Here's an article I wrote several years ago for the Norwegian American newspaper about prospective medieval-era Norse water travel into Minnesota and the Dakotas, in relation to the Kensington Runestone. It still seems as important to me now (July, 2021) as before, since the early visitors were completely dependent on the local river highway systems to get around...nothing new to them, of course! I tend to believe that getting close to the river systems will get one close to where the past Scandinavians came to.
It seems they came to sojourn in a special place where the earliest Norsemen into this region quickly recognized the dwindling down and merging of two different and separate waterways they had come in on...one from America's East Coast (Vinland) through the Great Lakes and one coming in from the north, that is, from Hudson Bay. How do you say "bingo" in Norwegian? So, now, the Norsemen saw that they could travel in and out of this special merging spot in either direction...each going back to "oceanic" beginnings.
Again, this waterway loop going down into and across America was connected by nature in a region where multiple Norse evidences now show up, specifically along the Whetstone River in nearby South Dakota. I wish authorities in both Minnesota and South Dakota would show an interest in assessing these multiple evidences, which include petroglyphs and an abundance of authentic medieval Norse stoneholes...evidently marking out land.
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https://www.norwegianamerican.com/in-defense-of-the-kensington-runestone-waterways/
Could this Copper Harbor, Michigan petroglyph by Lake Superior (photo courtesy of Bob Voyles) discovered far inside America’s interior be depicting a medieval Norse sailing vessel? Could these be snake heads—of all things—at each end of the ship? It would make sense, given that medieval Norsemen commonly used snake heads, like dragon heads, to decorate their ships.
The obviously very aged petroglyph pictured here helps to convince me, a believer in the Kensington Runestone, that medieval Scandinavians were traversing far-inland American waterways at least a few hundred years before the time of Columbus. The Scandinavian website “Maritime Topics on Stamps” shipsonstamps.org confirms that snake head features were used at the time. According to the site, “both bow and stern were decorated by ornamental carvings. Dragon heads were the most common designs, closely followed by bulls, snakes, and worms.”
In an enlargement of the photo, one can even see that the carver likely attempted to show what appears to be “banding” in the sailcloth, though this is mostly distorted by lichen. Triangle-shaped diagonal banding was done on medieval Norse sailcloths to stiffen up the sail. To me, these details help prove the petroglyph’s authenticity, since a pre-internet hoaxer would not have thought to include these little-known details I discovered while researching online.
Might the ill-fated Kensington Runestone party of 1362 have continued on from the location of this petroglyph by Lake Superior to reach their campsite destination in Minnesota a few weeks later? Again, absolutely, and I’ll explain just why the notion of waterway travel far into America’s heartland by medieval Scandinavians should be recognized as one of the foundations of our country’s true history.
It is my contention that when the exploring Norse came down from Hudson Bay, and when they came west from Vinland through the Great Lakes, they couldn’t help but notice that the two dwindling water routes ended up at the same place, and that this far-inland waterway convergence completed a huge circle, initiated from two different oceanic sources.
I believe that numerous clusters of stoneholes and other evidences (petroglyphs and iron objects) found near this location of convergence reveals that Norse explorers were interested in settling in at this spot. So instead of beginning a settlement or colony on a coastline, these prospective property owners seem to have been intent on beginning a settlement from deep within the North American continent—precisely in the location where the circular waterway is completed.
In Europeans in North America before Columbus, a book by Dr. Duane Lund, a naysayer asks, “what possible object could they have had in sailing into Hudson Bay, or through Lake Superior to the portage, and striking out into the wilderness?” Well, how about to acquire furs, or land? However, in my opinion, these intrepid men actually didn’t strike out into the wilderness much at all...rather, they kept primarily to the waterways, since waterways were the highways of the time. These same watery roadways had helped American Indians from getting lost for thousands of years, and it was no different for the Norse, or for the later French.
This may be startling news for some, especially for our academic friends, for whom the notion of medieval Scandinavian history far into inland America contradicts the “official” view that the 1600s French were the first Europeans to arrive in America’s Upper Midwest. Sadly, not many historians, professional or otherwise, know about the clusters of medieval Norse stoneholes and other evidences to be witnessed at the remote spot near the Minnesota/South Dakota border—let alone what they stand for.
We may now appreciate that the Chippewa River was almost certainly the last leg of the long waterway journey that brought the Kensington Runestone sojourners close to Runestone Hill. Anthropologist (and archaeologist) Alice Beck Kehoe came very close to identifying the precise waterway routes to Kensington, showing in general the Hudson Bay and St. Lawrence approaches to the Kensington area on a map. However, she didn’t specify the end of the route, showing how the Chippewa River connecting to the Minnesota River leads to both Runestone Hill and to the ill-fated campsite a day’s journey north.
I think some scholars (such as Hjalmar Holand) may have missed the significance of the Chippewa River because Runestone Hill is four miles or so overland, east from the river. Which begs the question: why was the Runestone Hill site chosen a few hours’ walking distance from the river? This writer thinks the reason was so that noise and campfire smoke would be undetectable from the river—the closest highway.
Kehoe mentions that the St. Lawrence/Great Lakes route “would have looked familiar to Scandinavians who had traversed their eastern fur trade route through northern Russia,” and within the concluding paragraph of her wonderful book, The Kensington Runestone—Approaching a Research Question Holistically, she astutely sums up the seriousness of the debate at hand by advising her readers:
“It does matter that educated Americans realize how much of the history they have been taught has been biased. It does matter that Americans understand that authorities can be dogmatic, that good thinking seeks a range of data and carefully weighs probabilities.”
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July 26, 2021 Addition...while on the subject....
I'm adding this after-section to make a few comments about another proposed route to Runestone Hill, made by Hjalmar Holand. I agree with much of Holand's life work with the KRS, however, there are a few things I'm at odds with him over. Primarily, they have to do with his take on so-called "mooring stoneholes." I also disagree with Holand's steadfast belief that King Magnus of Norway sent Sir Paul Knutson to parts afar off--including Minnesota--to look for the residents of the Western Greenland Colony, who apparently went "missing" in 1342. Holand had his proposed search team coming down from Hudson Bay...but then he made them take a strange detour, southeast, cross-country--the precise route decided by continual finds of Norse stoneholes and medieval Norse iron objects, mostly battle items.
Then, they had a camp one day's journey north of Runestone Hill. But we need to look at how they got to the camp in the first place. Looking at the river system, it doesn't seem like they got to Davidson Lake (lake with two skerries) from the north, via the Pomme de Terre River, as Holand proposes. So, it was apparently by coming up from the south, from the Chippewa River. In other words, they first came from the MN River up the Chippewa River to the camp by the lake with two skerries, and then after the massacre they came back down the Chippewa River and stopped at Runestone Hill to carve the KRS. Obviously, the Pomme de Terre River is west of the Chippewa River several miles, and out of the picture. So, evidently, the massacre site and the KRS are both directly connected with the Chippewa River, not with the Pomme de Terre River in any meaningful way that I see.
When the carver of the KRS wrote (from Runestone Hill) that the campsite was one day's journey north, he was talking about traveling back upstream one day's journey, but first by walking to the Chippewa River. If a group of people reenacted the journey today, they would likely find that Davidson Lake is, indeed, roughly an actual day's journey from Runestone Hill. Just as the KRS stated.
To sum up, Holand was in error in his thinking that authentic Norse stoneholes--like those at Runestone Hill--were for mooring boats, and he was likely in error about the mythical Paul Knutson search party, too. There were likely many expeditions into and out of the MN/Dakota region. While meaning well, Holand ended up distorting the truth and confused a lot people along the way. People are still being confused, some perhaps wondering what the story is behind the light-blue, decades-old "Viking Trail" signs still popping up here and there along the Holand-inspired, cross-country adventure. Better if the mythical Knutson Search Party had stuck with the regular, existing river system!
I think it likely that the men were camped right about where the Erdahl Axe was found, just off the Chippewa River, by Davidson Lake. Why do I think this? Because the axe was found only two rods from a springwater pond, where the men would have fresh water to drink while camped there. Keep in mind that the Erdahl Axe was found buried eighteen inches deep, while the nearby Brandon Axe was given to a pioneer farmer by a Native American; it is pristine, in the Runestone Museum, and I naturally link it to the massacre site as an item likely picked up by a Native American after the massacre. The Erdahl Axe, on the other hand, was found in 1894 under a stump more than two feet across, indicating that it was likely lost on a somewhat rough and/or brushy ground. My hope is that other items may have been lost at the spot and then buried over time.
(It is true that this all proves nothing, but it does indicate a good place to give further scrutiny to with ferrous-only metal detectors.)