The Kensington Stone: A Study in Pre-Columbian American History

Abstract

THE KENSINGTON STONE: a study in pre-Columbian American History. ByHjalmar R. Holand. Ephraim, Wisconsin:privatelyprinted 1932. 8} X 5^ inches; viii+316 pages; illustrations and sketch-map. $3.00 Within the limits available it is impossible to give an adequate idea of the close and cogent reasoning which Mr. Holand, as the result of more than twenty years' work on the problem, has brought to the rehabilitation of the runic inscription discovered near Kensington, Minnesota, as long ago as 1898. There is naturally a large measure of prejudice to be overcome; experts, acting, it would seem, on insufficient or erroneous information, have long ago pronounced the inscription a modern forgery, and its linguistic peculiarities, the improbabilities connected with the idea of a Scandinavian expedition in the heart of Minnesota in the fourteenth century, and, above all, the presence at the present day of a predominantly Scandinavian population, all give primd facie colour to the notion that the inscription is a fake. For all that, such a theory is almost certainly untenable. The responsibility of the modern Scandinavian colony is disproved by a most conclusive alibi: the stone was discovered under the roots of a tree which