St. Anthony Park, Minn., April 20th, 1910.
Rof. N.H.Winchell, St. Paul,
Dear Sir:
After comparing in detail the Kensington inscription with the book bearing the name os Sv. Fogelblad, I am prepared to make the following statements.
1. The book is a grammar of modern Swedish, published in 1840.
2. It contans some material on the development of the language:
(a) A system of runes;
(b) Noun declensions of Old and Middle Swedish;
(c) Verb conjugations of Old and Middle Swedish;
(d) Short selections to illustrate the language at different periods from A.D. 1200 to present time.
(e) Selections to illustrate different dialects.
3. The runes system in the Futhork of sixteen characters. The runes of the inscription are later "punctuated" (stungne) runes.
4. The declenations give the our cases for nouns in Old and Middle Swedish. The inscription has only nominative and genitive forms. Furthermore, the word for ship, used as a type word in the fifth declension, is spelled skep in Middle Swedish. The inscription has skip.
5. The conjugation gives plural inflection for all verbs in Old and Middle Swedish. The inscription uses singular verb forms with plural subjects.
6. A selction from the fifteenth century gives the constructions: "wi ware .... wi hafwe ..... " The inscription has "vi var ..... vi har."
7. A selection from the year 1370 gives the preposition "a". The inscription uses the preposition "po" (which is objected to by some linguists).
8. Some of the rune characters indicate (according to some runologists) that the author of the inscription must be from Dalarne in Sweden. A selection in the book shows the characteristic dipthongs of the dialect of Dalarne; but a characteristic feature of the inscription is the lack of dipthongs.
To summarize: the difference in rune systems, and the so-called "errors" in the inscription, with some parallel correct forms in the book make it evident that there is no connection between the inscription on the Kensington Rune Stone and the book bearing the name Sv. Fogelblad.
Yours truly,
J.A.Holvik
[quoted from MHS report on Kensington Rune Stone, pp 19-20.]
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