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I. The Last Kings of Norse America
In 1859, Charles Dickens published a famous book, titled: A Tale
of Two Cities, a fictional novel set at the time of the French
Revolution. What we have here is a tale of two runestones, but
unlike Dickens’s novel, the story told here is true. Our
focus is on two 14th century Scandinavian kings and two American
stones: the Spirit Pond runestone, found by an arrowhead hunter in
Maine in 1971, and the Kensington runestone, found by a settler in
western Minnesota in 1898. These runestones are part of the
evidence that trade, settlement, and widespread Norse exploration
occurred on the North American continent in the three hundred years
following the Vinland Voyages of Leif Eriksson and Thorfinn
Karlsefni, which ended about AD 1017. Each runestone is one
side of the same coin, and they were inscribed in the same year, AD
1362, by different men half a continent apart. The author of the
Spirit Pond inscription tells poetically of the loss of a ship and
seventeen men in a storm on Hudson Bay in 1361 and an exploration to
the west on lakes of the trade empire. The lost men included the
ship’s crew and the retinue of twelve companions of young King
Haakon VI, the son of King Magnus of Norway and Sweden. In contrast,
the Kensington runestone is inscribed in simple prose, and it tells
of the loss of ten out of a party of thirty Norsemen on an
‘uptaking” journey that began when they left their ship on
Hudson Bay.
These papers summarize the authors’ research that began in 2001
when one of us (LJW), a professional stone letter carver and
sculptor, was asked to examine the Kensington runestone and give an
opinion on the technical aspects of its runic inscription. This
invitation led to further studies of the Kensington runestone and its
controversial history, and to the observation and analysis of other
evidence for the medieval Norse presence in North America. Thus,
step-by-step, we were drawn inevitably to investigate the equally
controversial Spirit Pond runestone, and to attempt a grammatically
rigorous translation of its enigmatic inscription. The resulting
translation is the key to a long-forgotten effort by King Magnus and
his son, King Haakon VI, to revive the failed Norse trade empire in
the western lands. In that effort King Magnus made the first formal
attempt to establish a beachhead of European culture and commerce in
North America. Even without the superiority of 16th century firearms,
his attempt might have succeeded if he and his resources had not
become engulfed in the conflicts between fledgling Scandinavian
nations of the 14th century.
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II. Authenticity Issue
Most authorities of history do not yet recognize either American
runestone as being authentic, and they apparently feel that it is not
necessary for them to consider any additional facts or arguments.
This was the case when we submitted our analysis of the Spirit Pond
runestone inscription to a reputable journal of history. The
unanimous verdict of the reviewers, who rejected the paper only two
days after receiving the text by e-mail, was that the stone was not
authentic. But there is substantial evidence that the inscription is
a true record, and it is quite unlikely that any of the reviewers did
more than a superficial reading of the paper, if that. An honest
review of our study of the Spirit Pond inscription alone, a review in
which the content of the study is understood, words and citations are
verified, and logical connections are examined, could require a week
or more because its historical context and the poetic inscription
itself are quite complex. Including the parts of twenty-three
compound words, the inscription contains a total of eighty-eight
words, of which forty-two are abbreviated in some way. With
considerable effort over an interval of two years, we restored the
abbreviated words to their complete forms, and have elucidated the
historical connections. But it is all too easy for the skeptic to
reject these results without looking at the facts. Our analysis of
the inscription provides a feast of new historical insights for which
perverse reviewers have no appetite, and this is almost a case of
déjà vu.
The rejection of our study and its supporting evidence by authorities
of history and archeology parallels a similar initial rejection of
the now famous cave paintings of Altamira. These paleographic works
of art were discovered in 1879 by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola and his
daughter, Maria, near his estate in the Cantabrian Hills of northern
Spain. Sautuola examined the paintings and in 1880 he announced the
discovery in a published booklet in which he described the cave
images of bison, horses and other animals of Paleolithic time.
(Sautuola, M. de S., Breves apuntes sobres objetos prehistoricos
de la Provincia de Santander, Santander, 1880. Sautuola’s
discovery and its eventual acceptance are described in The Cave of Altamira,
Antonio Beltrán ed., Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, 1998.)
The authorities contemptuously rejected his discovery as not being
authentic because the paintings did not fit their preconceived ideas
of prehistoric human culture. Likewise with the Spirit Pond
runestone, the conventional wisdom is that the Spirit Pond runestone
is not authentic, and its poetic inscription violates preconceived
ideas of the linguistics of memorial runestones.
In the prevailing opinions of 1880, stone-age men were viewed as
unintelligent and lacking in any artistic talent. One critic proposed
that the paintings were done for money in a fraudulent effort to
discredit the new concepts of evolution proposed by the science of
paleontology. But other cave paintings were soon discovered, and
gradually the skeptical opinions began to change. More than twenty
years after the Altamira discovery, one scholar, Emilé
Cartailhac who had initially opposed the discovery, published an
apology in L’Anthropologie titled: ‘Mea culpa
d’une sceptique’ or ‘I am guilty of being a skeptic.’
The psychology of the skeptical scholars in 1880 is described by
Antonio Beltràn. He writes:
‘The skepticism with which it (Sautuola’s work) was
originally received is a lesson in the lack of humility in scholars.
As it often happens, many of the established authorities, without
taking into account the limitations of existing knowledge, believed
they were in possession of absolute truth. In the case of the
Altamira paintings, “truth” took the form of theories that
were undoubtedly legitimate as hypotheses, but were fallacious and
misleading as articles of faith.’(Beltrán, The Cave of Altamira,
p. 8.)
These words would apply equally well to modern authorities’
denials of the authenticity of the Spirit Pond inscription. The
development of new knowledge in the minds of skeptics, based on
evidence that conflicts with the conventional wisdom, requires that
the skeptics become sufficiently familiar with the evidence to enable
the replacement of the old idea by the new in their minds. If the
skeptics are reluctant to consider the new evidence, the replacement
might not occur. Even if it does, familiarization takes time, and
many years may likewise pass before we see a ‘mea culpa’ in
regard to the Spirit Pond runestone.
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III. Acknowledgments
This saga of medieval North American history is the result of
research that has been made possible by many contributors over the
last nine years. Suzanne Carlson, a long time editor of the New
England Antiquities Research Journal, gave us copies of all her
material on the discovery and controversy surrounding the Spirit Pond
runestone, plus a Danish copy of the 1354 proclamation by King Magnus
that was relevant to the expedition to ‘Greenland’ with
Commander Paul Knutson. This Danish copy had been translated
incorrectly by Hjalmar Holand. Our associate, Charlie Hughes,
called our attention to the fact that the awkward wording in
Holand’s translation did not refer to Paul Knutson. Malcolm
Pearson gave us permission to use his high-resolution pictures of the
Spirit Pond inscription. Richard Nielsen’s studies of the
Kensington runestone inscription were helpful.
At the time of the Kensington runestone’s discovery, the absence
of ‘this island,’ mentioned in the inscription, was
an argument against the stone’s authenticity. We identified the
rocky knoll, which had become an island when the Minnesota Department
of Natural Resources recently flooded the low-lying farmland, as
‘this island,’ in the shallow lake of 640 years ago, and
this removed the last legitimate objection to the authenticity of the
runestone. Our investigation of the island knoll was greatly aided by
the assistance of Ruby and Arlen Sabolik who owned half of the
island. We thank Bruce Kunze and Judi Rudebusch for their map
of holestones in the Whetstone River area of eastern South Dakota.
Likewise, we thank Leland Pederson for permission to use his map of
twenty-five holestone sites scattered over Pope County, Minnesota,
east of the Whetstone River. We owe a great debt of thanks to a long
list of landowners in eastern South Dakota who kindly allowed us to
examine their many holestones and carvings. Judi Rudebusch was our
guide in our inspections of the South Dakota holestones. She and
Valdimar Samuelsson of Reykjavik, Iceland, did the historical
research that told us that the many dozens of holestones on the veldt
of South Dakota and similar holestones that are still found on
property lines in Iceland had been used as medieval property boundary
markers. Valdimar also sent us a copy of the Landnámabók
of Icelandic history, and assisted in the translation of the part
that says that Ari, an Icelandic trader, had a land claim in
Whitemensland, and lived there on Labrador, probably in the mid 11th century.
We owe a special thanks to Dr. Marguerite Ragnow of the History
Department and the Center for Early Medieval History at the
University of Minnesota for her advice and counsel. In particular she
cautioned us to make sure that our translation was grammatically
consistent with the word endings of the words in the inscription.
This advice enabled us to make the first accurate translation of the
Spirit Pond runestone. The accuracy is measured by a highly
consistent rhyming and rhythm in the transliteration, and by its
internal consistency; that is, the details all combine to make good
sense. Similar rigorous attention to the grammar also enabled us to
make an improved translation of the Kensington runestone’s inscription.
Finally, we acknowledge King Haakon’s skald. He was a man who
probably had served in English courts as well as those in
Scandinavia, because several Anglo Saxon and Middle English words are
found among the many abbreviations used to achieve the rhyming and
couplet rhythm of the poem. The Spirit Pond inscription is a
carefully composed memorial, no doubt with King Haakon at the elbow
of the skald. The poem was to have been recited in Norway by the
skald, or perhaps by King Haakon himself, at a memorial service
months after it was composed at Spirit Pond in the winter of
1361-1362. The abbreviations that made our translation difficult
would have been no problem for the king or his skald, who may have
memorized the poem or would be reading an already familiar text. The
skald pays tribute to King Haakon’s explorations in the
‘trade empire.’ He memorializes the Norsemen who were lost
in the great storm, and salutes the mourning kinsmen of the lost men.
In this ‘Saga of a young Folkung,’ he leaves for us a
priceless record of a piece of Norse history that otherwise would
have remained forever unknown.
RGJ and LJW
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