USA > Minnesota > Douglas County > History of Douglas and Grant counties, Minnesota : their people, industries, and institutions, Volume I > Part 7
USA > Minnesota > Grant County > History of Douglas and Grant counties, Minnesota : their people, industries, and institutions, Volume I > Part 7
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47
In the spring subsequent to the finding of the stone Mr. Samuel Olson and a party visited the place and made some excavations where the stone was found, having the idea that the men who were massacred had been
75
DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
buried there, and that the stone was designed to mark their burial place. He saw, and all his party saw, the stump of the tree that grew on the stone. The members of this party, besides Mr. Olson, were the following: Cleve Van Dyke, executive clerk to the late Governor Johnson, then superintendent of schools of Douglas county; J. P. Hedberg, now at Warroad; John M. Olson, who furnished a team, now at Alexandria; Albert Larson, now in Canada; John E. Johnson, of Kensington; Emil Johnson, now at Warroad; Gulick Landsvark, living two miles east of Kensington; and Lars Coldberg, now at Bowbells, North Dakota.
Mr. Samuel Olson and Mr. John E. Johnson signed a joint statement that the tree must have been at least ten years old, and more likely twenty or thirty years old. The rest of the party have not been consulted, but Mr. Joseph Hotvedt stated that he saw the roots and verified the description of their flatness, "such as would be caused by lying against a stone."
Mr. Olson made a drawing to show the appearance of this stump when in contact with the stone. He thinks the largest root ran over and across the stone, but Mr. Olof Ohman was positive that the largest root ran down into the ground at the edge of the stone, and that a smaller root ran across the upper face of the stone. This smaller root he thought was about three inches in diameter.
It should be stated here that Professor Flom's account of his interview with Mr. Olson carries a misapprehension of what Mr. Olson said as to the size of the tree. Mr. Olson says that he said that the tree tapered so that at 15 or 18 inches above the stone it was about four or five inches in diameter.
The topography of Mr. Ohman's farm and the adjoining country is morainic, the elevations rising sometimes somewhat abruptly to the height of fifty or seventy-five feet, or even a hundred feet, above the adjoining lowlands. The material of the drift is clay of a limonitic yellow color, but at a depth of fifteen to twenty feet this clay is blue. There are very few boulders in the clay, yet on the tops of some of the drift hills granitic and other boulders are numerous, and sometimes they are found in numbers near the bases of the hills and in the swamps. They are sometimes large and conspicuous, and frequently have been gathered into heaps in the fields. About seventy-five in a hundred of the boulders are of granite; about five in a hundred are of limestone; about five in a hundred are of gabbro or of gabbroid rocks; five in a hundred are of Keewatin greenstone, including Ogishke conglomerate; about five in a hundred are of dark nondescript rock, sometimes quartzosė; and the other five in a hundred may be compared with the rock of the rune stone, being some of the various forms of graywacke.
76
DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
The extreme length of the Rune Stone is 36 inches, width across the face 15 inches, the thickness 51/2 inches, and its weight is about 230 pounds. It is of graywacke, but its shape and dark color suggest that it is trap. Its flat surfaces and angular jointage are due apparently to long continued heat- ing and slow cooling in contact, or near contact, with igneous rocks. On its inscribed face is a layer of calcite covering a part of the area in which the inscription was engraved. This calcite was deposited in a jointage- opening, probably when the rock was in its native place; and it has been revealed by the removal of an adjoining parallel mass, the joint plane itself causing the even face on which the engraving was made. The reverse of the inscribed side is not so regular and has evidently been through the rough experiences of glacial action, since it bears a number of distinct glacial striae.
The men who found the stone are plain and simple farmers, working hard to derive a subsistence for themselves and families from their land. The honesty and candor of Mr. Olof Ohman become evident to anyone who converses with him. He does not speak English readily, but seems to under- stand English when he hears it spoken in common conversation. He states that his education comprised six terms of school in Sweden, of six weeks each, in an elementary county school, where the children gathered for instruc- tion, first at one farm house for a week and then at another, six weeks in all making one term. I was told that Mr. Ohman came to his farm in 1890, and on consulting the register of deeds at Alexandria I found lands deeded at four different dates, now constituting the Ohman farm, from 1890 to 1898, from Halvor Stenson, Ole Amundson, and E. J. Moen.
After finding the stone, it was exhibited for a time in the drug store at Kensington. It was later sent to Minneapolis and was examined by Prof. O. J. Breda, also to Evanston, Ill., and was examined by Prof. George O. Curine. As they pronounced it fraudulent, it was returned to the finder in March, 1899, who placed it carelessly in his yard, where it served as a step- ping stone near his granary for eight years, without further notice. In 1907 Mr. Hjalmar Rued Holand obtained it of Mr. Ohman, and has brought it again to notice and wider study. By Mr. Holand it was brought to the attention of the Minnesota Historical Society; and the museum committee was directed to investigate its authentic or fraudulent record, and to report their recommendation to the executive council. Mr. Holand has since exhib- ited it in Chicago, Illinois; Madison, Wisconsin, and Northfield, Minnesota, giving in each place a lecture. This has brought out various criticisms, pro and con, and the burden resting on the committee has considerably increased.
The members of this committee appreciate the great importance of the
77
DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
question which is in their hands, and they know, collectively and individually, that it is due to American history, before they stamp the stone with their approval or their rejection, to make an exhaustive investigation and an impar- tial discussion of all the circumstances.
THE INSCRIPTION. 1
The runic inscription has been translated as below and published by Mr. Holand in Harper's Weekly, October 9, 1909.
On the face of the stone:
8 göter ok 22 norrmen po opdhagelse fardh fro Vinland of vest vi hadhe laeger vedh 2 skjar en dags rise norr fro dheno sten vi var ok fiske en dhagh aeptir vi kom hem fan 10 man rödhe af blodh og dhedh A V M fraelse af illy
On the edge of the stone:
har 10 mans ve(d) havet at se aeptir vore skip 14 [?] dhagh rise from dheno öh ahr 1362
No one has called in question the correctness of this translation. In explanation of the transliteration Mr. Holand writes: "The runic alpha- bet had only one character to indicate three, or what became three, different sounds, th, dh, and d. Out of 2,000 runic inscriptions we find only about a half dozen having a separate sign for d. This character was later sup- plemented, and was used medially and finally. This however was used only in the literature written in Roman characters, and was never used in runic inscriptions. In most cases this has now been superseded by d, but there is reason to believe that in the fourteenth century it had a soft sound. I have therefore translated it with dh."
The English translation is as follows :
"Eight Goths [Swedes] and twenty-two Norwegians upon a journey of discovery from Vinland westward. We had a camp by two skerries one day's journey north from this stone. We were out fishing one day. When we returned home we found ten men red with blood and dead. A V M [Ave, Virgo Maria], save us from evil.
[We] have ten men by the sea to look after our vessels fourteen [or forty-one?] days' journey from this island. Year 1362."
REFERENCES TO THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE REGION.
There are two or three references to natural objects to which we should give special attention :
78
DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
(a) Their camp was near two rocks in the water (skerries), one day's journey north from the stone;
(b) The location of the stone was on an island;
(3) The sea was fourteen days' journey from the stone (doubt fully forty-one).
(a) Professor Fossum and Mr. Holand searched about Lake Chris- tina, Pelican lake, and other lakes, lying about one day's journey (twenty miles) toward the north. The former found no rocks about the shores which could be accepted as the rocks mentioned in the inscription. Mr. Holand, guided by Rev. O. A. Norman of Ashby, found several large boulders standing in the water about 300 or 400 feet from a sharp point on the southwest shore of Pelican lake, which seemed to him to answer the description. There are twelve or thirteen of them and hence they are too numerous, and for the purpose of locating a camping-place they would hardly be referred to, and certainly would not be at all in accord with the number "two." Mr. Norman remarked, on occasion of a late interview, that the term "skerry" is applicable to one rock or a series of rocks, and that there are two lines or series of boulders which run not exactly parallel, and that those lines might be called the skerries referred to in the inscrip- tion; but such lines are not distinguishable from the land.
There are, however, on the point itself, at the water's edge and at the extremity of the point, two enormous boulders. One is of red porphy- ritic granite, cut by a coarse red dike, three inches wide, with dimensions of 6 feet by 4 feet by 31/2 feet, with rounded contours. The other is of gray gneiss, banded with light reddish laminae, 6 feet by 41/2 feet by 4 feet, irregularly and bluntly angular, showing some brecciation and a pegmatyte vein about an inch wide. These boulders are in the most exposed position, and are very conspicuous objects to anyone standing on the land a few rods farther back. Some small boulders and sand form the immediate break- water of the beach, and also compose the point itself for some distance inland from the boulders.
This part of the point is liable to destruction by ice and waves and winds of every season. That it is transitory is proved by the fact that the roots of a small oak are uncovered to the height of fourteen inches above the present surface, and this oak must have started to grow when the surface on which it sprouted was so much higher than now. Under such conditions, at times when the adjoining beach may have been washed away, the large boulders would be surrounded by water. It is also very certain that 548 years ago the lake level was somewhat higher than it is
79
DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
now, and that circumstance alone, without the removal of the stones and sand lying now about the big boulders, would have brought these stones into the water, and would give them exactly the characters required to comply with the inscription. The present beach line is parallelled, on either side of the point, by a higher beach composed of boulders, gravel, and sand, which could have been formed only when the lake was about two feet higher than now. This upper beach fades away into the mainland of the point, but between its arms embraces a small lagoon. If the explorers' camp was on this point, near its extremity, the two big boulders would be chosen very naturally as reference points in the inscription.
(b) The stone is said to have been located on an island, but when found it was not on an island. It was on a morainic hill which is now surrounded by a grassy marsh, and which may have been an island in a small lake prior to the desiccation of the country which has converted many lakes into marshes and many marshes into meadows. This gradual drying up of the country is a well-known feature throughout the western part of the state. It has been known and many times noted during the last fifty years throughout the Northwest. If the stone be genuine, therefore, the present disagreement with the facts, as with the skerries, is due to physi- cal change in the surface of the country.
(c) The sishe was fourteen days' journey from the sea. At no place could the sea be reached in that space of time, with their means of travel, other than Hudson bay. There is some doubt whether this figure should be 14 or 41, and if it be 41 it would allow the supposition that the party penetrated the country by way of the Great Lakes. There are, however, insuperable objections to such an idea. It is a very improb- able suggestion that from any place which may have had the name of Vin- land a party would penetrate North America by that route, by sail and by foot, to encounter the natives in a tragic death only in western Minne- sota. That suggestion need not be further considered; and the more so, since the route of possible travel, or at least most probable, as shown by the Minnesota Historical Society's map of regions north to Hudson bay and of the proximity of Minnesota through a well-known water route, would have been from Vinland to Hudson bay, and to Lake Winnipeg via Nelson river, and thence up the Red river of the North. This map is based on the chart of J. T. Smith, published in 1839 at London, in a work entitled "The Discovery of America by the Northmen in the Tenth Cen- tury." By this map it appears that the entrance to Hudson bay is directly west from Westbygd and Eastbygd, the chief settlements of Greenland,
1
DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
80
and could hardly fail of being well known. It is the route which the ships of the Hudson Bay Company followed for about three hundred years in reaching the region of furs tributary to Hudson bay.
WHERE WAS VINLAND?
It will be noted that, according to Smith's map, Vinland was eastern Massachusetts; and it is customary, in writings dealing with the North- men's discoveries, to mention three parts of the coast of North America, namely, Helluland, Markland, and Vinland, the last being farthest south. But that there was confusion in the application of these geographic terms there seems no room to question. It seems to be a mere assumption that Helluland was north of Markland, for it is sometimes said to be northeast of Greenland, and even to be duplicated, one to the northeast and one to the southwest, while Rafn has placed one at Labrador and one at Newfound- land. This last made it reasonable to place Vinland much further south (Nova Scotia).
That Vinland was not exclusively Nova Scotia, but still less exclu- sively Massachusetts, is evident from Joseph Fischer's work, "The Dis- coveries of the Norsemen in America" (St. Louis, 1903), at page 3, when, in quoting from Adam of Bremen's oldest work, Fischer states that the objections to Adam's tales consisted mainly in a statement like the fol- lowing :
"After Wineland there is no habitable land in that ocean, but all that emerges is icebound and wrapped in impenetrable mist."
Adam was the earliest, according to Fischer, who called attention to the arctic and North American discoveries of the Northmen, having written in A. D. 1067. Perhaps the objection to Adam's account of Vinland was based by Fischer on an idea of Vinland which grew up afterward without sufficient warrant, and it is necessary to inquire to what land Adam's original description was intended to be applied. It could not apply to the region south of Labrador, but it is applicable to the country north and west, i. e., adjoining Hudson strait and extending into Hudson bay; and it seems to indicate that from the first the Northmen knew something of the rugged- ness and inhospitable nature of at least the northern part of Hudson bay. It is perhaps reasonable to presume that at the first the term Vinland was applied to the whole known coast of North America, and that it was only at a later epoch that it was localized and restricted to Nova Scotia or to Massachusetts. But that would discredit the story of the discovery of
20
OLD STAGE COACH AND CONESTOGA WAGON, EARLY MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION.
81
DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
grapes by the enthusiastic German, unless it can be shown that grapes grew ·spontaneously as far north as Labrador.
NOTE-Since the foregoing was written, the important researches of Prof. M. L. Fernald on the "Plants of Wineland the Good" have been printed (Rhodora, February, 1910), which show conclusively that the "grapes" referred to by the translators of the sagas, were not the fruit of the grape vine (Vitis), but some form of currant (Ribes), or the wine- berry of northern Europe (Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea), and that the last named species is common in northern Labrador. As the so-called "grapes" were gathered so abundantly as to fill their afterboat in the spring of the year, it seems certain that the fruit so gathered was that which is now well known as wine-berry (Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea), which is so abundant in the spring as to constitute the food supply for birds when they return from the south. Professor Fernald also shows that the "self-planted wheat," men- tioned as one of the products of Vinland, was the strand wheat (Elymus arenarius ), having a similar northern distribution. The tree which the Norse- men procured in Vinland, as identified by Fernald, was not maple, but some form of curly birch, probably the canoe birch (Betula papyracea). These researches not only confirm the description of Adam of Bremen, but render it probable that the people of Vinland were acquainted with more or less of Hudson bay.
It is well known that students of Norse records have found difficulty in reconciling the statements respecting Vinland, not only as to the name of the discoverer, but as to the nature of the country and its products. It occurs to this committee that possibly these discrepancies can be reconciled by the supposition that two different eastward-facing coasts have been con- founded and considered as one. The earliest accounts are perfectly appli- cable to the west coast of Hudson bay. The Flatey book states that in Vinland were glaciers, and these are well known about the northwestern confines of Hudson Bay, but are not found in Nova Scotia nor in Massa- chusetts, and only scantily in Labrador. The description by Adam of Bremen, and the earlier dates given by the Flatey book, giving Bjarne as the discoverer of Vinland, seem to point to the west coast of Hudson bay. After the lapse of about fifteen years (985 to 1000) Leif's accidental voy- age to Vinland took place, and there is reason to suppose that he and his successors visited points on the Atlantic side of North America, but sup- posed they had visited the country which had already been named Vinland. From his and Karlsefne's sagas, there rose the geographic distinction of
(6)
82
DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
Helluland, Markland, and Vinland. so much spoken of by all later accounts. The committee has not taken the time necessary to verify or to disprove this hypothesis, and desires merely to call attention to it as a possible solu- tion of contradictions that appear in the historic records, avoiding the neces- sity of rejecting either as untrustworthy.
Dr. Henrik Nissen, of Minneapolis, has called attention to "Characters" described as engraved on the rocks of the shore of Hudson bay, not far from Fort George, and suggests that they may be runes made by the Norse- men. There certainly was no permanent colonization of Vinland, and according to Fischer all arguments hitherto brought forward to support the idea of colonization by the Norse have proved to be fallacious. The definite history of the voyages to Vinland ends at A. D. 1121, but there is sufficient account to show that until the year 1362 voyages from the Scandi- navian settlements in Western Greenland were occasionally made to Vin- land. The western settlement in Greenland was about that time attacked by Eskimo and destroyed, and probably within a half century later the eastern settlement suffered a similar stroke. The year A. D. 1406 is the last date given in the Icelandic annals for the arrival of a foreign vessel in Greenland. A colony in Vinland, if it existed, therefore must have perished about the same time as the destruction of thé Greenland colonies. In the absence of other evidence, the statement of the Kensington Rune Stone, that a party of thirty men started from Vinland on an exploring tour westward, may be understood to refer merely to a winter spent by the party in Vinland, or even to a temporary landing there, rather than to any prev- iously existing settlement or colony.
According to Storm's "Studier over Vinlandsreiserne" ( pages 76. 77). an expedition was sent by King Magnus from Bergen in 1355, under the command of Paul Knutson, into American waters, the purpose of which was to defend the Greenland settlements against the Eskimo. It has been supposed that this expedition, or a part of it. returned in 1364.
THE SLIGHT WEATHERING OF THE RUNE STONE.
It may be assumed that. if this stone was erected, as it claims, by explorers in 1362. it was set up on end, and that the lower end, where no runes are engraved, was buried in the ground. When it was found. accord- ing to the testimony of Mr. Ohman, its inscribed face was downward. Now the lower end of the stone is not cut off squarely, but is roughly beveled on one side. Gravitation alone acting on a beveled stone would cause the
83
DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
base to be diverted to one side, in the same manner as a single-beveled stake when driven into the ground. In settling into the ground, owing to the direc- tion of the bevel, this stone naturally would fall with its face side upward. Its position therefore was determined by some other force than gravitation. Either it was purposely placed with the rune inscription down, which is not reasonable to suppose, whatever its age, or it was acted on by some other force which caused it to fall over forward. We cannot of course state how many forests have grown and been thrown down by tornadoes within the 548 years through which it may have been in the spot; nor how many forest fires have devastated the region ; nor how many buffaloes have rubbed against it ; nor, finally, to what acts of violence the native Indians may have resorted to counteract its evil influences. Numerous works of the mound-building Indians are known in the immediate neighborhood, and they certainly would have discovered the monument. If they participated in the massacre of the ten men at the camp, they would quite certainly look upon the stone as a retributive threatening reminder of their pale-face victims.
The interior of the stone is dark or dark gray. On close inspection it can be seen to contain many grains of quartz which are roundish, showing a sedimentary detrital origin. In a thin-section, prepared for microscopic examination, it shows not only rounded quartz grains but also feldspar grains, and a finer matrix consisting chiefly of quartz and biotite. The dark color of the stone is due to much biotite, mainly, but also to an isotropic green mineral (chlorite?), magnetite, and hematite. The quartz has become mainly re-formed by secondary growths. There is a crypto-gneissic elonga- tion prevalent in the mica, and also to some extent in the larger quartzes.
The weathered surface is somewhat lighter, and yet it is firm and wholly intact. It is evident that the surface color has been acquired since the Glacial period, and therefore that some 7,000 or 8,000 years may have elapsed since its face was first exposed to the elements. The reverse of the inscribed side is more altered by weathering and carries evident older glacial striations.
The first impression derived from the inscription is that it is of recent date, and not 548 years old. The edges and angles of the chiseling are sharp, and show no apparent alteration by weathering. The powder of the stone when crushed is nearly white. None of this powder is preserved in the runes on the face of the stone, and it is necessary therefore to allow it some years of age, but it is quite impossible to draw a decisive inference of the age of the inscription from that alone. The edge of the stone differs in this respect from the face, since most of the rune letters show the white powder formed by crushing the stone. This difference was said to be due to the fact
8+
DOUGLAS AND GRANT COUNTIES, MINNESOTA.
that the runes on the edge had been filled with mud and had been cleaned out by scraping them with an iron nail. Indeed in the runes in some places on the edge can be seen with a pocket magnifier small quantities of fresh metallic iron evidently derived from that process.
The freedom of the face of the stone from glacial marking is to be noted. It seems probable that the smooth jointage surface on which the inscription is made was of more recent date than 7,000 or 8,000 years. It is plain that the calcite deposit that covers a part of it was formed in a joint-opening before the stone was separated from its neighbor, and that it has had approximately as long direct exposure to the elements as the rest of that surface. The well preserved condition of this calcite, as a whole, no less than the non-glaciation of the face of the stone, indicates a period of exposure less than 7,000 or 8,000 years. Marble slabs in graveyards in New England are more deeply disintegrated than this calcite, when they stand above the surface of the ground.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.