Geologist thinks Kensington Runestone not a hoax
Peg Meier / Star Tribune
 

Q. What's 102 years old, an enduring dispute in Minnesota (and beyond) and
again riling up scholars, scientists and Scandinavians?

A. Yup. The Kensington Runestone controversy.
 

The runestone
 

It's back, and it's hot.

So hot that it drew a standing-room-only audience at a recent conference in
St. Paul for archaeologists from about 20 states and three Canadian
provinces. It was there that a Minnesota geologist and a Wisconsin chemist
presented what they say is indisputable evidence that the runestone
inscription is "real" and old, probably from the 1300s.

Most historians, archaeologists and linguists over the decades have said
"nonsense" to the idea that wandering Norsemen in 1362 got to Minnesota and
left a carved stone in memory of slain members of their expedition. They
say the famous (infamous?) stone, weighing a hefty 202 pounds, was carved in
about 1898 by Olof Ohman, a farmer and stone mason near Kensington, Minn.
As did other schoolboys in his native Sweden, Ohman had learned the ancient
symbols called runes. He is said to have wanted to pull a hoax on scholars.

Most scholars are sticking with the assessment of forgery on Ohman's part,
despite new studies on several fronts.

Leading the campaign to lend legitimacy to the runestone is Barry Hanson, a
semi-retired chemist from Maple, Wis. He hired geologist Scott Wolter,
president of American Petrographic Services of St. Paul to investigate the
rock. The two hadn't known each other.
 

Geologist Scott Wolter examined the Kensington Runestone in his St. Paul
lab. He has come to believe that the stone's legend is real and that it was
carved by Norsemen.
 

Wolter said he has found a clear pattern of mica degradation on the surface
of what they believe are man-made features of the stone. Mica degradation
of this nature would take "considerable" time to manifest itself and would
require a moist soil environment, they say. That proves, they contend, that
the stone was buried after it was carved into its tombstone size and shape;
the time period was at least 50 years and probably centuries.

That would mean, Hanson said, that "Olof Ohman was telling the truth. He
didn't carve it." Ohman, Hanson said, had farmed on his western Minnesota land for only eight
years when he unearthed the stone. "If he didn't carve it, who did?" Hanson
asked. He thinks it was the Vikings, just as the stone's inscription
indicates. Hanson said, "We're being cautious. This will take quite a while" to prove
fully. But he promises "a lot of interesting things to come," including
linguistic studies that show the runes are those that were used in the
1300s, not the 1800s, as many other linguists contend.

New to him

Wolter, the geologist, has some Norwegian in his ancestry and grew up
mostly in Minnesota, but he said that he'd never even heard of the runestone until
several months ago. That was when Hanson hired him to conduct what they say
is the first laboratory testing ever on the runestone. Among Wolter's
instruments were high-tech, high-power microscopes.

What he found convinces him that the runestone is legitimate. With further
study, he said, he'll be able to better pinpoint the time period that the
carved stone was underground. "But absolutely no way was it carved in
1898," he said. Degradation of mica along one carved side clearly shows the
exposed surface of the graywacke rock was "dressed" (meaning cut to its current
size) at the same time the runes were carved.

He said he went into the work as an impartial scientist.

"I've never had an ax to grind, one way or the other," Wolter said in an
interview. He's being paid about $10,000 by the Runestone Foundation (a
group of believers) but denies that the signer of his paycheck could
influence his research.

His usual work is what he calls "autopsies on concrete" -- determining if
there are flaws in concrete projects and, if so, whose fault they were. He
said that he routinely tells the people who pay his bills, "I may have to
give you bad news. It is what it is."

His company of six employees annually investigates more than 500 projects,
and about five times a year he's an expert witness in court, testifying on
his findings about the cracking or scaling of concrete. He said he's
accustomed to being in the middle of controversy.

The other side

Experts on the runestone -- and many have emerged over time -- urge caution
in rushing to new judgments.

Mike Miklovic, professor of anthropology and earth science at Minnesota
State University, Moorhead, and a firm believer that the runestone is a
fake, said it bothers him that Wolter's research is preliminary.

Said Miklovic, "I'm willing to listen," but he wants solid proof. "He
[Wolter] hasn't published this. We have nothing to review. Maybe we have to
wait until all the publications come out. But the historical evidence is so
overwhelming in opposition that I wonder about the methods. Are his
techniques appropriate for the examination of an artifact of this type?"

Paul Weiblen, a retired University of Minnesota geology professor, said it
will be very difficult to establish through geological methods if the
runestone was carved in 1362. But he added that the head of the
university's geology department in about 1908 looked at the stone and said he doubted it
could have been carved as recently as 1898. Weiblen said he, too, has
eyeballed the runestone and agrees, basing his opinion on the stone's
patina.

Joy at the museum

Meanwhile, people at the Kensington Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minn.
home to the runestone and thousands of runestone souvenirs -- are ecstatic. LuAnn Patton,
museum director and a big believer, called Wolter's work
"wonderful." She said, "In my entire time here, I've heard and seen
naysayers verbally abuse the integrity of the Ohman family, the runestone
and the museum. ... Now perhaps the Kensington Runestone will get its just
due."

She read a scholarly paper by Hanson, written before the geologic studies,
and persuaded museum directors "to back away from fear and check this out."
Wolter asked Patton for permission to take the runestone to his lab and
remove a core sample, a little over an inch in diameter and 2 inches deep,
from the back. (No inscription is there.) She hesitated on both requests.

Patton said she can't have a runestone museum without a runestone, and the
idea of drilling into the very hard stone terrifying: "It was one of the
most nerve-racking days of my life."

But to her, to the many others in the area who believe the inscription is
real and to the 12,000 tourists who visit the museum each year, it's best
to find out. "Let science speak for itself," she said.

Rewriting history?

To Wolter the runestone is "the single most important archeological
artifact in North America -- ever. It flies in the face of theory that Columbus was
the first European over here."

After his science shows the inscription was written in the 1300s, he said,
everything else will have to be rethought -- geology (was North America a
lot wetter in the 1300s, allowing exploration by river and stream?), trade
routes, politics of the day in Scandinavia.

Birgitta Wallace disagrees -- forcefully. Wallace, a Canadian of Swedish
descent who is considered a foremost expert in west Norse archeology, gave
the keynote address at the conference at which Wolter and Hanson presented
their hypothesis. She blasted their views.

She said in an interview that every person who has ever studied the
runestone and dreamed of fame must have had this fleeting thought: "I wish
it were genuine." But every piece of evidence contradicts that, she said.
As for Wolter's geology, she said, "All they've been able to prove is the
stone is old." True, the stone is old, but is the inscription? No, she said
flatly.

In her mind, the runestone clearly bears a 19th-century inscription.
Neither the runes nor the vocabulary reflect the 1300s, she said. "If you know
Swedish, that is the way my grandfather would write, not my ancestors from
the 1300s."

Also, she said, the idea of Norsemen exploring for the sake of exploration,
as the runic legend suggests, is ridiculous. There were no economic reasons
to go to Minnesota, nor has even one artifact been found that suggests the
Norse were anywhere nearby in the 1300s. She finds the coincidence
"amusing" that Norsemen explored an area more than 600 years before it was heavily
settled by Scandinavians. Plus, geologic studies indicate that a cold
climate prevailed in much of the 1300s, making travel very difficult in
mid-America.

To Wolter, though, there's another reason, a nonscientific reason, to
believe Olof Ohman. Ohman claimed he cleared a field for plowing, pushed
over a tree and found the runestone clasped in its roots. His 10-year-old
son was at his side. If the discovery were only a hoax, Ohman would have
had to tell his son, "You're going to lie about this until the day you die."
Wolter has a 10-year-old son. "A father wouldn't do that," he said.

Peg Meier can be contacted at pmeier@startribune.com