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 including here what I consider to be a longstanding, reliable translation of the inscription on the KRS:
“We are 8 Goths [Swedes] and 22 Norwegians on an exploration journey from Vinland through the West. We had camp by a lake with 2 skerries [small rocky islands] one day’s journey north from this stone. We were out and fished one day. After we came home we found 10 of our men red with blood and dead. AVM [Ave Virgo Maria, or Hail, Virgin Mary] save us from evil. We have 10 of our party by the sea to look after our ships, 14 days’ journey from this island. Year 1362.”
For factual history's sake, I need to be totally "un-woke" for a few minutes here in order to possibly overcome any political correctness that might have crept into this issue over time. So then, I need to first establish whether or not we could expect to believe that Norsemen may have been horribly massacred in the region and timeframe at hand. Fortunately, we have close-by central South Dakota's mid-14th century "Crow Creek Massacre" to prove the likelihood of finding just such butchery a day's journey north of Runestone Hill. Sadly, the terrible flows of blood described by the KRS's inscriber were possibly from the victims being scalped and from their tongues being unceremoniously cut out...among other grim atrocities.
But, here's another scenario: twenty Norsemen are camped at a temporary home-base near a lake, about a day's journey from where the KRS was found on Runestone Hill. Davidson Lake, located about a dozen miles north up the Chippewa River from Runestone Hill, has two skerries, and the so-called Erdahl Axe was discovered in 1894 on this small lake's slightly elevated west bank, buried about a foot and a half deep under a stump more than two feet across. The Brandon Axe, in the Kensington Runestone museum, was given to an early settler by a Native American only several miles away from this Davidson Lake. (See my blog essay about locating the Lake With Two Skerries.)
The men camped at Davidson Lake had been traveling together for months. One day ten of these men who had been living at close quarters left as a group to go fishing, leaving the other group of ten men at the camp. So, that day, one large group was split in half as two groups and one of the groups left to go fishing. When the group out fishing for the day returned, they found all ten of their traveling partners red with blood and dead. A question about the possibility of disease now pops up centuries later...but, how is it that all in one group died while all in the other group survived? After all, the men had all been together, alive as one group in one setting, just hours earlier. Is it possible for the Black Death to work this way, so quickly?
Answer: Science-wise, no...symptoms of bubonic plague generally appear within two to six days of infection. So, obviously, the ten dead men were murdered by Native Americans--as most of us have supposed all along.
Comments
Post a Comment