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Paper No.1: "The
Last Kings of Norse America: The Spirit Pond Runestone"
By proclamation in 1354, King Magnus Eriksson tacitly assigned his
son, fourteen year-old Haakon VI, to a trading foray to the Western
Lands, the foray to be commanded by the “Honorable Paul
Knutson.” Seven years later in the summer of 1361 the
fleet was sailing on Hudson Bay and the ship carrying young King
Haakon’s retinue of twelve young men of the Norwegian court sank
in a terrible storm. That winter at Spirit Pond, Haakon and his
skald composed a chivalric poem to be recited at a memorial service
for the lost men when Haakon returned to Norway in 1362. The
copy of that poem on the Spirit Pond runestone is our window to an
epic story of a Norse attempt to revive a lost medieval Norwegian
trade empire in what is now northeastern North America.
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Paper No. 2: "The
Lost Expedition: The Kensington Runestone"
The Kensington runestone tells us of a Norse expeditionary force of
thirty men who lost ten of their party to an Indian attack when
camped on a lake about 75 miles to the north of Kensington in
1362. Now we know from historical documents, field research in
South Dakota and Minnesota, and clues from the Spirit Pond runestone
that Paul Knutson, the commander of the force, was attempting to
revive the 200 year old fur trade with Norsemen living on the
Whetstone River. The trade had been lost about 1340 when
Greenland trade ships no longer called at the port trading post on
Hudson Bay. Knutson’s grand attempt to revive the trade
was not successful, and the fate of Knutson and his surviving men is unknown.
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printer friendly pdf of Paper No. 2
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