David M. Krueger

In the late nineteenth-century, a bunch of white folks in Minnesota found a stone covered in incised runes which purported to be an artefact left behind by Vikings in the fourteenth century. It was an obvious and poor forgery. Yet many people in the area—then and now—were convinced that a group of Swedes made it to the area almost two hundred years before Christopher Columbus set sail. David Krueger lays out a pretty convincing case as to why people have latched onto it over the years: a mix of ethno-nationalism, Christian sectarianism, implicit belief in white supremacy, a desire for economic gain, racism against Native Americans, and the American predilection towards civic religion. Krueger very tactfully refrains from definitively calling the stone a laughable forgery—perhaps because the book is published by the University of Minnesota Press and he didn't want to alienate a potential purchasing demographic—but the weight of the evidence that he lays out is undeniable.

Overall, it's a quick and entertaining read (I laughed out loud at the mention of the woman who believed that she could use the power of faith to find secret acrostics and cyphers within the inscription, one of which spelled out... gopher, and thus we know that there definitely were Vikings in Minnesota, QED!), though the book could have done with another couple of editorial passes to make its origins as a doctoral dissertation less apparent. In a history book that's clearly intended to be a crossover with the field of pop culture studies and aimed at a more mass market audience, the references to Durkheim's theories should be kept to a minimum.… (plus d'informations)

Several years ago, I completed my thesis for a masters in history by writing about the role of the ethnic identity of Scandinavian-Americans in installing the Kensington Rune Stone as a major facet of the pop cultural history of Minnesota, the Midwest, and North America in general. As a young Minnesotan I was aware of the stone as a kitschy piece of roadside Americana and, fascinated by hoaxes and other strange things, thought it would be a fun topic to study. Starting out, I had no idea of the weird and intense debate I would find myself in. Myths of the Rune Stone brought me right back into that time of feverish study and I believe it to be the most important resource published on the rune stone in the last century.

Like myself, David Krueger, the Minnesota born author of this engaging, compact treatise, found himself drawn into the mythology surrounding the Scandinavian relic and its evocative inscription. While not taking an official stance on the “authenticity” of a medieval origin of the stone, Krueger writes an erudite, compelling account of what the rune stone story means for Minnesotans, Scandinavians and non-Scandinavians alike, how the debate regarding its authenticity changed throughout the century, and who its story served. Focusing on popular accounts of the rune stone and the debate that engulfed it, Myths of the Rune Stone examines issues of racial and religious identity among immigrants and regional boosterism. Arranged in a rough chronology, from the early twentieth century to the century’s chronology, Krueger examines the stone’s story through many lens, including identity (Scandinavian, Minnesotan, or Euro-American in general), and as a form of civic religion crafting an important history for a region known as parochial and sleepy. It was very interesting to see Krueger touch on some of the topics I noticed in my research, only to expand them far more broadly and strongly than I attempted. In particular, his chapters of the unstated but implied presence of indigenous people in the narrative and the strong attraction it had for Catholic Americans were very informative.

Whether a nineteenth century creation or a fourteenth century artifact, the story that came to surround the stone after its discovery and the debate that engulfed it, of Christian Vikings fighting against indigenous people appealed to Euro-Americans hoping to impose themselves on a landscape once belonging to someone else. Even as scholars continually spoke against the stone, it became emblematic of the United State’s, and Minnesota’s, special place in a continually uncertain world. All in all, Krueger does a superb job chronicling the evolution of the rune stone story, from its 1898 discovery in the heart of one of the most Scandinavian regions of North America to its fixture as Minnesota’s most famous icons. As a skeptic but someone who continues to be fascinated with how the rune stone story continues to attract believers eager to reaffirm the central place of Euro-Americans in the history of the continent, Myths of the Rune Stone is both a sobering and refreshing look at how such origin stories evolve.… (plus d'informations)