The Spring 2001 issue of Scandinavian Studies contains an article on the linguistics of the Kensington Runestone by Dr Richard Nielsen, who has been studying the stone for over 15 years. An online version of the article is available here , but please note that you need Adobe Acrobat to read the article. Note: refferenced pages refer to the Internet version of the article, not the published version.
The piece is difficult to summarize - there is a great deal of detail here - and perhaps I should actually start with Nielsen's conclusion:
"It is the conclusion of the author that there is no evidence presented in the realm of runology, linguistics, dialect, or numbers that proves that the KRS is a modern artifact. What is clear is that the early investigators were not sufficiently familiar with runic discoveries of the 19th century and that lack of knowledge of the Old Swedish language still exists, as demonstrated by recent evidence, such as the diplomas in Wiktorsson (1996). The assertions that the KRS runes were based on those of Dalecarlia are not supported by the evidence presented by Gustavson/Hallonquist (1984). Furthermore, there is no evidence that Ohman was the carver or that traces of his Hälsingland dialect are on the stone." (p 35)One of the first points that Nielsen makes is that the double dotting found above some of the runes are not the anachronistic umlauts as has been previously suggested, but are marks for abbreviation as were used in manuscript documents of the period (for an example of such diacritic marks from a 12th century Norwegian manuscript see here ).
"During the 14th century many inscriptions in Latin were carved in runes, some with manuscript abbreviations. Most likely some of these followed a manuscript rendition of the text, perhaps such as, the Danish Blæsinge lead tablet dated to either the 14th or 15th century (Ertl 1994: 367). Hence, there is no reason to exclude the possibility that the KRS carver worked from an Old Swedish draft in Roman alphabet letters drawn either on birch bark, in the sand, or on some other material, or perhaps, simply retained from a draft in his memory. In 1362, the runic age still thrived in Bergen and the island of Gotland. Many runic inscriptions in Latin were copies from manuscript writings and Roman alphabet and runic letters were not infrequently used in the same inscription." (p 5)Nielsen attempts to reconstruct the complete words from the abbreviations (usually one letter would be eliminated from such an abbreviation - such as the double dotted /a/ in 'har' would give a reconstructed 'haar'). In most cases the reconstructed word would better fit the known grammar of the 14th century. He also suggests that the 'ahr' prior to the date might not be ahr = year, but could be an abbreviation for the 14th century 'ar vars herra' = 'Year of our Lord'. He finds a parallel convention in the use of 'a dm' before the year in a 15th century grave slab from the Lund Cathedral. (see p 16)
Nielsen's translation does vary some from the text that is usually quoted for the KRS - please see page 10 of his report for this updated version.
Most of the arguments presented are done in the form of a rebuttal of several critics of the stone, notably Knirk, Moltke, and Janzen. Moltke in particular comes under the gun: "Moltke's statement lends weight to the comment by Barnes (1990: 17), “Moltke is another scholar
who often preferred the bludgeon of assertion to the cut and thrust of argument.“ Barnes (1990:
13-25)" (p 4)
Moltke's objectivity in preparing his paper on the KRS is also called into question:
"Moltke's (1951b: 88-89) strong bias against the KRS is echoed in the statement made to him by Prof. Jon Helgason, “In my opinion the inscription on the Kensington Stone is such that no philologist with any self respect could in any decency write about it; any more than an archaeologist would trouble to publish a grave find of the Iron-Age if he found a telephone book under the urn.” Moltke retorted, "in my heart of hearts I agree with Jon Helgason. On the other hand there has been so much fuss made about this inscription that a stop must be put to it.”" (p 44)Nielsen's rebuttal of the critcs is highly detailed, and heavily cited. As I am not trained in the subject, I cannot tell how strong his arguments are from a strictly languistic standpoint. But from a rational point of view, his arguments seem to be logically well formed - he does not skip any steps, nor does he state conjecture as fact (indeed he notes that this is one of the great failings of the critics of the stone), but builds his points steadily and securely from well documented foundations.
Part of the problem in attempting to authenticate or dismiss the runestone has been the lack of availible material on Old Swedish. This is particularly true in regards to the cataloging of word forms found in letters and such documents which would reflect variations in dialect, and the spoken word in general (as compared to formal documents).
"Quoting Haugen/Markey (1972: 50), "Swedish diplomatic texts have continued to appear since 1829, but the material from 1365-1400 has yet to appear, though available in photostat copies at the university libraries. Facsimiles of texts which have appeared in the series Corpus codicum suecicorum medii ævi (Wessén 1943-)," (with some now appearing in S D: VII-X). This shows that the diplomas of the most interest for KRS studies have not been considered in the make up of the Söderwall Old Swedish Dictionary. Obviously, there was a rush to judgment regarding the KRS by the first investigators. Much more evidence has become available since Moltke/Andersen (1949/50) studied the KRS in 1949, when it was judged principally information on Old Swedish grammar found in Adolf Noreen (1904) and lexical information in Söderwall (1884-1918). However, this data was not sufficient to cover the word forms found on the KRS. More word forms could have been found in the Söderwall Supplements (1925-1975), but this was not consulted by Moltke for his research on the KRS, as can be seen from his reference list. However, even the information contained in the Supplements would still have been inadequate in regard to judging the KRS." (p 18)To bolster this claim, Nielsen includes a table (table 13, p 29) of citations in recently published diplomas from Dalsland (Wiktorson, 1996) that support the forms of the Kensington Runestone. In short, the KRS was condemned on a limited knowledge of Old Swedish dating back over a century. That certain forms on the runestone have since been found provides a positive argument for the authenticity of the stone:
"Table 8 lists over a dozen words on the KRS that were not discovered to be Old Swedish until the 20th century, nor could they derive from 19th century Swedish. Until advocates of forgery can show how these words and forms were known in the 19th century, there are no compelling linguistic arguments that the KRS is a modern artifact." (p 18)
Nielsen also takes exception to the oft suggested theory that the runes involved in the inscription were either (a) found in books owned by Olof Ohman (who unearthed the stone in 1898) or (b) were based on Dalecarlian runes. These ideas were fairly easily disposed of by the simple matter of comparing the rune rows side by side (see table 14 p 29). Regarding Ohman's 'runebooks':
However, the KRS was not carved by using this material (Table 15). The four examples of the Lord’s Prayer given in Rosander (1881/2: 64) even demonstrate that the letter ‘i’ and the letter ‘j’ were inter-changeable between the years 1300 and 1527. Even long ‘i’ [i:] is shown as ‘ij’ in the 1500 version (Hence, there was no need for the so-called “j-rune”). Wahlgren (1958: 129) intimated that Ohman could have known of Ljungström's (1865 and 1875) runic books from his limited schooling in Sweden. However, Ljungström also clearly stated that 'i' is used for 'j' and that 'u' is used for 'v' (w) as well as 'u'. Hence, a reading of Ljungström’s book would have demonstrated that there was no need to invent special runes for either the u- rune or the "j-rune. “ (p 26)and
"Only four runes... were used in Dalecarlia in the 19th century, and none of them is found on the KRS (Gustavson/Hallonquist 1984: Inscription 19 and 20). Earlier Dalecarlian runic inscriptions were mainly in private hands and it seems that it would have been difficult for a 19th century Dalecarlian native to have learned 18th century forms." (p 1)That there are odd runes in the KRS is not in doubt, however most of these special rune forms could have been found in pre-20th century literature, though most critics have stated that these forms simply did not exsist, and were therefore taken as proof of forgery. Since 1898, models have been found for the remaing two forms, again showing knowledge which would have been unavailible to a 19th century forger.
"Many runic inscriptions in Scandinavia have runic innovations that are seen only on a single inscription. Therefore, there should be no fixed requirement that a particular rune on the KRS must exist in Scandinavia. An innovation actually helps provide validation, since the traditional "normal" rune forms were available for a potential modern carver to use if he wanted to create an orthodox archaic inscription. The special or aberrant KRS rune forms are no more unusual than those found on the Danish Blæsinge lead tablet discovered in 1984 (Moltke 1985: 518)." (p 43)Nielsen finds that most of the rune forms were in use in 14th century Gotland, and makes the following suggestion about the development of the KRS rune forms:
"The runic evidence presented here shows that all the rune forms on the KRS were possible in the 14th century. Furthermore, almost all the rune forms are found to be used on the island of Gotland during the 14th century.see also table A18, p 64.
This evidence seems to point to a carver from the island of Gotland, possibly a priest transferred to Norway to fill one of the vacancies in clerical positions following the Black Death in 1349-50. Such a priest would have said many prayers over the grave slab inscriptions calling for prayers for those named, and would be able to read inscriptions going back hundreds of years. Such a man on the KRS expedition could have added the graphemes [oe bindrune from KRS] and [x shaped rune] from existing runic signs on the island of Gotland and created the KRS a-rune [hooked x form] from the Roman x (10) to avoid confusion, since the mainland rune for æ was the Gotlandic rune for a . The carver might have rejected the Gotlandic o-rune , since it was the same rune as the mainland ø-rune." (p 62-63)
It seems at once clear from Nielsen's paper that the vast majority of the critics of the Kensington Runestone did not address its problems with the intellectual rigor that is necessary to adequately confirm or deny its authenticity. It seems they were touched with a zealous need to disprove the artifact, rather than to investigate in depth and then draw conclusions as to whether it was a forgery.
It is to be noted that two noted scientists, Dr William Thalbitzer (philologist) and Dr Newton Winchell (geologist) began their examinations of the runestone with the expectation that it would be found false. However, because of their objectivity they were capable of changing their minds as the evidence (at least to them) showed the stone to be an authentic document of the 14th century.
Nielsen's work also goes a long way into solving the riddle of the runestone. Certainly if much of the linguistics aspects of the stone are both correct, and could only be verified as such with information not availible until the 20th century, the possibility of a forgery must be conidered vanishngly small.
Some will undoubtably find error in Nielsen's work - the size and number of points addressed virtually assures some imperfection. Other points will be properly disputed and debated, as is right. This can only be looked at as a starting place for further investigation. But likewise the quantity and quality of the arguments brought against the critics of the KRS, as well as those supporting the authenticity of the stone assures us that it can no longer be easily and simply dismissed as a 19th century hoax. It is now required that the stone be studied and examined, and determinations made on objective fact rather than the slanted testimony which has so frequently been laid upon it in the past.
Concerning the many new proposals in this paper it seems fitting to quote Haugen (1976: 243) regarding the First Grammarian, “Now any man who wishes to write or to learn that which is written in our language, whether it be sacred writings or laws or genealogies or whatever useful knowledge a man would learn or teach from books if he is humble enough in his love of learning so that he will rather gain a little insight than none, until there is a chance for more--then let him read this treatise with care, and improve it, as it no doubt needs in many places, let him value my efforts and excuse my ignorance, and let him use the alphabet which has been written here until he gets one that he likes better.” Hopefully, this paper can spark further research on the KRS. (p 36)