echo Press, January 8, 2014).

  3.One example is Barry J. Hanson’s extended treatise Kensington Runestone.

  4.Kehoe, The Kensington Runestone, 15–16. Robert G. Johnson and Janey Westin’s The Last Kings of Norse America also develops a fur-trade-expansion thesis and links the Kensington Rune Stone to the Spirit Pond Rune Stone discovered in coastal Maine in 1971.

  5.Thomas E. Reiersgord notes that the rune stone phrase “red with blood and dead” could refer to the way a person typically died of the plague—expelling blood from the mouth shortly before death (The Kensington Runestone and Its Place in History, 8).

  6.Nielson’s interest in the rune stone was first piqued by Robert A. Hall Jr.’s The Kensington Rune-Stone Is Genuine. Hall was a linguistics professor from Cornell University who asserted that the language in the runic inscription contained vernacular expressions that conformed to known Norse writings of the fourteenth century. Hall’s work received mixed reviews from other academics, but it inspired a new generation of rune stone defenders. For a summary of Nielson’s earlier conclusions about the runic inscription, see Nielson and Wolter, The Kensington Rune Stone, 215–17.

  7.http://www.uhaul.com/SuperGraphics/262/1/Enhanced/Venture-Across-America-and-Canada-Modern/Minnesota/Minnesota-Runestone (accessed August 6, 2014).

  8.O’Keefe was inspired to take on this project after seeing a presentation on the Kensington Rune Stone given by Scott Wolter. A pervasive theme of the musical is that Ohman and his family have been treated unfairly and that scholars are often wrong.

  9.Wolter is the founder of the American Petrographic Services, which had previously performed research on the structural concrete of the Pentagon following the attacks of 9/11.

  10.Ohman admitted that he had scraped out the grooves of the letters with a nail shortly after unearthing it in 1898 (Nielson and Wolter, The Kensington Rune Stone, 23–25). For an exchange between Wolter and Miklovic about the rune stone, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PJZp9N1-zo.

  11.Ibid., 221–25.

  12.Richard Nielson, “Review of Wolter (2011), ‘Report of Digital Microscopic Examination,’” November 26, 2011. Revision 1, February 26, 2012; http://www.richardnielsen.org//PDFs/Review%20of%20Wolter%20(2011)%20Report%20of%20Digital%20Microscopic%20Examination%20Final%20v3.pdf (accessed August 6, 2014). In 2008, Nielson conducted a 3-D imaging study of the rune stone and has since been banned from the Runestone Museum for not making the results public.

  13.Runo Löfvendahl notes that the stone throughout the years has been “cleaned with different liquids, scratched with nails or similar, molded a number of times, polluted with gypsum; all these and other unknown interferences changing the appearance of the stone.” See Henrik Williams, “Dotted Runes: What Are They and What Significance Do They Have for the Dating of the Kensington Runestone?” July 25 (revised August 20), 2011; http://www.nordiska.uu.se/digitalAssets/79/79636_dotted-runes.pdf (accessed August 6, 2014).

  14.Williams, “The Kensington Runestone,” 3–22.

  15.Larry J. Zimmerman, former chair of the Department of Archaeology at the Minnesota Historical Society, says that Wolter’s data has some merit, but it has not been submitted for adequate peer review. Wolter’s eagerness to prove his theory has aroused ongoing suspicion from scientists (Zimmerman, “Unusual or ‘Extreme’ Beliefs about the Past, Community Identity, and Dealing with the Fringe,” 72). Wolter has been an outspoken critic of the biases he sees as inherent in the academic peer review process. See Scott Wolter, “Reviewing Peer Review” (April 12, 2014); http://scottwolteranswers.blogspot.com/2014/04/reviewing-peer-review.html#comment-form (accessed August 6, 2014).

  16.Nielson and Wolter, The Kensington Rune Stone, 234. See Wolter’s more enhanced arguments in The Hooked X.

  17.Brad Lockwood, “High Ratings Aside, Where’s the History on History?” Forbes Online (October 17, 2011); http://www.forbes.com/sites/bradlockwood/2011/10/17/high-ratings-aside-wheres-the-history-on-history/.

  18.In order to have a just and accurate understanding of American history, scholars must continue to research and tell the stories of the continent’s first inhabitants. Numerous books give an account of the history of the place that would one day become Minnesota, including Westerman and White, Mni Sota Makoce; Treuer, Ojibwe in Minnesota; and Wingerd, North Country.

  19.Jessica Sly, “Runestone Museum’s Native American Exhibit Re-Opens,” Echo Press, April 25, 2014.

  20.Paraphrase of the video The Diary of Clara Kinkaid from the author’s visit to the Runestone Museum on July 21, 2014.

  21.Wingerd, North Country, 185–224.

  22.It is not known when this placard was produced, but in a post-9/11 world, the use of the word terror to refer to Dakota people evokes President George W. Bush’s “War on Terror.” This association is further solidified by observing that this placard is located within a few feet of a display about the participation of local residents in the U.S. military and in several wars. This spatial juxtaposition implies that the viewer should recognize the contemporary military interventions by the United States as the latest efforts to eradicate the savages, reify national security, and carry out an exceptional American calling in the world.

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