Of
course, as a side show, the publicizing of everything Viking or Norse is now ticked
up a notch. In the US that means the
Kensington Rune Stone, the Heavener Rune Stone and the Newport (RI) Tower get
some additional attention.
Years
ago, I wrote a piece for the newsletter of the Denver Chapter of the Colorado
Archaeological Society about proposed evidence for Viking exploration into
North America (Moore 2001). It is
reproduced below. Its title was “Hoaxes
and the Norsemen of Canada,” and was a response to a Viking exhibit that was on
display at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, March 2 - May 28,
2001. I’ll have some additional comments
afterward.
___________________
The
difference between myth and reality is often a fine line, particularly when the
story is too good to be true. No matter
how much data is presented or how tight the argument is made some people will
believe the version of it they prefer. This
often happens with archaeological research.
Every now and then, we get to debunk an idea, enjoy the two minutes of
limelight, and then our findings are ignored because the other story is more
appealing.
Two
appealing stories are the continued claims for Viking, or Norse, explorations
in the upper Midwest, mostly Minnesota, and in New England. The former is said to have been visited by a
Swedish-Norwegian expedition in 1362; the other is linked to the "Vinland
Voyages" chronicled in the Norse stories The Greenlanders' Saga and
Erik the Red's Saga. While the
sagas do contain useful hints about eleventh century Norse sojourns in parts of
Canada, there is little credibility to these ‘Viking Hoaxes’.
These
two stories are worthy of attention. The
oldest concerns the origin of the Newport Tower in Newport, Rhode Island. The tower is an unusual stone structure
commanding the view over the town and bay.
In 1837, a Danish professor named Rafn published a book presenting
evidence for Norse settlement in the New World.
His interpretation of the sagas placed the colony of Vinland within New
England. This news led to a flurry of
attempts at finding the physical remains of Vikings. Some believed the tower was Norse because it
was thought to be different from other English structures from the early days
of the town. Others felt that it was
English, dating to the seventeenth century. The debate about the tower went on for several
years and evidence for Norsemen was brought forth from many places within New
England.
To
resolve the issue, William Godfrey (1949, 1951, 1955) excavated the area within
and around the tower in the 1940. He
found numerous artifacts in the builder’s trench dating to the seventeenth
century and interpreted the structure as a windmill. Even so, people still refer to it as evidence
that Norsemen had been in New England.
The
other story is a hoax from Minnesota (Guralnick 1982). In 1898, a rune stone was found outside the
town of Kensington. Rune stones are
rocks that have been inscribed with some message, often a memorial, in the
runic alphabet, common in Northern Europe in Medieval times. In some parts of Scandinavia this script was
used into the early twentieth century. Many
of these stones have been found in Sweden.
The Kensington Stone inscription read:
8 Goths and 22 Norwegians on
an exploration journey from
Vinland to the west We
had camp by 2 skerries one
day's journey north from this stone
we were to fish one day after
we came home found 10 men red
of blood and dead AVM
We have 10 men by the sea to look
after our ships 14 day's travel
from this island Year 1362
Certainly,
this tale is intriguing. But, soon after
it was found, the rock was studied by a linguist and shown to be a fake. Its alphabet is nineteenth century runic not
fourteenth, as the date indicates. The
language is a dialect of Swedish found only in parts of Minnesota, including
the Kensington area. And, the
inscription was not weathered, as it should have been if it was older. However, the rock received much attention,
and, after a promoter got onto the story, people began to believe that it was
real. Suddenly many more rune stones
were found. Today, one occasionally
hears stories about Vikings in Minnesota.
Not
all the stories about Norsemen in North America are hoaxes (Ingstad 1977; McGhee
1984; McGovern 1981, 1990). During the
late eighth through the eleventh centuries, there was a major population expansion
out of Scandinavia. Norsemen spread
across the northern part of Europe and to their west. Iceland was settled in the decade
860-870. Erik the Red colonized
Greenland from Iceland in the 980s. By
1500, this colony either was abandoned or had died out, possibly due to Eskimo
warfare. About the year 1000, several
voyages were undertaken from Greenland to explore further west. Three places are recorded in the Sagas that
were either settled or temporarily used:
the southern part of Baffin Island, called "Helluland," the
coast of Labrador below the medieval tree line, named "Markland," and
the northern part of Newfoundland, the legendary "Vinland".
Archaeological
evidence for Norse settlements or contacts in North America is sparse but they
definitely did land in parts of Canada. The
best known site is L'Anse aux Meadows, located along the northern coast of
Newfoundland, which was excavated in the 1960s by Anne and Helge Ingstad and by
Parks Canada in the 1970s. There, the
remains of ten houses, four boat sheds, refuse heaps, and two cooking pits were
recovered. The houses were medieval
Norse long houses, similar to ones found in parts of Iceland and Sweden. Some of the artifacts, such as a spindle
whorl and some rivets are typical Norse products. Twenty-one carbon dates clustered around the
early eleventh century, correlating well with the Sagas. Anne Ingstad is cautious about calling this
site the Vinland colony. However, it is a
very good chance that it is.
Relations
between the Norse and American natives, or "skraelings" as they called
them, were mostly hostile. Three groups
were probably encountered: the Dorset Eskimos in northern Labrador, the Thule
Eskimos in Greenland and eastern Arctic Canada, and the people of the
archaeological complex called Point Revenge, found in southern Labrador and
Newfoundland. The Dorset and Thule
Eskimos differed in their material culture, the latter having a more complex
marine technological system. The Point
Revenge people may be the ancestors of the historic Algonquian speaking
Naskapi, Montagnais, and Beothuck tribes.
Fascinating
as this archaeology may be, the Norsemen did not leave much of an impact on the
New World. The modern stage of North
America does not start with their presence. There is no evidence for major epidemics, battles,
or changed economies. All of that would
come later. The existing evidence
suggests sporadic and wide-ranging contact between Norse and Native Americans,
whose legends apparently do not remember them.
Their memory lives on in our culture in the form of runic stones,
strange towers, and the all too often vague line between fact and fiction.
---------------------
Since
2001, there have been many claims that these two “hoaxes” are in fact
truth. The Newport Tower has been
featured in recent cable shows (e.g. America Unearthed), once again arguing for
a Viking or a Knights Templar connection.
Godfrey’s research can’t be accepted because it is too boring; people
just want more. I admit I shouldn’t have
called the tower a “hoax” because the structure is very authentic. It was built for a real purpose, as a
windmill, a gristmill, built in the 17th century. Those perpetuating the “fringe”
interpretations about it are con artists trying to make a buck or a name from
selling silly ideas.
However,
the Kensington Stone has actually gained some respectability in the last few
years. Two recent books (Kehoe 2004;
Nielson and Wolter 2005) sum up the sordid story and argue for the stone’s
authenticity. Nielson has done much new
research on the linguistics and history of runic writing in Scandinavia. He actually documents that many of the
linguists who first looked at the stone were wrong in their understanding of
runic history. His research seems like a
valid contribution to the case.
Wolter’s
contribution to the story is his petrographic analysis from which he argues
that the inscriptions are older than when the stone was found; in other words,
it had to be older than 1898. Unfortunately,
petrographic analysis isn’t an established dating method, so he can’t tell us
when the stone was inscribed. He assumes
the date on the stone is correct.
Since
their joint publication in 2005, Nielson and Wolter have soured their
relationship. Several physical scientists have waded in on the discussion
and Wolter’s petrograhic analysis is considered to have failed. The best
evidence against Wolter is now found on Nielson’s web page, http://www.richardnielsen.org/Welcome.html
under the Discussion tab. Wolter has
gone on to be a shill for the Knights Templar/Holy Grail in America theme,
using both the Kensington Stone and the Newport Tower as a backdrop.
Into
this fray came well respected Anthropologist and archaeologist Alice B Kehoe
who argued for the stone’s authenticity and supported Nielson and Wolter in her
own book and by writing a Forward to their 2005 book. In the Forward, Neilson and Wolter are
described as “hard scientists” with appropriate resumes.
One
has to wonder about Kehoe’s stance in this controversy. She has spent much of her professional life
arguing for a multitude of pre-Columbian contacts from the Old World to the
New, and across the two continents of the New.
She seems to particularly dislike the idea that Columbus “discovered”
America. Two essays summarize her
position (Kehoe 2003; 2010). Today, it
is widely accepted among archaeologists, myself included, that Polynesians,
Basques, Chinese, and others came to the New World long before Columbus. I would love to see a rigorous analysis that
Jomon Japan is connected to Mesoamerican antiquity. She seems to ignore this commonly held view
and acts as if opinions like mine don’t exist.
The
Norse certainly lived in Newfoundland; the Chumash probably saved the lives of
some Polynesians and adopted their boat making skills and words; and the
Basques left words in Micmac. But none
of these events changed the world the way Columbus did. Archaeologists don’t have to prove that fact.
If
Kehoe and others want to argue that pre-Columbian cultural contacts were indeed
momentous events then the burden of proof is on them. Find the evidence, make a good presentation,
and convince us that Columbus wasn’t THE watershed event.
Unfortunately,
the Kensington Stone has fallen into a terrible state of affairs. Around 2002 a cast of the stone was made and
now a black silicon layer covers the stone.
Physical analysis isn’t possible until the contamination is removed. Moreover, it is not clear on how to do this
without destroying underlying patina and the surface of the stone itself.
Like
Indy, all I can say is the stone belongs in a reputable museum. Regardless of its authenticity, the story of
the Kensington Stone is wonderful American folklore that continues to inspire people
to do inspiring things. It shouldn’t be
treated as some commercial object.
This
whole sad discussion reminds me of the book Moby Dick by Herman
Melville. There, the scarred, tortured,
and obsessive character of Captain Ahab chases the elusive goal, destroying his
life and everyone else around him. He
never really catches the whale but becomes tied to it, cannot escape, and goes
down with it. Only the narrator,
Ishmael, survives.
Nielson,
is that you?
References
Godfrey,
W. S. (1949). The Newport Puzzle. Archaeology, 2(3), 146-149.
Godfrey,
W. S. (1951). The Archaeology of the Old Stone Mill in Newport, Rhode Island. American
Antiquity, 17(2), 120-129.
Godfrey,
W. S. (1955). Vikings in America: Theories and Evidence. American
Anthropologist, 57(1), 35-43.
Guralnick,
E. (Ed.). (1982). Vikings in the West. Chicago, IL: Archaeological
Institute of America.
Ingstad,
A. S. (1977). The Discovery of a Norse Settlement in America. Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget.
Kehoe,
A. B. (2003). The Fringe of American Archaeology: Transoceanic and
Transcontinental Contacts in Prehistoric America. Journal of Scientific
Exploration, 17(1), 19-36.
Kehoe,
A. B. (2004). The Kensington Runestone: Approaching a Research Question
Holistically. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
Kehoe,
A. B. (2010). Consensus and the Fringe in American Archaeology. Archaeologies,
6(2), 197-214.
McGhee,
R. (1984). Contact between Native North Americans and the Medieval Norse: A
Review of the Evidence. American Antiquity, 49(1), 4-26.
McGovern,
T. (1981). The Vinland Adventure: A North American Perspective. North
American Archaeologist, 2(4), 285-308.
McGovern,
T. (1990). The Archeology of the Norse North Atlantic. Annual Review of
Anthropology, 19(1), 331-351.
Moore,
L. E. (2001). Hoaxes and the Norsemen of Canada. All Points Bulletin, 38(3),
1-2.
Nielson,
R., & Wolter, S. F. (2005). The Kensington Rune Stone: Compelling New
Evidence. Eden Prairie, MN: Outernet Publishers.
