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This is a guide to major online sources of information about the Kensington Runestone, now displayed in a museum at Alexandria, Douglas County, Minnesota, USA. As far as possible, this page steers clear of theories about the origins of the KRS, concentrating instead on the facts from which theories can be developed. Many of the references are to pages within a single website, by Minnesota resident Michael Zalar- these are identified "Zalar site". | ||
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#02 Douglas County, Minnesota When studying the Kensington Runestone, it is important to remember that the options for its date of creation are not limited to 1362 and 1898- there's also a considerable span of time in between. The best source for the documented history of the area where the KRS was found is the Douglas County Historical Society Some early maps of Douglas County can be found on Rootsweb. For information on the earliest European settlement in the vicinity of the KRS find site, in the neighbouring township of Holmes City (established some years before Kensington) it's worth looking at the page on the Van Loon family in the Blackwell genealogy website. | ||
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#04 The discovery of the Stone The best all-round source is probably "THE KENSINGTON RUNE STONE. Preliminary Report to the Minnesota Historical Society" by its Museum Committee, in "Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, Volume 15", 1910. This is the original source for much of the material referred to below. Michael Zalar also demonstrates an index search to find key features such as illustrations (e.g. the stone itself, a plan of the find site, and a sketch of the famous tree roots) within the Report. However, you might begin with the Zalar site summary of events from about 1898 to 1910. | ||
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#05 General background in Zalar v Wallace Although I'm avoiding opinion pieces, there is a lot of useful background information in Michael's attempts to persuade the Smithsonian Institution that dozens of mistakes had been made in a short summary of the KRS story in one of its publications, by archaeologist Birgitta Wallace. The Zalar site contains Michael's original 37 points plus his replies to rebuttals and his more detailed replies to two rebuttals concerning estimates of the stone's age (with a postscript about a suggestion made around December 2000, that the current investigator of the stone, Minnesota geologist Scott Wolter, is biased in favour of authenticity). And see also Michael's critique of another Wallace publication with details on early attempts to translate the text, and on the notion of Runestone Hill as an island. | ||
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#06 The roots of the problem Affidavits made in 1909 by Olof Ohman, his son Edward, and neighbours including Nils Flaten, concerning the circumstances of the stone's discovery among the roots of a tree: Zalar site Testimony (some from 1899, some from c1910) by people who investigated the stone and the find site within a few months of the discovery, including more description of the tree roots Zalar site | ||
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#08 How old were the tree and the roots? Notes by investigator Newton Winchell, particularly on the tree, and on the method used to estimate the tree's age (with statements by Ohman etc. on trees of comparable size, rings from which were counted). This page also includes Winchell's summary of the find story, and comments from forestry experts on root flattening Zalar site More details from the University of Minnesota School of Forestry on root flattening Zalar site | ||
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#10 Descriptions of the find site As the Kensington area (part of the township of Solem, within Douglas County, Minnesota) was only settled in the late 19th century, there are detailed records of land ownership etc. around the time of the KRS find; there's a summary with an 1886 plat map on the Zalar site Michael has also provided a modern description of the area elsewhere on the Zalar site | ||
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#12 The physical condition of the stone- before 1940 Some of the earliest descriptions of the physical appearance of the Stone, including Prof. Curme's summary for "Skandinaven", Chicago, May 3, 1899, and John F. Steward's, October 15, 1899, from the Zalar site Newton Winchell's description for the MHS in 1910 (plus more for the MHS by Warren Upham, and a postscript on the weathering of the letter "H" carved into the stone in 1908): Zalar site Harold Langland's 1950 comments on his study of the Stone in 1929, noting the contrast between the appearance of recent scratches and the rune carving: Zalar site | ||
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#14 Pictures of the Stone Apart from the 1910 MHS report, there are various picture sources available, the most detailed of the front face of the stone being probably those at the bottom of Hu McCulloch's KRS web page Or for a lower-resolution view of the front and carved side, see Bill Hoyt's site There are also close-up views of parts of the text on the Zalar site: front- right half and side- bottom half | ||
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#16 Transcripts and translations of the runes For a clear drawing of all the runes, with a transcript and translation, see: here. But the first transcript of the runes was sent to a local Scandinavian newspaper by Kensington resident J.F. Hedberg on 1 Jan 1899, with a covering letter (text just legible at top of illustration) suggesting that the symbols might be Greek. The numbered areas on the illustrations of the stone and the Hedberg transcript indicate differences- which some have claimed make more grammatical sense than the original! | ||
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#18 Early public appearances The above-mentioned Hedberg transcript followed a period when the KRS was displayed in the local bank in Kensington, thanks to cashier Samuel Siverts. Years later, his son recalled those early days in two letters here and here (both on the Zalar site). Other memories of the weeks following the discovery can be found elsewhere on the Zalar site | ||
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#20 Accusations against Ohman After the stone was declared a forgery following the newspaper publicity, various rumours circulated, mostly based on the assumption that Olof Ohman was the forger. Running through them in no particular order, we have: "Ohman had said he wanted to fool the learned" "Ohman had painted some runes on a board years earlier" "Ohman found a stone among the tree roots, carved runes on it, then 'discovered' it again" "Ohman (and/or his friends) had all the learning and craft skills necessary to create a runestone" "Ohman had books on the Swedish language from which he copied the runes" (see also Bill Hoyt's site) (all these are on the Zalar site unless otherwise stated). | ||
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#22 Accusations against Sven Fogelblad Preacher Sven Fogelblad, whose name was written in one of Ohman's books, also came under suspicion, but as with Ohman there was firm testimony on his behalf, as shown in two pages from the Zalar site by Andrew Anderson and Andrew Davidson | ||
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#24 Edward Ohman breaks his silence Olof's son Edward, co-finder of the Stone, hated all the publicity, and insisted that his family had not forged the runes. There is a short but passionate letter from him on the Zalar site (in which he also denies that the KRS was ever used as a granary doorstep). | ||
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#26 The Gran tape Although it's way out of chronological sequence, I'll mention here the notorious taped interview from the 1960s with Walter Gran, who appeared to suggest that his father John Gran, back in the 1920s, had cast suspicion on Ohman. There are details on the Zalar site. Subsequently, interviews were conducted with other old Kensington residents (transcribed on the Zalar site) who tended to cast doubt on Gran's story, while remembering details like the use of the KRS for some years as a granary doorstep. | ||
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#28 Holand and the MHS Any discussion of Hjalmar Holand, who bought the stone from the Ohmans and championed it against all comers for many years, is irrelevant to the actual authenticity of the KRS, but if you want to know about his publications you could start by looking at this list from a university collection. It was Holand who involved the Minnesota Historical Society, whose 1910 report is referenced in section #04 above. | ||
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#30 The runes and the language The 1910 MHS report had a special appendix on the language, by Prof. George Flom, who thought many features too modern for a 1362 inscription. Much effort has since been expended to demonstrate that the "modern" features were used in some medieval documents. The most notable worker in this field at present is Richard Nielsen. The Zalar site devotes two pages to his work on the KRS and the dialect of the Bohuslan area of western Sweden (here and here). The latest word on Nielsen's research is the recent book he co-authored (see #36 below). It's also worth repeating in this context the earlier reference to Hu McCulloch's KRS page, which discusses some specific problems and has links to many sites about runic alphabets. | ||
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#32 The pentadic numbers Not "pedantic" or "pendatic" but "pentadic", meaning counting in fives. This system was originally developed as an extension of counting on the fingers- 1, 2, 3, 4, a fist; 6, 7, 8, 9, both fists- make a mark or put down a pebble and start again. There is a discussion of the unusual way the KRS uses pentadic number signs on the Zalar site. One point I'd like to clear up myself is the matter of the pentadic "ten" symbol, which has dual functions. In the strict pentadic system, it represents the number 10 (two fists); but when the pentadic symbols are used to represent numbers on the Arabic decimal system, then it can be used to indicate multiples of 10, just like the Arabic zero symbol. | ||
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#34 Barry Hanson's book This web page ought to have been unnecessary. A KRS researcher named Barry Hanson has published a 2-volume work examining pretty nearly all previous evidence and studies of the stone (main text formerly available free online, but link currently broken). | ||
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#36 The weathering of the stone Barry Hanson recognised that the ultimate answer to the question "is the KRS medieval?" is to determine the age of the carved surfaces. The printed version of Barry's book contains an appendix by Prof. Paul Weiblen of the University of Minnesota, which begins this process, but the main analaysis has been performed by Scott Wolter and his team at American Petrographic Services. A new book on the story of the KRS is now available, which contains details of this research, but to give you a free flavour, here are some sources of information on what Wolter found in the early stages of his work: His first impressions, in autumn 2000, on the Zalar site. An introduction to Wolter and the KRS dating project in a university magazine. The first results of the dating programme, in a company magazine from 2001. A report on early progress was for a time available in printed form at the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Mn. Brief quotations from this report are available online, concerning the geology of the Stone and the type of soil where it was found (with bonus links from another contributor to information about biotite weathering, and other fun stuff). | ||
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#38 The trip to Scandinavia If you want to know about runestones, the experts are, inevitably, in Scandinavia, where they have thousands of the things. Therefore, in the autumn of 2003, the KRS was sent across the Atlantic for study and display. Sadly, the pdf magazine produced at the time (which contained material from Scott Wolter, among other interesting information) seems no longer to be available. Information from the Swedish researchers is expected to be published later. | ||
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#40 Edward Larsson's runes One of the points in favour of the authenticity of the KRS was that some of the runes used were unknown to late 19th century historians, but tended to turn up in early documents once the Stone prompted people to start looking for them. If the best scholars of the time had not spotted these scattered occurrences, how could Minnesota villagers manage it? A disturbing answer came when the KRS made its visit to Scandinavia, as a researcher at the DAUM institute in northern Sweden remembered something very similar: two 19th century sheets of alphabet lists by a young man named Edward Larsson. Larsson had copied down a traditional runic "futhark", plus a runic version of the conventional Swedish alphabet (which looked remarkably similar to the KRS runes), plus a set of KRS-style pentadic numbers (which he used to write the dates of his lists), plus another alphabet which he had been told was used to write "the tablets of the law"- familiar today as the "Freemasons' cipher". This raised the possibility that, like the Freemasons' cipher, the KRS runes were supposed to be secret, perhaps used by members of a particular Masonic lodge in the 19th century... There is information (in Swedish, but with good pictures!) about Larsson's alphabet lists in issue 13 of the DAUM pdf magazine. Incidentally, for Richard Nielsen's thoughts on the discovery, see here. | ||
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#42 The latest information In August 2004, a KRS forum in Kensington, MN, was announced, at which, among other matters, new evidence was to be unveiled in support of the still-beleaguered Ohman family. Here are reports on the forum from Michael Zalar (who attended) and Eric Stevens (who was sent a videotape). The 2005 edition of the DAUM-KATTA pdf magazine (in Swedish) is a special on the language of the KRS. | ||
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#80 The $64,000 question During online discussion of the 2001 company magazine article on the Wolter testing, a contributor raised an important question. The illustrations to the article had shown that newly-exposed surfaces on the KRS presented a glittering array of biotite and pyrite crystals. It therefore seemed inevitable that if the Stone was a forgery, its makers would have taken steps to disguise this glitter. What effect might such unknown processes have on attempts to measure the age of the rune carvings? There are basically two schools of thought- one suggesting that the very simplicity of the processes available to a forger at any time before 1898 could make them difficult to detect, the other arguing that with modern methods it is possible to test for effects (particularly those taking place over long periods of time beneath the surface of the stone) which artificial aging methods simply could not generate. Scott Wolter's contribution to the new book on the KRS, should show he has dealt with this problem, but I have no plans to get myself a copy just to answer this one question [because what I do know from reviews of the book is that some of Wolter's non-geological answers to problems like the Larsson runes make even Gavin Menzies' barefaced untruths about Chinese voyages to America look relatively convincing]. | ||
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#90 And finally... In case help is needed to detect evidence of possible trickery, here are a few pointers to expertise on forgery: The Museum Security Network pages on forgery (3 sequential pages, linked at bottom). The International Foundation for Art Research, available for hire by museums etc. There appears still to be a Centre for the Study of Forgery at Salerno University in Italy, but its web pages are currently [Nov 2006] broken. By way of consolation, try this article about the Centre's Museum of Fakes. | ||
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