The New World in the North : 121 



can continent and left a record of its wanderings and its fate in a 

 runic stone that was discovered in 1898 grown into the roots of an 

 aspen tree in Kensington, Minnesota. The stone records how eight 

 Goths and twenty-two Norwegians, on an exploring journey, had 

 traveled to this point and how ten men had already been killed by 

 the Indians. They had left ten men behind at a sea or lake coast to 

 look after their ship — fourteen days' journey away. The date of the 

 stone was 1362. , 



I included a brief summary of Mr. Holand's work in my volume 

 entitled Unrolling the Map and, more recendy, Dr. Stefansson has 

 reviewed the case in his volume, The Great Explorations and Dis- 

 coveries. Linguistic scholars find difficulty in accepting the language 

 of the stone but this difficulty may be accounted for by the mixed 

 origin of the travelers and the circumstances under which it is sup- 

 posed to have been created. On the other hand, geologists, forestry 

 experts and archaeologists who have worked with Mr. Holand, find 

 an even greater difficulty in believing that the stone itself and the cir- 

 cumstances under which it was found could have been faked. Despite 

 the linguists, the Kensington stone remains, at least, one of the lively 

 mysteries; possibly it represents a basic record in the exploration of 

 the American continent. 



In 1432 Henry VI of England and Eric of Pomerania, who was 

 then king of parts of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, entered into 

 a treaty which provided specifically that England was not to trade 

 direct with Greenland. The mere fact that such a treaty was thought 

 necessary shows two things. First, that the Greenland colony and its 

 products were sufficiently important to engage the attention of two 

 European countries. It also shows that there was contact not only 

 between Greenland and the Scandinavian countries but also between 

 England and Greenland. 



As a matter of fact, we know from other sources that the Green- 

 land products that passed in trade to Europe were furs and hides 

 and rawhide thongs made from the various sea animals and fish. The 

 light-colored American Arctic falcon, often referred to as the gyr- 

 falcon, was also captured and tamed. It was highly prized in the sport 

 of falconry and exchanged as an honorable gift between princes. 



In addition, at about this time Europe had another contact with 

 America that was of considerable importance. The historians of the 

 whaling industry report that the seamen of the Bay of Biscay, chiefly 

 the Basques, commenced whaling locally in the thirteenth century. 



