Why on earth would a band of seafaring Vikings have traveled all the way to Minnesota in the heart of North America in 1362? The notion that they did may seem absurd, but ever since the turn of the century many people have argued learnedly that it happened. They have based their claim largely on the Kensington Rune Stone, a flat rock incised with medieval Norse symbols that was allegedly discovered in 1898on the Kensington, Minnesota, farm of a Swedish-American settler named Olaf Ohman.

Despite inconclusive studies and tests of the stone and its inscription, most serious scholars long ago decided that it was almost certainly a hoax, and they identified the likely culprits as Ohman himself, who had a resentment against bettereducated people, and Sven Fogelblad, a hard-drinking local schoolteacher and cynic. Now, a series of tape recordings made in 1967 and recently released by the Minnesota State Historical Society not only corroborate that belief, but expose a third participant in the hoax—John P. Gran, one of Ohman’s Scandinavian-born neighbors, who apparently also loved a good joke as much as he, too, despised educated folk.

The following selections from the tapes, published in the winter, 1976, issue of Minnesota History , illuminate the shenanigans of the trio. Describing the hoax were Walter Gran and Anna Josephine, the son and daughter of John P. Gran; the interviewer was Walter’s nephew:

NEPHEW : Did you ever know him [Fogelblad]?