current historical belief of the times? How could an impostor come 

 to the knowledge that Vinland was nowhere except in Labrador, or 

 at least in the region about the entrance to Hudson Strait? .... 

 This agreement with the latest research as to the location of Vinland 

 is a very suggestive fact." 



Fourteen days journey from "the sea," if the region of Hudson 

 Bay is indicated, would have brought the foreigners, with the means of 

 travel at their command, to the neighborhood where the stone was 

 discovered and the Bay would have been the nearest port. It is 

 stated that their most probable route would have been from Vinland 

 to Hudson Bay, and to Lake Winnipeg via Nelson River, and up the 

 Red River of the North to the region where the stone was found 

 buried. 



Professor Fossom and Mr. Holand searched around Lake Chris- 

 tina and Pelican, as well as other lakes twenty miles north of the stone 

 trying to locate the "two skerries" or rocks surrounded by water. 

 Finally, they found two immense boulders, one of granite, the other 

 gneiss; though not in water now, they are on a point exposed to 

 destruction by ice and waves, and as the lake level is known to have 

 been higher five or six hundred years ago, the rocks answer the descrip- 

 tion perfectly. The gradual drying up of the region through the 

 intervening centuries, is an established fact. The stone is described 

 as being on an island, though the ground where it was found is not 

 one today. As the historian remarks, it is a remarkable fact that 

 these two skerries exist, and at the right distance from the site of the 

 stone, and that there are no others. In modern times, they could not 

 be called skerries, there being no water around them. 



The exact description of the location of the camp is no doubt due 

 to the wish for accuracy as to the burial place of the victims of the 

 massacre, which was probably the work of native savages. And as 

 the practice of scalping was unquestionable strange to the Scandina- 

 vians, they were all the more impressed by the horrible sight, speaking 

 of their comrades as "red with blood and dead." 



"A. V. M." stands, of course, for a Roman Catholic expression, 

 which according to Archboship Ireland, no modern Scandinavian 

 would use, that nation now being Lutheran. But as it was constantly 

 employed in the 14th century, in time of the plague or "black death" 

 its use in the inscription, when danger seemed to threaten, is another 

 point in favor of antiquity. 



It was objected, by some scholars, that certain words used in the 

 record are too modern; others, however, differed from this opinion. 

 At length, finding the mass of evidence to point strongly to the 

 genuineness of the contested statement, the Minnesota Historical 

 Society made the following announcement: "After carefully con- 

 sidering all the opposing arguments, the Museum Committee of this 

 Society, and Mr. Holand, owner of the stone, believe its inscription 

 is a true historic record." 



27 



