America's Viking Heritage

Frank Joseph
(The Ancient American, Volume 1, Issue 6)

Through the ominous visor of the helmet feature on this month’s cover once peered the eyes of a Norse warrior. Found at a Swedish site belonging to the 7th century A.D., it predates the generally accepted beginning of the so-called “Viking Age,” 200 years later. For unknown millennia before, culturally related Germanic peoples inhabited the lands of the Baltic and Scandinavia, steadily growing in the number of settlements, until the relationship between burgeoning population and shrinking living space made the Norse look beyond Northern Europe, around the turn of the 9th Century . It was then that they began referring to th4emselves as “Vikings”, or “Bay-raiders”, after their early sorties among the fjords of their own homelands. And, while the title persisted for the duration of the Viking Age, the Norse very quickly expanded their activities far beyond local bays and inlets. Their great courage and incomparable long-ships took them throughout Russia to North Africa, as far as Ireland, Greenland, Iceland and . . . America.
Most salaried historians have long demonstrated a knee-jerk rejection of any notion that Vikings actually landed here, dismissing such embarrassing suggestions as many tall tales. Even after the critics were forced to acknowledge 40 years ago that a northern Newfoundland site, L’Anse aux Meadows, yielded physical evidence of an 11th Century Norse settlement, they continue to deny the Vikings any farther. Clearly, Establishment academics are clinging to a deteriorating position. The two widely this issue are certainly authentic artifacts which confirm Viking impact on America. The very text of the Kensington Runestone establishes its authenticity, even down the smallest detail. For example, the runic author describes his Minnesota location as an “island”. Nowhere in the broad vicinity of its discovery does the area remotely resemble anything like an island. Yet, at the same time of the date inscribed on the Stone, 1362, the present location of Kensington was an island surrounded by a shallow lake that has long since vanished, a fact not recognized until long after the deaths of all persons who found the Stone in the late 19th Century. Moreover, modern stone-carvers have affirmed that the Runestone was inscribed by an expert mason, while the artifact’s discoverers were only simple farmers, with no such skills.
A contrary view is taken by rune-researcher, Jane Sibley. Kensington SAtone is not authentically Viking. But unlike other critics, Jane makes a provocative presentation of new evidence and challenges the defenders of the runestone to find convincing responses. Whatever we may think of her assessment, her advocacy of new testing for the controversial artifacts points future research in the right direction.