Original headline: Family defends farmer who found Kensington Runestone
KENSINGTON, Minn. (AP) - The descendants of the Swedish farmer who claimed to have found the Kensington Runestone in 1898 have broken their silence to say Olof Ohman wasn't the sort of man who would put on an elaborate hoax.
The debate has raged for decades over whether the rock was indeed carved by Norsemen and left in western Minnesota in the 1300s - 100 years before Columbus sailed - or if it instead was an elaborate prank.
Ohman's family has mostly stayed out of the fray, until now.
"For the family and the people of Kensington, there's never been a doubt that my grandfather was telling the truth," Darwin Ohman of New Brighton, who at age 61 is the oldest living descendant, told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. "So much information is coming out now to confirm that he didn't carve the rock."
New revelations about Olof Ohman, as well as research into the famous stone's inscription and weathering, are exciting the proponents of its authenticity and giving the family courage to talk and dig into family history.
Ohman, a Swedish immigrant, was clearing his farmland near Kensington 106 years ago. When he a 202-pound inscribed stone tablet wrapped in the roots. In the ancient Scandinavian language known as runes, it describes a massacre of 10 members of an exploration party of Swedes and Norwegians in 1362 in what's now central Minnesota.
Ever since, Minnesotans have been intrigued by, and feuding about, the stone. Scholars tend to dismiss it as an elaborate hoax by Ohman and his neighbors.
In 1910 he emphatically denied making the inscription, and he also insisted that he didn't have the ability to carve it if he had wanted.
More than 100 people who knew the Ohman family, or who were simply intrigued by the saga, recently gathered at the community center in Kensington (population about 280) to record their memories of the runestone and to hear what proponents call new evidence.
The recent revival in the controversy is led by Scott Wolter, a St. Paul geologist. He was hired four years ago by the Kensington Runestone Museum in Alexandria to study the stone. He says he began his research as an impartial scientist and since has become certain that weathering of mica on the stone's inscription proves that it is more than 200 years old. Therefore, Wolter insists, Ohman and his friends didn't do it.
Scientists and historians who call the inscription a hoax have shown little interest in renewing study of something they say has been proved over and over to be fraudulent.
Wolter contacted the Ohman family about six months ago, asking for help in finding information. The family turned over five bins of Ohman memorabilia squirreled away. There were photos, legal documents, books, newspaper articles and personal letters.
Wolter said that within the records there was not even a hint that the runestone was a hoax. Rather, he said, the material adds support to his case.
One letter from Olof Ohman Jr. (who was 12 when the runestone was found) to two of his brothers in 1957 tells what he remembers about that day. It's a straightforward account. "This is sincerity," Wolter said. "Nothing suspicious was going on."
About six runic characters on the rock hadn't been seen in Scandinavia or anywhere else in recent times - until this year, proponents said. Critics assumed they were made up by Ohman. However, Richard Nielsen, 70, of Texas has been studying the runestone for 20 years and said he has found proof that some of them were used in the 1360s, when the stone supposedly was carved.
Nielsen has been criticized for delving into the runes, when his training is in engineering, not old languages. "I am not a linguist," he said. "But I am a tenacious investigator."
He's of Danish descent, has lived in Scandinavia for eight years and considers himself an expert in 1360s old Swedish.
People who have known the Ohmans insisted at the Kensington meeting that Olof Ohman was not the carver. Einar Bakke, 92, a family friend who still lives near Kensington, fiercely denied that Ohman was a prankster, as he often is described by doubters.
Bakke said: "No, he would not pull a practical joke on anybody, no way! ... To think he'd sit down and scratch a rock like that" when he had six children, 80 acres to farm and lots of stumps to pull is "ridiculous."
