FINDING THE RUNESTONE
In Autumn of 1898, a farmer near Kensington, MN, Olaf Ohman was grubbing out the roots of a tree near the top of a roghly 50 ft high hill on his land. As the roots of the tree had grown around a large rectangular stone, he had to dig a little deeper in order to cut off the roots. The exact details are unclear, but after the stone had been freed, Olaf's son, Edward, noticed some sort of odd inscription on the stone, and brought it to his father's attention. Ohman called his neighbor, Nils Flatten, whom he had been talking to earlier in the day but none of them could figure out just what the thing said.
The stone was brough to Ohman's house, where it became something of a curiosity. The stump and roots were preserved, and many people noted the flattening of the roots where they had pressed against the stone, and how they fitted tightly around the stone. Within a few weeks, the rune stone was brought into Kensington where it was displayed in a shop window, and a copy of the inscription sent to Prof. O.J. Breda of Minneapolis, and the stone itself a bit later send to Prof. George Curme in Evanston. Both pronounced it a fake, based primarily on linguistic evidence, Breda perhaps a bit more strongly than Curme (who sent photographs to linguists in Sweden). The stone was then returned to Ohman, who apparantly used it as a stepping stone to his granary.
In 1907, the Rune Stone was 'rediscoverd' by Hjalmar Holand, who was researching a book on Scandinavian immigration in the Kensington area. He found enough evidence to get the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) to launch the first thorough investigation of the Rune Stone. Their report, primarily researched by former state geologist N H Winchell who made several fact finding trips to the area, was of a favorable opinion to the stone's authenticity, though with reservations centering around the linguistics of the stone.
Central to the MHS report were the physcial evidences of the age of the tree in whose roots the stone was found, and the weathering that had occured on the face of the stone. As to the former, the stump had been destroyed by the time of the investigation, but several similar sized trees were selected from the same general location and the average age of these trees was approximately 40 years of age. If the tree had been growing over the stone for its life, then the inscription would have been carved prior to 1860, when the population of Douglas County was 194.
The weathring noted in the stone, and compared to the 7-8000 year old glacial scratches on the back of the stone, put the age of the inscription as 500 years old according to Winchell. W. O Hotchkiss, state geologist of Wisconsin, working independantly also felt the inscription could have been of that age, noting also that the inscription must have been at least 50 years old.
The linguistic evidence, however, was not as favorable - Prof. George Flom of the University of Illinois finding numerous linguistic flaws in the inscription. This view that the stone was a hoax, was similarly held by linguists and runologists in Sweden. For more on the linguistics of the stone, please see the Linguistic section off of the main page.
Various attempts have been made to determine who a possible forger might have been. Breda considered it possible that a soldier during the Indian uprising of 1862 may have carved the stone, Curme thought it might be a Swedish born trapper early in the 19th century. Most of the attention, though, has centered around the finder of the stone, Olof Ohman, possibly in association with a retired minister / teacher by the name of Sven Fogelblad. There is no direct evidence prooving that either of these had anything to do with the inscribing of the stone, though some such as Theodore Blegen, have put forth strong arguments that they were involved.
Winchell - Notebooks and the Historical Society Report
Weathering - Winchell, the patina, and others
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