Another Runestone ?
Richard Elfstrom found something in his field. It was about 25 years ago (article written December 1985), during fall plowing. Actually, he was breaking up some brome grass seed that had been planted many years earlier on his family's farm, just southeast of Wheaton, MN.
This time, however, he was using his new Moline GB tractor to its full advantage and plowing the land quite deeply. He was in a depression about 200 feet wide, at the far south end of his farm, when the plow struck the object. Looking back he noticed it wasn't just another rock. This stone had a uniquely squared shape to it.
It wasn't the first time Elfstrom had found curiosities on the farm. Over the years he'd accumulated quite a collection of arrowheads, tomahawks, and firestones. These Indian artifacts are rather common in this part of Minnesota. When one has picked rock for so many years as Elfstrom, it became easy to identify some of the crude stone tools in use before the white man's presence.
This stone, turned up by the plow that fall day, was different though. The dark colored boulder was roughly squared. It was different enough for Elfstrom to stop the tractor for a closer inspection.
Rolling the rock from the furrow, he noticed scratches on one of the planed sides. They were not the scratches of the plow nor were they the ancient marks left by an ice-age glacier. In fact they appeared man-made. The far right symbol was identical to the letter X.
The stone was interesting enough for Elfstrom to haul it from the field to his yard. A rock that did not stir his curiosity such as this one would have quickly found its way to the stone pile. Here the tablet has sat, in the tall grass of his back yard, for the past 25 years.
Elfstrom has lived on this farm, in section 27 of East Lake Valley Township, for all of his 79 years. His father bought the land in 1895. Richard remembers the spot where the where the stone was unearthed as being virgin sod until the previous owner seeded it to brome grass, quite some years back. This was done with a horse drawn breaking plow. Consequently, the land was plowed shallow in order that the pasture grass could be seeded. The junior Elfstrom added this piece of land to his farm in 1939. It remained in the brome sod until the fall he broke it for more cropland.
Eflstrom at first dismissed the stone as another Indian artifact. He was content to figure if fit in with the nearly dozen tomahawks and war clubs that he’d found on his farm. It wasn’t until the early ‘70s that he began to see the stone in an entirely different light. By this time a renewed interest had been awakened in the Kensington runestone, found some 40 miles east of Wheaton.
This controversial petroglyph tells an epic tale of a Scandinavian expedition to central Minnesota in the year 1362. Its finding place is now a county park; and the stone rests in a museum in Alexandria, Eflstrom began to wonder about the origins of his marker.
The Knesington stone used an angular alphabet known as runic. Its use was quite common in northern Europe before the spread of Christianity brought the forerunners of our present lettering system. Its letters are nearly all straight geometric forms, with few curved elements. It adapts quite easily to being chiseled into stone. This was its prime purpose; the recording of events onto markers, especially the epitaphs of prominent leaders.
Strangely enough, Elfstrom’s stone bore similar elements. It is had been Indian in origin, the symbols could very well have been in the form of pictograms. These being quite literal symbols for the objects they stood for. Here though, were these four harshly geometric symbols engraved onto the stone.
Whatever the source of the marks may be, it is quite evident that they are very old. Only the first of the symbols has any relief into the stone. The others appear simply as lighter areas on the dense, dark surface. Weathering of such a hard rock is slow. Elfstrom notes that the symbols have changed negligibly since he discovered the monument.
Eflstrom’s marker indeed bears similarity to the more famous Kensington stone. Many of these may be circumstantial, but the parallels are interesting. Both appear to use a form of runic lettering, both were fond along a waterway.
It was the Kensington stone that raised serious questions regarding early American history. The fact that its story defies the long held belief that Columbus discovered America in the late 1400’s has gained both praise and ridicule for the marker’s epitaph.
The initial discovery of the Kensington stone was innocent enough. It happened in the fall of 1898 as Olof Ohman was clearing his Douglas County, Minnesota farm of some unwanted trees. According to the legend his young son, Edward, has accompanied him to the field that day. Olof had uprooted the tree; and with the ten-year-old’s typical curiosity, Edward began to poke around the toppled roots.
Until now, this November day had been no different from all the rest. Then, Edward noticed an odd shaped rock wedged between the tree’s roots. Further inspection revealed a series of strange marks engraved into the stone’s surface.
Neither Olaf, nor his son, could make any sense of the marks. Some weeks later they hauled the tablet into the nearby town of Kensington. Here too, the inscription baffled everyone. Much to Olof’s dismay, neither the newspaperman, nor the banker, could decipher any meaning.
Word of the discovery reached Minneapolis. Within two weeks a crude translation had been made. The Scandinavian newspaper Svenka Americanska Posten ran a story on the starteling epic contained on Ohman’s marker. It was almost too unbelievable to be true: “Swedes and Norwegians on a journey of discovery from Vineland west – we camped – days journey north from this stone – we fished one day – after we came home we found men red with blood and dead – save from evil – Have men at the ocean to look after our ships – day’s journey from this island (year?).”
In fact it was too incredible to be true. The first wave of criticism was so strong that Ohman quietly stored the stone in a granary for nearly a decade. He in no way wanted to be connected with the public harassment that the inscription caused.
Unlike Elfstrom’s stone, that can be seen today in an entirely different context, the Kensington stone was suspicious from the moment it had been translated. The times were just too right for such a find. It appeared an obvious hoax.
For centuries tales of new, or lost, lands had persisted. Plato, in 400 BC, had advanced the notion of a land that lies to the west of Europe. His continent of Atlantis appeared to be the ideal state.
Again in the early 1500’s Thomas Moore wrote a social commentary disguised as a travel to an imaginary land which he called Utopia. His fictional voyage was so convincing that many mistook it for fact.
Then, only 30 years previous to Ohman’s discovery, a huge figure of a supposedly prehistoric giant had been unearthed at Cardiff, New York. It proved to be a notorious hoax.
Public opinion was simply biased against an objective view of Ohman’s discovery. It appeared far too coincidental. A stone tablet telling of a journey by Scandinavians had been found in one of their communities. It looked like another hoax.
NOTE: The entire story will be posted when it is transcribed from the original manuscript
All designs and photographs are originally executed works and copyrighted to Randy M. Olson, unless otherwise stated.
