THE KENSINGTON RUNESTONE: Commentary and Speculation by Bob Voyles

This posting is about solving a mystery.  By putting many clues together, I believe I have discovered where the "Lake With Two Skerries" referred to in the inscription carved into the KRS is located.  Much of the material contained in this blog presentation was provided to the Minnesota Historical Society a few short years ago, where it is presently archived within the KRS documentation holdings. Not by coincidence, I believe, a medieval Scandinavian battle axe was found in 1894 (four years before the KRS was unearthed), a foot and a half deep on the west bank of Davidson Lake, which is about one day's journey north from Runestone Hill.  My belief is that the exact finding spot of the battle axe helps to verify--like a time capsule--where the KRS campsite was likely located by this lake with two small islands.  In its inscription, the KRS indicates that a bloody massacre occurred where the men were camped by this lake. My purpose in this blog posting is to help c...

Towards the end of summer in 2015, I found myself exploring the region several miles south of Glenwood, Minnesota, which offers a beautiful wonderland created by the final retreat of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago.  The area is a glacial paradise, offering a distinctive hill and lake appearance.  Here, one can expect to see one of the finest examples of "kame and kettle" glacial topography in the Upper Midwest. I was out enjoying the day, looking for reported medieval Scandinavian stoneholes carved into rocks--like those along rocky coastlines in Scandinavia and like those dozen or so stoneholes hand chiseled into rocks encircling the Kensington Runestone (at Runestone Hill), which I believe is a genuine medieval runic stone document self-dated to 1362.  Many people consider the runestone--discovered in 1898--to be authentic, while many other naysayers believe it is an elaborate hoax.  Unlike the typical hidebound "professionals" in Minnesota, I believe ...

Norway Lake in Minnesota is approximately 50 miles from the small town of Kensington, where the Kensington Runestone (self-dated to 1362) was discovered by an immigrant farmer named Olof Ohman in 1898.  I was already aware of a medieval Scandinavian axe that was found in 1908 by a Norway Lake area fisherman named Ole Skaalerub (the axe is presently in a collection of iron weapons at Alexandria's Runestone Museum), but I didn't learn about a possible submerged runestone in the middle of Norway Lake until a few years later, when I came across a September/October 2012 article in the Atlantis Rising Magazine, entitled "Norsemen in Minnesota," with the subtitle  " The Kensington Rune Stone Is Not The Only Evidence For A Prehistoric Viking Presence ."  The magazine is now defunct, but I have included pertinent portions of the timeless and fascinating article in this presentation about a possible submerged runestone in Norway Lake: Excerpts from the ...

I came across this extremely intriguing story of a possible submerged rock with runes carved into it while reading one of Hjalmar R. Holand's books published in 1946, entitled "America 1355 - 1364."  The obscure story is told in Appendix B of the book, in a sub-title called "A Submerged Inscription."  The rock's existence was reported in "North Dakota Guide Book," from which the following citation, given by Holand, is taken: "Below Stanton is DEAPOLIS (caps in the original), marked by a single grain elevator, all that remains of another of the towns that sprang up along the Missouri, flourished, and declined with the steamboat trade...old residents tell the story that in the summer of 1894 the river at Deapolis was extremely low, exposing a huge boulder in the center of the stream.  An interested group made their way to the stone, and found it carved with peculiar markings they were unable to decipher.  Before leaving, they added the date of...