- KENSINGTON, MINN.
-- A team of Minnesotans who believe the famous Kensington Runestone is
authentic has found a second carved rock; the groups says it might have
marked the gravesite of Viking explorers in the 1300s. More evidence that
the Kensington Runestone, found in 1992, was really left behind by the
Vikings.
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- Janey Westin, a member of the seven-person Kensington
Runestone Scientific Testing Team, said she noticed a faint inscription
on a boulder in May. "Oh my gosh! That stone -- it has writing on
it," she remembers saying softly to herself. Because the stone bears
the Latin letters "AVM," perhaps for Ave Maria, the team is calling
it the AVM stone.
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- The team says the AVM stone is "new evidence"
to help prove the legitimacy of the Kensington Runestone. However, it does
little to persuade those scientists and historians who believe that the
inscription on the first runestone is fraudulent.
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- Mark Dudzik, the state archaeologist, said the runestone
theory "has not held up well under professional scientific scrutiny."
Also, he said, it's "just not logical" that Scandinavians got
to the middle of Minnesota more than 600 years ago.
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- But team members are treating the AVM rock as a major
find. They'll hold a news conference Monday in Kensington and expect eventually
to display the stone at the Kensington Runestone Museum in Alexandria,
Minn. The museum attracts 12,000 visitors a year.
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- Immediately after spotting the rock, Westin said, she
photographed and mapped the site. On July 11, team members lugged the 2,200-pound
rock to a secure -- and secret -- place. Then they hired three impartial
archaeologists to conduct an exploratory dig. Using standard archaeological
procedures, the scientists spent much of July 25 digging nine test holes,
from 12 to 27 inches deep.
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- Team members hoped the archaeologists would find evidence
of human activity in medieval times. They did not. They found two quartz
flakes, probably chipped from arrowheads, and other evidence of Indian
habitation but no clues of early Norsemen.
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- Westin had spotted the 43-inch-long rock on an island
about a quarter-mile from where the runestone was found in 1898. That stone,
the subject of international controversy ever since, is in an "Unsolved
Mysteries" exhibit in Vienna, Austria, until Sept. 23.
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- New studies
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- Most doubting scientists and historians suspect that
the Kensington Runestone was carved by Olof Ohman, a man of little formal
education who was born in Sweden and farmed near Kensington. He claimed
to have found the stone on his property, wrapped in the roots of a tree.
Historians have put a great deal into the story that he wanted to pull
a hoax on educated people.
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- But in the past year, a small group of scientists led
by St. Paul geologist Scott Wolter have examined the runestone closely,
including studying it with powerful microscopes in his laboratory. After
investigating weathering and other features, they have concluded that the
letters were carved long ago, long before Ohman's time, perhaps in Viking
time.
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- Both the Kensington Runestone and the AVM stone probably
were incised with hammer and chisel and display the ancient Scandinavian
language called runes.
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- The AVM stone also carries the runic date of 1363 --
a year after the runestone date -- and has some runic letters, which the
team speculates may stand for "Christ the Savior conquers."
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- One of the archaeologists conducting the dig was Mike
Michlovic, professor of anthropology and earth science at Minnesota State
University, Moorhead. He calls himself a skeptic about the runestone, but
adds that he's willing to keep an open mind.
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- Historians who don't believe the runestone legend say
the second rock might have been carved in 1898 or 2001 or anytime in between,
but not in 1363.
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- Battle site?
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- To Westin, who found the stone, the two dates of 1362
and 1363 suggest that Vikings didn't just pass through what's now Kensington,
but wintered there or at least came through a second time. Either possibility
gives her the chills. Did the AVM stone mark the place where a battle took
place? Or was it carved in memory of someone who died over the hard winter?
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- A Minneapolis stone sculptor and calligrapher, Westin,
44, is knowledgeable in the history of stone carving, which she realizes
will make some suspect her of carving the AVM rock herself. (She adamantly
denies that.) The team asked her last November to study the carving on
the Kensington Runestone. She said she began open-minded and came to the
viewpoint that the inscription is valid.
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- Wanting more information (and hoping that she could find
hunks of rock removed from the runestone where it was shaped), she visited
the area several times in the spring. Instead of looking for clues where
others had, she concentrated on an island about the length of a football
field.
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- That's because the Kensington Runestone inscription refers
to an island; for generations, enthusiasts assumed that the island was
"Runestone Hill," where the rock was found and which is now marked
by celebratory flags. But Westin knew that the landscape has changed considerably
over hundreds of years. Early farmers in western Minnesota claimed as much
land as they could, partly by eliminating wetlands.
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- About five years ago, the state returned the region to
the swampier condition it once was. After a wet winter and spring this
year, a little piece of land that had been a wooded knoll on land became
an island.
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- That is the island searched by Westin and her father,
Robert G. Johnson, an adjunct professor in the University of Minnesota
Geology Department.
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- They kayaked to it and tromped around several times this
spring. Several times they walked over a rock pile where the current farmer,
Arlen Sabolik, had tossed unwanted boulders.
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- On the evening of Mother's Day, with a setting sun casting
light at just the right angle, Westin noticed letters on the rock. "Daddy,
come here!" she shouted. "There's a stone that says AVM."
She said the hand that carved the runestone is not the same as the one
that carved the AVM stone; the "penmanship" is clearly different.
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- Removing the boulder in July was difficult. First it
was covered with an old pink chenille rug, heavy pads, quilts and shrink
wrap, all bound together with duct tape. With chains and winches, the team
pulled it up onto a sturdy car hood (removed from a 1971 Impala) and onto
a big duck boat. Half a dozen men and Westin then walked it through the
shallow water and muck to shore.
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- Mixed feelings
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- The team says the AVM rock belongs to Sabolik and his
wife, Ruby, on whose land it was found. Ruby said they have mixed feelings
about the discovery. On one hand, they believe it lends support to the
Kensington Runestone theory, which they support. On the other hand, they
recognize it might bring them trouble.
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- "I always felt sorry for the Ohmans," she said.
"That stone caused their family nothing but pain and grief."
They knew Art Ohman, Olof's son, and believed that he was ridiculed to
his death for the link to ancient Vikings.
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- Dudzik, the state archaeologist, said he doesn't believe
the runestone legend, partly because early Vikings were seafaring people,
plundering along coastlines. Why would they abandon that lifestyle to get
to the center of a gigantic continent? "Why would they all of a sudden
happen to end up in a Scandinavian-settled state, in a Scandinavian farmer's
back yard? It makes no sense," he said.
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- Russell Fridley, former director of the Minnesota Historical
Society, said he, too, remains a skeptic.
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- "I have come to feel it's a fraudulent inscription,
but a fascinating one," he said. "It's a great testimony to Scandinavian
humor on the frontier."
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