The Kensington Runestone

Summary

The Kensington Runestone is a slab carved with runes that tell of Swedes and Norwegians on a journey from Vinland in 1362, found by a Swedish immigrant farmer in Minnesota in 1898. Scholars called it a fraud within months, and runologists still regard it as a nineteenth-century forgery.

Its language is the evidence. The words, the grammar and the runes belong to the Swedish of the nineteenth century, not the fourteenth. A local historian obtained the stone in 1907 and defended it until his death in 1963, and it has never lacked defenders since. Who carved it has not been proved.

What is documented

The find. According to the 1910 report of the Minnesota Historical Society's museum committee, the stone was found on 8 November 1898 on the farm of Olof Öhman, in the south-east quarter of section 14, Solem Township, Douglas County, about three miles north-east of Kensington station. Öhman was having a patch of land cleared for ploughing, and his men were grubbing out stumps. The stone lay inscribed face down under about six inches of soil, with the roots of a poplar or aspen spread around it. The stone is a greywacke.

The inscription. In the committee's translation, the face reads: "Eight Goths [Swedes] and twenty-two Norwegians upon a journey of discovery from Vinland westward." It goes on to describe a camp by two skerries, a day's fishing, and ten men found "red with blood and dead", and ends "A V M [Ave, Virgo Maria], save us from evil." The edge adds: "Have ten men by the sea to look after our vessels fourteen days' journey from this island. Year 1362."

The first verdicts, 1899. The stone was shown in the drug store at Kensington, then sent to O. J. Breda of the University of Minnesota and to George O. Curme at Evanston, Illinois. Both pronounced it fraudulent, and it was returned to Öhman in March 1899. The committee's bibliography records a report in the Minneapolis Tribune of 16 April 1899 of a cablegram from professors at Christiania (Oslo) discrediting the inscription, chiefly for its apparently English words. Öhman set the stone in his yard, where, the committee reported, it served as a stepping stone near his granary for eight years.

Holand. In 1907 Hjalmar Rued Holand obtained the stone from Öhman. He lectured on it in Chicago, Madison and Northfield and brought it to the Minnesota Historical Society, which referred it to its museum committee.

The 1910 committee. N. H. Winchell visited the site three times for the committee. Witnesses' recollections of the tree were gathered, and Holand obtained from Öhman four sections cut from other poplars near the find spot to show the tree's size; their annual rings were counted at 31, 37, 38 and 42. The committee traced a rumour that Öhman carved runes to a man from Brandon, where Öhman had lived years before, who said Öhman had once cut runes on a piece of wood. Öhman maintained that he knew nothing about runes and said he could not remember doing so. On 21 April 1910 the committee unanimously resolved to render "a favorable opinion of the authenticity" of the stone, provided that its references to Scandinavian literature were verified by "a competent specialist in the Scandinavian languages". On 9 May 1910 the Society's council voted to receive and print the report, but stated that the council and Society reserved their conclusion until there was more agreement for or against the inscription.

Flom, 1910. In May 1910 George T. Flom of the University of Illinois addressed the Illinois State Historical Society on the inscription. He found modern verb forms where fourteenth-century Swedish had plural endings, and a word for a journey of exploration that he traced to Dutch, of which he wrote: "The conception 'journey of exploration' did not and could not exist in 1362." He identified the runes as the Dalecarlian runes of Dalarna in Sweden, placed the author's dialect in the region of Orsa and Mora, and dated the inscription "probably between 1880 and 1890."

Later. The stone has been the centrepiece of the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota, since the museum opened in 1958. Book-length studies followed, including Erik Wahlgren's The Kensington Stone: A Mystery Solved (1958) and Theodore Blegen's The Kensington Rune Stone: New Light on an Old Riddle (1968). The Norwegian national encyclopedia, Store norske leksikon, whose entry was last updated in June 2026, states that the runes are of a type unknown from the Middle Ages but close to those used in recent times in Dalarna, that the language is strikingly modern and agrees with English, and that runologists regard the inscription as a forgery made by Öhman around 1890.

Leading explanations

A nineteenth-century carving. Established among runologists. The case rests on the text itself. Its grammar lacks the forms fourteenth-century Swedish still used; it has vocabulary and concepts from centuries later; it agrees with English in places; and its runes match a recent Swedish folk tradition rather than any medieval inscription. Breda and Curme reached the verdict in 1899, Flom set out the linguistic case in 1910, and Store norske leksikon gives it as the position of runologists today.

Who carved it (not established). Store norske leksikon attributes the carving to Öhman around 1890. He denied knowing runes, and the only testimony the 1910 committee found that he had ever cut any came from a single acquaintance. No contemporary document names the carver.

A genuine inscription of 1362 (rejected by runologists). Holand defended the stone from 1907 until his death, and the 1910 committee gave its conditional support. Later writers include the anthropologist Alice Kehoe, whose book of 2005 asks whether the stone was rejected too hastily, and Scott Wolter, whose The Hooked X (2009) argues from its runes and from weathering studies he calls archaeopetrography. Runologists have not accepted these arguments: Store norske leksikon, last updated in 2026, still describes the inscription as a forgery.

Current status

Debunked. The inscription claims to be a record of 1362, and its language, grammar and runes belong to the nineteenth century. That was the verdict of the first scholars to see it in 1899 and remains the position of runologists. The tree, the weathering and the story of the find have been offered in its defence, but they bear on the stone's burial and surface, not on its language. What remains open is who made it. A Norse site in the region, or a demonstration that the language fits the fourteenth century, would reopen the case; neither has been produced.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.