THE KENSINGTON RUNESTONE: Commentary and Speculation by Bob Voyles

Page 188 about the "Lake With Two Skerries Massacre" from Hjalmar Holand's 1940 book entitled Westward From Vinland     Every now and again, I come across someone referring to the ten dead men told about on the Kensington Runestone as possibly having died from disease, rather than from being massacred.  The consensus is that they were killed by Native Americans. It appears that the idea of "death by disease" was popularized by the late Thomas E. Reiersgord in his 2001 book  The Kensington Runestone:  Its Place in History.   Apparently, Reiersgord believed that Native Americans may have been victims of the disease, too, and that could have led to the loss of their land.  Then Henrik Williams mentioned Reiersgord's views about the Black Death in the January 2012 issue of the  Swedish-American Historical Quarterly.   Scott Wolter has also mentioned the possibility of disease in his body of work.   For readers to more easily follow along in this essay, I am inc