USA > Minnesota > Douglas County > History of Douglas and Grant counties, Minnesota : their people, industries, and institutions, Volume I > Part 9
USA > Minnesota > Grant County > History of Douglas and Grant counties, Minnesota : their people, industries, and institutions, Volume I > Part 9
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8. The age of the tree which was growing on the stone seems to show that the inscription was made prior to the occupancy of the farm by Mr. Ohman.
9. Mr. Fogelblad, whom rumor has associated with the stone, died in 1895, three years prior to the finding of the stone. The tree must have started to grow on the stone at least as early as 1888, according to the short- est estimate of its age. The committee has not learned the date of Mr. Fogel- blad's coming to the region, not deeming it important. The relation of the rune stone to the Swedish grammar owned by Mr. Fogelblad at the time of his death is expressed by Mr. Holvik. According to his opinion, the book could not have been the source of the information necessary to construct the inscription.
IO. If the stone is fraudulent, it seems necessary to exonerate both Mr. Fogelblad and Mr. Ohman from the imposition. (See the Appendix.)
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NOTES ON THE RECORD GIVEN BY THE INSCRIPTION.
The inscription has been acceptably translated as follows :
Eight Goths 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., save us from evil.
Have ten men by the sea to look after our vessels four- teen days' journey from this island. Year 1362.
Without reference at this time to the language used, and not consider- ing the peculiarities of the grammatical inflections, it may be worth while to take a general view of the record.
One is struck first with the simplicity of the statements and the omis- sion of non-important details. This simplicity, unfortunately for the his- torical value of the record, goes so far as to omit the name of the leader of the party, as well as that of the patron or king who may have sent it out.
It is a mixed party, of Swedes and Norwegians. By reason of the order in which these are mentioned it is probable that the scribe was a Swede, since he names them first, although composing only about one-quarter of the whole party.
The party started from Vinland, a very remarkable statement in the light of the fact that it is not known, even at this day, that a permanent or even a temporary colony was established in Vinland. The expression "from Vinland" may mean in a direction westward from Vinland. In the light of the results of Professor Fernald's studies on the "Plants of Wine- land the Good," it is remarkable, if the stone is fraudulent, that the location of Vinland, by the statements of the record, should agree with the location of that country by Fernald, since all modern (and even earlier ) descriptions of Vinland have placed Vinland either in Nova Scotia or in Massachusetts .. Could it have been a random and accidental coincidence, that a fraudulent record should correct the current historical belief of the times? How could an impostor come to the knowledge that Vinland was nowhere except in Labrador or at least in the region about the entrance to Hudson strait? What credit could be given to his record by going counter to the accepted history of his time? This agreement with the latest research as to the location of Vinland is a very suggestive fact.
They went "westward" from Vinland, and they had their ships till
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within fourteen days' journey of the end of their exploration, when they left them "at the sea," with ten men to guard them. If the record be fraudu- lent, what reason could there be for saying that their camp was fourteen days' journey from the sea? How much more probable it would be to say that their camp was forty days or even two months' journey from the sea, especially if Vinland was where it has been thought to be; and how much more probable that an impostor would not attempt to make a definite state- ment. If the record is fraudulent, the impostor was very foolish not only in giving the distance of their camp from the sea, but also in saying how far it was north from the stone. Not only so, but he attempted, more foolishly, to give guides to the exact location of the camp by saying it was "near two skerries." If the stone had been noticeably more than one day's march from those skerries, or if the camp had been noticeably nearer or more distant than fourteen days' journey fromn "the sea," there would be much doubt thrown upon the record by such a discrepancy.
The exactness with which the location of the camp is described can be attributed to the probable burial of the ten men at the camp, and the natural desire to describe geographically the place of the bloody massacre of ten of their comrades; while the agreement of this exactness with the facts in nature shows how improbable it was for a faker runologist to have made the inscription. If the record be fraudulent, it is a remarkable fact that those two skerries exist, and at the right distance, and that there are no others.
It is still more remarkable, on the hypothesis that the stone is fraudu- lent, that within modern times they could not be called skerries, as they are not now surrounded by water. Hence the impostor-scribe was not only a runologist, but he was able to look backward through the physical change that has come over the region, and to describe those boulders as they were five hundred and forty-eight years ago, when there is no doubt that the water of the lake was so high as to surround them and thus warrant the description which he made of them. He must have been a geologist.
If the record is fraudulent, it is also remarkable that the impostor could see that five hundred and forty-eight years ago the hill on which the stone was placed was surrounded by water so as to warrant the application of the term "island." He must have known, and must have made allowance for the fact, that within recent time the country has dried up considerably, and that what are now marshes were then lakes.
If the stone be fraudulent, it is singular that the impostor ran the risk of all these details and violated none of them. A well considered fraud is usually characterized by the omission of details. Here was a reckless and a
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fearlessness amongst details which betoken honesty and truth. The very dis- crepancies, where the details diverge from present geographic knowledge, when correctly understood are turned to so many points of confirmation.
"We were out fishing one day." That is a remarkable and rather singular statement, especially if the stone be fraudulent, since the fishing was on a lake twenty miles distant from the place at which the inscription was made. Again, they must have had boats. There is no reference to them. Where could they have got boats? Not a word is said as to how they reached the place where they were encamped, nor as to the direction to the sea. Such links as are necessary to make a connected and reasonable story would certainly be given by an impostor. But here the briefest statement is made of the lead- ing facts, and the reader is left to connect them as best he can. We are not at a loss to supply the links. The boats must have been birch bark canoes, used to this day by the northern Indians, easy to propel in the water and easy to "portage" over the land.
"We found ten men red with blood and dead." That is a remarkable statement. Why should the fact of the gory appearance of the dead men be stated at all? and especially why should it be stated before stating the fact of death? The murderers are not mentioned nor indicated. These peculiari- ties in the record may be explained by attributing the massacre to Indians, with whom they may have had some dealing. The appearance of the bloody corpses implies the scalping knife. The appearance of the bodies is stated before the fact of their death, and must have made a deep impression on the explorers, although it is probable that the men were dead before they were scalped. If the stone is fraudulent, it is singular that, within modern times, when the scalping of white men by Indians is a familiar fact, the massacre should be described in that manner. An impostor would hardly observe the nicety of the significance in inverting the terms of description, or that of mentioning the bloody appearance of the dead at all.
Then comes the most remarkable feature of this remarkable inscription, "A. V. M." Hail, Virgin Mary! or Ave Maria. This is a distinctly Catholic expression. According to Archbishop Ireland, no modern Scandinavian would utter it, as they are Lutherans. It would be strictly appropriate in 1362. If the stone be fraudulent, the impostor artfully employed a term suitable to the date of the inscription; but we would hardly expect an im- postor, such as this man must have been, to be so religious as to call on Mary, or on any of the gods of the Vikings, or on any of the saints of Christianity. On the supposition that the stone is fraudulent, this is a decided anachron- ism and would hardly be introduced by an impostor.
KENSINGTON RUNE STONE
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If the stone is fraudulent, the base perpetrator was artful enough to make use of rune characters appropriate to the date 1362. The ancient runes are sixteen in number, according to the grammar of Almquist. The inscription contains several characters not found in the old runic alphabet, and some that are peculiar to itself or to some locality.
Rev. O. A. Norman, of Ashby, called our attention to a singular coinci- dence, viz., the frequency of the expression calling upon Mary, in Scandi- navia, at the time of the "black death," which prevailed in the fourteenth century. A poem or song, entitled "Fornesbronen," was recited at the burials of the many dead, and appears to have become well known. It was lately reprinted in a brochure at Fergus Falls, Minnesota, entitled "Telesoga." Each verse ends with an appeal to Mary to grant help and freedom from evil. The sudden and bloody death of ten of their comrades seems to have impressed the living in a manner similar to the mysterious death of the black plague. If the stone be fraudulent, the impostor seems to have been aware of the prevalence of that prayer in the fourteenth century, and very shrewdly appended it at the proper place in this inscription.
It appears, from several considerations, that the scribe was a rather illiterate Swede. If the stone be fraudulent, it is singular that such a man should prove himself capable of such literary and historical knowledge, and of such artiful cunning. If the stone be fraudulent, it seems necessary to suppose that a non-educated Swede should be able to make the inscription and to accomplish the following :
I. A simple, straightforward record.
2. Correct the prevalent notion as to the whereabouts of Vinland.
3. Refer to two skerries, which could not have existed when the record was made but did exist five hundred and forty-eight years ago.
4. Refer to an island, which was not an island when the stone was in- scribed, but was so five hundred and forty-eight years ago.
5. Define exactly the location of the camp with reference to the seaside and with reference to the stone.
6. Describe the massacre in such a way as to indicate that the men were scalped by Indians, although no mention is made of Indians.
7. Make the prayer to the Virgin Mary common in Scandinavia in 1362, but anachronistic in the nineteenth century.
8. As an impostor, utter the common prayer of a devout Catholic of the fourteenth century.
9. Use in part some ancient runic characters instead of those common in later centuries.
(7)
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IO. All this deceit and laborious cunning, without any ascertainable motive, perpetrated in an unpopulated, or at most only a sparsely inhabited, region amongst a wilderness of forests.
LINGUISTIC OBJECTIONS.
Notwithstanding these considerations, which point toward the genuine- ness of the Kensington Rune Stone, there are linguistic objections, which, it is claimed, are insurmountable. It is claimed by those who are expert in the Scandinavian languages, and who present those difficulties, that linguistic evidence is paramount in importance, and that other considerations are pertin- ent only after the linguistic objections are removed.
A summary statement of these objections is about as follows :
Certain words not in use in Sweden at the date given the inscription, viz. :
opdagelse. It is pointed out that this word is not in Sodervall's diction- ary, nor in that of Kalkar, the latter being a dictionary of the old Danish (and Swedish) language covering the years 1300 to 1700, and that in modern Swedish the word opdage is uppdaga; that "opdagelse" is made by adding to the root the suffix else, which in the form ilsi is not found in Swedish or Dan- ish prior to 1300; that "opdage" itself is a borrowed word, allied to the Dutch opdagen and the German entdecken; and that, if it had existed in 1362, its only meaning could have been dawning.
po, which appears twice in the inscription. This word, derived from upp a becomes pa and paa, and in Sodervall's dictionary is said to date from about 1400, and to have, in the older Swedish, only the active sense, "to designate an action by some one, or a condition or state of a person," which is not the sense in which it is used here.
laeger is objected to as a word in Swedish at the date of 1362, on the ground that it shows a Germanic influence, dating from the sixteenth cen- tury or later, its earliest date in Kalkar being 1534.
dag is, on the stone, thag (or dhag), meaning day, but in 1362 d had supplanted dh and should have been used. The use of "the thorn" (the rune (?) for dh or th or d) indicated a modern Swede runologist. The same objection lies against dh in opdagelse, T'inland, and ded, and other words.
vore skip should have been written vorum skipum, to agree with the lan- guage of Sweden in 1362.
har, var, kom, and fan, are first person plurals, as used, and should have the ending om, viz., hafthom (or hathom), varom, komom, and funnom.
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These would have been found in the "Mariaklagan," had any first person plurals been used in the part with which comparison is made, since in the third person plurals found in it the full inflectional endings are used.
ded (or theth, or dhedth) should have been dodh, and is apparently a reflection of the English word "ded."
from is English
mans is an incorrect plural English word for men.
o is written with e rune inside an ö. ö appears for the first time in 1495.
In short, the language of the stone, it is claimed, is a mixture of modern Swedish, Norwegian, and English.
It is fortunate for the cause of historic truth, no less than for linguistic criticism applicable to the inscription of this stone, that quite a number of American as well as some European experts in runes and in Scandinavian literature have given close attention to this stone, and have afforded their aid to the committee in their efforts to reach a warrantable conclusion as to the authenticity of the record for the date which it claims. The commit- tee has also taken advantage of the published opinions of others, so far as we have learned of them, whenever such opinions have been based on specific and critical linguistic points. A mere "opinion," pro or con, has been passed by without consideration; for it is plain that not only the labor would be practically endless should the committee entertain unsupported opinions, but that in the end the result would be based on other's opinions and would not be a creditable and judicial consideration of the problems with which the committee is charged.
The following eminent and critical scholars have aided the committee, and to them the thanks of the Historical Society are due :
Helge Gjessing, University of Christiania, Norway.
Hjalmar Rued Holand, Ephraim, Wisconsin.
O. J. Breda, Christiania, Norway, formerly of the University of Min- nesota.
George O. Curme, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
Chester N. Gould, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
Rasmus B. Anderson, Madison, Wisconsin.
Dr. Knut Hoegh, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Gisle Bothne, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
John O. Evjen, Augsburg Seminary, Minneapolis.
Andrew Fossum, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota.
P. P. Iverslie, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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George T. Flom, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois.
Julius E. Olson, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.
J. A. Holvik, United Church Seminary, St. Anthony Park, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Olaf Huseby, Norwegian journalist and author, Fosston, Minnesota.
J. J. Skordalsvold, Minneapolis, Minnesota, formerly professor of Nor- wegian Literature in Augsburg Seminary.
O. E. Hagen, Meridian, Wisconsin, formerly professor in the Uni- versity of South Dakota, Vermilion, South Dakota.
It is needless to say that among these there is divergence of testimony, and sometimes contrary, not only in the results which they have reached, but sometimes in their estimates of the value of the linguistic peculiarities of the language of the inscription.
With one exception, the members of the committee are all linguistic scholars and are capable of judging the force of linguistic arguments, pro and con, and we have attempted to compare judicially the evidence that has been adduced.
It should be remarked at the outset that the argument against the rune inscription is like this : As the translation of the Bible in King James' version does not employ the words boy or girl, but instead uses lad and damsel, if a book purporting to be a copy of the King James version were found to contain the words boy and girl, it would at once be classed as fraudulent. Likewise if words are found in the Kensington rune stone inscription which were not in use in 1362, the inscription is fraudulent. But it is evident at once that such a comparison of these cases involves a possible error. Two books actually in print can be compared with preciseness, and one can be pronounced a fraud with positiveness when it does not agree with its prototype. In the case of this stone, a definite inscription is to be com- pared with a "usage," and it is the wide uncertainty of that usage that gives rise to the variety of evidence and opinion.
It should be remarked also that the usage with which the stone may be compared may be that of a considerable period of time, say a whole century; it may be that of high-class and dignified literature, or that of common or ordinary writing, or that even of everyday speech. It is plain, therefore, that it is important to determine the standard to which the inscrip- tion ought to show a conformity. It should also be remembered that. as in English, these standards change from one into the other with lapse of time. A usage which was prevalent only in common speech, say in the fourteenth century, might be found in literature in the fifteenth cen-
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tury, and in the more dignified language of legal documents not till the sixteenth century. As our slang words creep slowly into literature, and finally are recognized in the standard dictionaries, so the colloquial terms and usage of the Swedish gradually came into use in the higher type of literature.
It is agreed by all, so far as we have learned, that the inscription, whether false or genuine, was made by a Swede and a rather unlettered man, a good mechanic, and probably from ancient Gothland, now the south part of Sweden, or from Visby, on the island of Gothland, where foreigners were numerous from all commercial points in Europe. In such a city the influence of foreign languages would be apparent and more pronounced than in any other part of Sweden, except perhaps Stockholm. If the engraver of the inscription were an unlettered Swede, it appears that the standard with which it should be compared is not that of high-class standard literature, whether legal documents, educational treatises, or poems, but more reasonably the colloquial vernacular of Gothland. It would be neces- sary to allow for some effect of German and perhaps English contiguity. Hence, as the stone claims to date from the fourteenth century, it is reason- able to compare it with the colloquial usage of that century.
Here arises another important consideration, viz., the fourteenth cen- . tury was a period of change and confusion, arising from the introduction of Christianity. Here was in full swing the tradition to the modern forms and usages. Indeed the language of Sweden and Denmark in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries "was much like that of the present." and, "to that degree agrees with the new that nothing except an occasional business or law expression will stop a reader of the present." This change was not accomplished without much irregularity, and perhaps this is most apparent in the fourteenth century. The German language made a powerful impress on the Swedish. Dahlerup declares, "Never has our language received so- great influence from abroad (especially Middle Low German) as it received in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries." Those irregularities consisted in a more or less prevalent dropping of case ending, disregard of grammatical agreements, especially in common speech, and differences of spell- ing.
With these facts in mind, we will examine in succession the difficult linguistic points which we have already mentioned.
opdagelse is claimed to be a modern word. It is a serious objection to this word that it is not found in two standard dictionaries, Sodervall's and especially Kalkar's, the latter purporting to be a dictionary of the old
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Danish (and Swedish) language, covering the years 1300 to 1700. The root of the word was known, also the prefix op (upp), and the suffix else (ilse). It was a neuter verb, signifying to appear, to dawn. In the inscrip- tion it has an active significance, to discover. Yet Kalkar gives a quotation dating from 1634 in which this word appears in its active sense, viz., "Et skib med röfoere for landit var opdaget" (A vessel with pirates was discov- ered off shore). The fact that the date of this quotation is 1634 does not show that this signification of this word was not in earlier use, for Kalkar gives numerous other quotations witth dates showing similar Ger- man influence, dated later than their known earliest use, as follows:
understanda is dated 1610, but is found in Den Jydske Lov of 1241. (Brandt, Gammeldanska Läsebog, 1856, p. 29, line 15.)
ophange in dated 1575, used in a provision of Waldemar Seier of 1250 (itto, 41, 3, as uphengia.)
opladha, dated by Kalkar 1550, used in a diploma of 1329 (ditto, 77, 5, as uplader ) ; and numerous others.
Kalkar's dictionary was not complete. He is now compiling a sup- plement, which will contain hundreds of words missed by him in his first edition. The following, similar to opdagelse, may be mentioned, in use about 1400, which were omitted by Kalkar: opfostre, upfodde, opbrande, opraettilsac, forymmels, paamindelse (ditto, 98, line 23; 169, 8; 168, 6). This shows simply that opdagelse may have been one of the common words omitted by Kalkar, and therefore that the absence of this word in Kalkar's Danish dictionary is not certain evidence that it was not in use in Gothland in 1362, at least in common speech; for, as has been remarked already, the standard dictionaries of any language are the last to recognize innovations, such as this appears to have been, from other languages.
We fail to see the force of the objections to opdagelse in the fact that the modern Swedish for opdage is uppdaga. The use of the older word seems to us rather to be a difficulty in assigning the inscription to modern invention.
The difficulty with po in the inscription consists of two parts: (1) It is used earlier than is recognized by Sodervall's dictionary; and (2) it is used correctly to designate "an action by some one, or a condition or state of a person," which is thought to be not the sense in which it is used here.
The fact that Sodervall's dictionary assigns this word to "about 1400" is in some degree an objection to its use in 1362; yet, if it be recalled that in common speech many words are in use long before they are recognized
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in standard literature and in dictionaries, and that the difference of · time here amounts to only thirty-eight years, it appears to the committee that the word po was more likely than not to have been known and used at the date assigned to the rune stone. In the middle of the fourteenth century, moreover, we find pa, po, and upa, used side by side.
As to the significance of the word po (on), used as a preposition before the word opdagelse, its force, as defined by the objectors, is to be inferred from the connection. "On a journey of discovery" implies a verb such as going, and if that be supplied the phrase reads "going on a journey of dis- covery," which gives the preposition exactly the sense required.
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