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 2012 article "Norsemen in Minnesota":
The Upper Midwest was suffering a severe drought that lowered water levels across Minnesota throughout the summer of 1938. That August, Elmer Roen, a mechanic from nearby Brooten, was fishing beside an algae-coated boulder to which he tied his rowboat near the middle of the lake. Making his way from one end of the boat to the other, he tried to steady himself against the large stone with his right foot, when he slipped, pushing off a swath of slime. To his surprise, the exposed area revealed several inscribed letters in an unknown written language. The stone was flat on its side, emblazoned with the inscription, and weighed an estimated 300 pounds. Washing away the rest of the stone face he was amazed to see that the inscription completely covered the four-foot high, five-foot long, gray granite rock. The letters ran along the stone from top to bottom, going down beneath the surface of the lake. Roen probed along the stone under the cold, turbid water with his fingertips, feeling, not seeing, more incised characters. But he was not the first man to find them.
About fifty years earlier, another drought revealed the same stone to Henry Moen, a Sunburg grocery store owner. Since he found it a few years before the more famous Kensington Rune Stone came to light, the latter's well-publicized discovery in 1898 could not have inspired Moen to commit a hoax. Moreover, he had a reputation among his fellow townsmen for credibility but with no interest in history. As an educated man, he nonetheless immediately recognized the inscription as runic, because he had been shown many Norse runes during a previous visit to his native Norway.
Minnesota's Norway Lake stone was next glimpsed in 1934 by "Foxy" Anderson, who hid behind it to ogle the local Qualm sisters exposing themselves to the afternoon sun. He took his eyes off the bathing beauties long enough to notice that the engraved monolith was "tombstone-like."
Two years later, a Colonel Anderson (no relation to the voyeuristic Foxy) was using the boulder as a duck blind, when he observed that flaking-away algae covered what appeared to be "Indian writing."
Elmer Roen alone took any real interest in the Norway Lake stone during the late 1930's. Over the next two decades, he sought out one ancient writing system after another--Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Latin, and many more. But none of them matched his eyewitness description of the Norway Lake inscription. Although not university trained, he was widely known for his inflexible honesty and photographic memory. Finally, by chance, he was shown the contents of a book by a well-known historian of the Norse: "A Holy Mission to Minnesota Six Hundred Years Ago," (MN: Rune Stone Museum Foundation, 1959). In it, author Professor Hjalmar R. Holand, earlier awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Anthropology and Cultural Studies, reproduced a photograph of the Kensington Rune Stone. Roen recognized the glyphs at once as stylistically identical to those covering the boulder in Norway Lake.
He contacted Marion Dahm, head of the Minnesota Viking Society, in Chokio, and told him about the obvious comparison. In 1959, Dahm arranged for them to visit the Kensington Rune Stone preserved in Alexandria, Minnesota. Roen was struck by its resemblance to the Norway Lake script and instantly picked out eight different runes he remembered from the half-sunken boulder. He returned to Alexandria two weeks later, when Dahm asked him to select the same eight runes from among the several dozens engraved on the Kensington slab. Roen correctly picked them out again without a moment's hesitation.
On July 9, 1972, Dahm led a dozen other scuba divers into Norway Lake's first underwater expedition. But their all-day efforts were frustrated by the murky waters, with subsurface visibility from two feet to six inches. Several other attempts failed to locate the missing rune stone. It was mostly championed by Dahm, a true believer, until his death. Since then, the inscribed boulder has not been forgotten, and preparations are underway to overcome the poor water clarity that has so far frustrated all efforts to pinpoint its location. The boulder's re-emergence would be a major find, more significant perhaps than that of the Kensington Rune Stone, just 45 miles to the north. Connection between both sites is easily accessible via a water route down the Chippewa to the Shakopee River, even more navigable six centuries ago than they are today.
The sunken rune stone's existence was underscored by complimentary evidence that surfaced in the summer of 1908, when a local fisherman found a peculiar axe on a peninsula projecting into the northern section of Norway Lake. "I picked it up and thought it must have been part of a seeding machine, or some other machinery," recalled Ole Skaalerud. Instead, the axe "was immediately recognized by the staff at several museums in Norway" as a twelfth-century blade, as depicted in contemporaneous Norwegian paintings (Jay Rath, The M-Files: True Reports of Minnesota's Unexplained Phenomena, WI: Trails Books, 1998, pp. 92, 93). It was by no means the only verifiable artifact of its kind found in Minnesota, however.
Another example, though in broken condition, was recovered three miles south of Erdahl, by Julius Davidson, while pulling stumps on his farm, less then 25 miles northwest of the Kensington Rune Stone, which was found four years later. "Beneath one of the stumps," according to his wife, Martha, "he found this heavy axe of strange shape, the like of which he had never seen before." His find was sent to Stockholm, Sweden's Historical Museum, where Assistant Curator, Bengt Thordeman, stated that the object "is in type practically identical with the St. Olaf axe (preserved at the Museum) dated to 1468."
(End of excerpts.)
Of course, many Minnesotans are beginning to realize that the Viking Age was well over (roughly AD 1100) by the time of the 1362 carving of the inscription on the Kensington Runestone. Accordingly, it may be logical for believers in the KRS to assume that both the Norway Axe and the possible submerged runestone in Norway Lake would be related to the KRS's later medieval timeframe, rather then to an earlier Viking Age.
As a conclusion to this blog posting, I would like to mention that I recently discovered that the aforementioned Erdahl Axe was found by Mr. Davidson on the west bank of Davidson Lake in 1894. Davidson Lake is the farthermost lake in a succession of lakes just off the Chippewa River. I also personally discovered that Davidson Lake has two skerries, and that it is about a day's actual travel north from Runestone Hill. The Erdahl axe was found a foot and a half deep, under a tree stump more than two feet across. I prepared a PDF presentation about this discovery only a few years ago, and it is presently archived in the KRS materials at the Minnesota Historical Society. I would venture to guess that both the Erdahl Axe and the neighboring Brandon Axe are battle weapons left over from the bloody massacre told about in the runic carving on the KRS. The Brandon Axe can be seen at Alexandria's Runestone Museum, but sadly, no one seems to know where the Erdahl Axe is presently located.
Excerpts from the 2012 article "Norsemen in Minnesota":
The Upper Midwest was suffering a severe drought that lowered water levels across Minnesota throughout the summer of 1938. That August, Elmer Roen, a mechanic from nearby Brooten, was fishing beside an algae-coated boulder to which he tied his rowboat near the middle of the lake. Making his way from one end of the boat to the other, he tried to steady himself against the large stone with his right foot, when he slipped, pushing off a swath of slime. To his surprise, the exposed area revealed several inscribed letters in an unknown written language. The stone was flat on its side, emblazoned with the inscription, and weighed an estimated 300 pounds. Washing away the rest of the stone face he was amazed to see that the inscription completely covered the four-foot high, five-foot long, gray granite rock. The letters ran along the stone from top to bottom, going down beneath the surface of the lake. Roen probed along the stone under the cold, turbid water with his fingertips, feeling, not seeing, more incised characters. But he was not the first man to find them.
About fifty years earlier, another drought revealed the same stone to Henry Moen, a Sunburg grocery store owner. Since he found it a few years before the more famous Kensington Rune Stone came to light, the latter's well-publicized discovery in 1898 could not have inspired Moen to commit a hoax. Moreover, he had a reputation among his fellow townsmen for credibility but with no interest in history. As an educated man, he nonetheless immediately recognized the inscription as runic, because he had been shown many Norse runes during a previous visit to his native Norway.
Minnesota's Norway Lake stone was next glimpsed in 1934 by "Foxy" Anderson, who hid behind it to ogle the local Qualm sisters exposing themselves to the afternoon sun. He took his eyes off the bathing beauties long enough to notice that the engraved monolith was "tombstone-like."
Two years later, a Colonel Anderson (no relation to the voyeuristic Foxy) was using the boulder as a duck blind, when he observed that flaking-away algae covered what appeared to be "Indian writing."
Elmer Roen alone took any real interest in the Norway Lake stone during the late 1930's. Over the next two decades, he sought out one ancient writing system after another--Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Egyptian, Latin, and many more. But none of them matched his eyewitness description of the Norway Lake inscription. Although not university trained, he was widely known for his inflexible honesty and photographic memory. Finally, by chance, he was shown the contents of a book by a well-known historian of the Norse: "A Holy Mission to Minnesota Six Hundred Years Ago," (MN: Rune Stone Museum Foundation, 1959). In it, author Professor Hjalmar R. Holand, earlier awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Anthropology and Cultural Studies, reproduced a photograph of the Kensington Rune Stone. Roen recognized the glyphs at once as stylistically identical to those covering the boulder in Norway Lake.
He contacted Marion Dahm, head of the Minnesota Viking Society, in Chokio, and told him about the obvious comparison. In 1959, Dahm arranged for them to visit the Kensington Rune Stone preserved in Alexandria, Minnesota. Roen was struck by its resemblance to the Norway Lake script and instantly picked out eight different runes he remembered from the half-sunken boulder. He returned to Alexandria two weeks later, when Dahm asked him to select the same eight runes from among the several dozens engraved on the Kensington slab. Roen correctly picked them out again without a moment's hesitation.
On July 9, 1972, Dahm led a dozen other scuba divers into Norway Lake's first underwater expedition. But their all-day efforts were frustrated by the murky waters, with subsurface visibility from two feet to six inches. Several other attempts failed to locate the missing rune stone. It was mostly championed by Dahm, a true believer, until his death. Since then, the inscribed boulder has not been forgotten, and preparations are underway to overcome the poor water clarity that has so far frustrated all efforts to pinpoint its location. The boulder's re-emergence would be a major find, more significant perhaps than that of the Kensington Rune Stone, just 45 miles to the north. Connection between both sites is easily accessible via a water route down the Chippewa to the Shakopee River, even more navigable six centuries ago than they are today.
The sunken rune stone's existence was underscored by complimentary evidence that surfaced in the summer of 1908, when a local fisherman found a peculiar axe on a peninsula projecting into the northern section of Norway Lake. "I picked it up and thought it must have been part of a seeding machine, or some other machinery," recalled Ole Skaalerud. Instead, the axe "was immediately recognized by the staff at several museums in Norway" as a twelfth-century blade, as depicted in contemporaneous Norwegian paintings (Jay Rath, The M-Files: True Reports of Minnesota's Unexplained Phenomena, WI: Trails Books, 1998, pp. 92, 93). It was by no means the only verifiable artifact of its kind found in Minnesota, however.
Another example, though in broken condition, was recovered three miles south of Erdahl, by Julius Davidson, while pulling stumps on his farm, less then 25 miles northwest of the Kensington Rune Stone, which was found four years later. "Beneath one of the stumps," according to his wife, Martha, "he found this heavy axe of strange shape, the like of which he had never seen before." His find was sent to Stockholm, Sweden's Historical Museum, where Assistant Curator, Bengt Thordeman, stated that the object "is in type practically identical with the St. Olaf axe (preserved at the Museum) dated to 1468."
(End of excerpts.)
Of course, many Minnesotans are beginning to realize that the Viking Age was well over (roughly AD 1100) by the time of the 1362 carving of the inscription on the Kensington Runestone. Accordingly, it may be logical for believers in the KRS to assume that both the Norway Axe and the possible submerged runestone in Norway Lake would be related to the KRS's later medieval timeframe, rather then to an earlier Viking Age.
As a conclusion to this blog posting, I would like to mention that I recently discovered that the aforementioned Erdahl Axe was found by Mr. Davidson on the west bank of Davidson Lake in 1894. Davidson Lake is the farthermost lake in a succession of lakes just off the Chippewa River. I also personally discovered that Davidson Lake has two skerries, and that it is about a day's actual travel north from Runestone Hill. The Erdahl axe was found a foot and a half deep, under a tree stump more than two feet across. I prepared a PDF presentation about this discovery only a few years ago, and it is presently archived in the KRS materials at the Minnesota Historical Society. I would venture to guess that both the Erdahl Axe and the neighboring Brandon Axe are battle weapons left over from the bloody massacre told about in the runic carving on the KRS. The Brandon Axe can be seen at Alexandria's Runestone Museum, but sadly, no one seems to know where the Erdahl Axe is presently located.
New update August 7th, 2021:
I went to the Kandiyohi County Historical Society and Museum yesterday to do some research about the reported "submerged runestone" in nearby Norway Lake, and was soon enough surprised by what Deputy Director Bob Larson had found to show me...reports of an already recovered, supposed "runestone" from Norway Lake.
I went to the Kandiyohi County Historical Society and Museum yesterday to do some research about the reported "submerged runestone" in nearby Norway Lake, and was soon enough surprised by what Deputy Director Bob Larson had found to show me...reports of an already recovered, supposed "runestone" from Norway Lake.
At first, I was disheartened to see that a weak and very conflicted "non-runestone" had been pulled out of the water, something that could put a damper on a continued search for the potentially "real" runestone, but then last night during further researching, I came upon information (see below) showing that the rock in question was afterwards discovered to have been a cornerstone, marked with the year 1934.
So, that tempory confusion has been cleared up, and the search for the reported runestone deserves to go on as before, in my view--except this time, the modern technology of side-scan sonar should be put to use to capture underwater 3D images. This should help get over hurdles of the early 1970's associated with extremely low visibility.
I would like to add an important footnote:
Norway Lake can be reached by way of the Chippewa River--which is also true of both Runestone Hill and the Lake With Two Skerries (Davidson Lake). Also, the discovery of the Norway Lake Axe in close proximity to the reported submerged runestone makes the continued search for the possible runestone even more compelling, in my view.
So interested in this!
ReplyDeleteThank you. This article has gotten many more "hits" than usual. I think it's because a runestone was reported by several persons in the same neighborhood as the rare medieval axe was found. Also, the Chippewa River took the KRS crew to within about four miles of Runestone Hill, and this same river took the prospective Norway Lake crew part way to Norway Lake. Coincidence upon coincidence?
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