Runic inscription discovered in Minnesota and supposed to represent the extent of Norse exploration in North America. The Kensington Stone is a slab of rock that was found embedded in the roots of a large tree by a Swedish farmer named Olaf Ohman on his Minnesota farm in November 1898. It measures 91 centimeters long by 38 centimeters wide by 14 centimeters thick (about 36 inches long by 15 inches wide by 5 4 inches thick) and weighs 86 kilograms (230 pounds). The stone is covered with runic writing that tells the story of about 30 men on a exploratory journey in 1362 westward from Vinland (northeastern North America). The stone records that a third of the company was killed while the rest of the men were out fishing, and prays to the Virgin Mary to be spared from a like fate. The stone is generally regarded as a forgery, but this has not been proven to the satisfaction of all scholars.
The historicity of the Kensington Stone was originally challenged because scholars felt that the language it used was not contemporary with the 1362 date and because it mixed characters from the Latin alphabet with the runic signs. However, the earliest scholars to investigate the stone (from the University of Oslo) drew no conclusions about who might have perpetrated the forgery. The first to accuse Ohman, the stone’s finder, of forging the inscription was former university professor and newspaper editor Rasmus B. Anderson. In 1910 Anderson claimed in his newspaper that three men Ohman, defrocked Lutheran minister Sven Fogelblad, and Swedish worker Andrew Anderson had colluded to produce the stone. Andrew Anderson and Olaf Ohman both denied Rasmus Anderson’s charges and defended the authenticity of the stone.