Читать книгу Canoeing with Jose онлайн

51 страница из 81

We pulled off the interstate in Alexandria, intending to eat lunch and round out José’s paltry collection of gear at one of the discount stores along the strip. While searching for a restaurant we drove past the 30-foot statue of Big Ole, “the country’s biggest Viking,” outside the Runestone Museum. Home to the Kensington Runestone—a purportedly ancient tablet covered with writing said to be inscribed by pre-Columbian Viking explorers in 1362, and discovered by a local farmer in 1898—the site had since become a destination of sorts. The inscription on the stone reads as follows:

Eight Goths and 22 Norwegians on a journey of exploration from Vinland very far west. We had camp by 2 rocky islands one day’s journey north from this stone. We were out fishing one day. After we came home we found 10 men red with blood and dead. AVM [Ave Maria] save from evil.

If the tablet is authentic, the Nordic travelers who inscribed it almost certainly came down from Hudson Bay, making the Runestone the earliest evidence of paddlers from the north Atlantic reaching Minnesota. Scientists and archaeologists had questioned its legitimacy for more than a century, but there was no debate as far as José was concerned. He had once participated in a discussion of the Runestone in a history class at Heart of the Earth, and his mind was made up.