Bad River just above where it enters the gap, and so on east to the line of the present highway over the ridge to the site of the city of Mellen, thence down the divide between the streams flowing into the Bad River on the east and those flowing into the White River on the west to the present Indian village of Odanah, where were the Indian fields of corn and vegetables in those old days? Who knows where lay the forgotten trail? Or do any care? THE KENSINGTON RUNE STONE IS IT THE OLDEST NATIVE DOCUMENT OF AMERICAN HISTORY? H. R. HOLAND One of the most interesting questions that has appeared in the historical field in many years is the one popularly known as the Kensington Rune Stone. It is now twenty-one years since it first came to light and during the first ten it lay stillborn and utterly discredited as a crude forgery. Since then, however, it has not only come to life but has survived numerous attacks by learned critics, until it now is a subject of debate by experts of two continents. The object of this review is to present the latest phases of the discussion concerning the rune stone to the readers of the WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, but I am in a quandary as to where I should begin. Some of our readers are quite familiar with the various stages of the controversy but I understand that the greater number have merely heard its name. In view of this, perhaps a very brief introduction of the subject will be desirable. The Kensington Rune Stone is a slab of graywacke about thirty inches long, seventeen inches wide, and seven inches thick. It weighs about two hundred and thirty pounds. Three-fifths of the length of its face is covered by an inscription in very neat runic characters. This inscription is continued for a similar distance on one of its sides. The uninscribed two-fifths of its length was evidently intended to be planted in the ground. The stone was found by a farmer by the name of Olaf Ohman, who lives about three or four miles northeast of Kensington, a station on the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railway, in the west central part of Minne sota. He was grubbing stumps on his land which consists in part of a rolling elevation surrounded by a marsh. In grubbing out a poplar tree, about eight to ten inches in diameter, he found the stone on this elevation just beneath the surface of the ground, lying with the inscribed face downward, closely embraced by the roots of the tree. The find was soon brought to the attention of a number of learned men of the time. Strangely enough, the deciphering of the inscription seemed to present great difficulties to these men, who were unable to read a large portion of it. They made out, however, that the inscription mentioned Vinland— the name which Leif Ericson in the year 1000 bestowed upon a certain portion of the Atlantic coast of America. As the language employed, or as much of it as was made out, was plainly not that of Leif Ericson's tongue, the inscription was quickly pronounced a clumsy forgery. The stone was returned to Mr. Ohman, therefore, who made of it a suitable doorstep to his granary. Nine years later I chanced to be in that vicinity in search of material for my history of the Norwegian settlements in America. The old runic hoax was recalled to me; and as I for years had been interested in the study of runes, I obtained the stone from Mr. Ohman as an interesting souvenir. When I returned home and deciphered the inscription my amusement changed to amazement for I decided that it was not a clumsy forgery dealing with Leif Ericson's discovery of America in the year 1000, but that it contained a dramatic recital of an expedition into the middle of the continent in the year 1362! The language and runes of Leif Ericson's time could easily have been imitated as we have a multitude of patterns of both; but the date 1362 is a peculiarly difficult one, not only linguistically and runologically, but also historically. What an unheard of date in which to locate Norsemen in America! This forger, if he was one, was evidently a most courageous man. The following is a copy of the inscription with interlinear transliteration: 8 g öter ok 22 no men pag s rise norr fropeno oten 41:4XR:44:P14++++: 6X4*: XBTIR ok fizke en pagh vi kom hem hem fa fan 10 XETIR: Y+R+:41 B÷SE: PXY*:R14+: rom peno of ahr 1362 *This character has suffered so much from weathering as to be illegible. The runic character for e in this word was inadvertently omitted in making this copy. I translate as follows, putting into parentheses words which the rune master seems to have omitted: Eight Goths and twenty-two Norsemen on (an) exploration-journey from Vinland through the western regions. We had camp by two skerries one day's journey north from this stone. We were (out) and fished one day. When we came home (we) found ten men, red with blood and dead. Ave Maria! Save (us) from evil! (We) have ten of our party by the sea to look after (or for) our vessels 14 day journey from this island. Year 1362. At first sight the truth of this inscription seems most improbable. That a band of adventurers should have penetrated to the very heart of the continent one hundred and thirty years before America was discovered by Columbus seems so incredible that almost everyone who hears of it is prompted to ask, "Can this be possible?" Yet this objection so generally urged is really very superficial. We have many other journeys on record, of greater extent and more hazardous, which we know to have been performed. For instance, Ferdinand de Soto in 1542 pushed one thousand five hundred miles into the primeval forest of America. Jean Nicolet without a single white companion in 1634 made a journey of two thousand miles amid savage tribes who never before had seen a white man and returned to tell the tale. So also did that amazing fur trader, Peter Pond, who in the years 1773-86 wandered at will with his wares all over the Northwest, penetrating even to the Great Slave Lake. Cabeza de Vaca in 1537 crossed the continent from the mouth of the Mississippi to California with only three companions. We have no reason to suppose that it was safer to sojourn among the Indians in 1537 than in 1362. Nor have we reason to suppose that the hardy Norsemen were less capable than the Spaniards of making arduous journeys. Is it not rather a reasonable supposition that the Norsemen should finally undertake to explore this continent which they had discovered 1i.e., native to West Gothland in the southwestern part of Sweden. In the fourteenth century this was an independent province, united with a part of Norway under one king. |