Read Online The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2) by Neve Maslakovic - Free Book Online
Authors: Neve Maslakovic
Ads: Link
farmer would pass away, both white-haired, bespectacled, and seemingly shrunken by life. It was no wonder—they had raised nine children.
I came across a sworn affidavit that Olof had given to the county register or someone of similar official standing regarding his unusual find. It began with his swearing in and continued,
I am fifty-four years of age, and was born in Helsingeland, Sweden, from where I emigrated to America in the year 1881, and settled upon my farm in Section Fourteen, Township of Solem, in 1891. In the month of August, 1898, while accompanied by my son, Edward, I was engaged in grubbing upon a timbered elevation, surrounded by marshes…Upon moving an asp, measuring about 10 inches in diameter at its base, I discovered a flat stone inscribed with characters, to me unintelligible. The stone laid just beneath the surface…with one corner almost protruding. The two largest roots of the tree clasped the stone in such a manner that the stone must have been there at least as long as the tree…
I turned the page and found a letter written in the farmer’s own hand in his native Swedish, dated December 9, 1909. The four pages of tightly scribbled text included a small sketch, which showed the stone-harboring tree—the tree’s thick roots had grown horizontally over the width of the stone, making a right angle before continuing deeper into the ground.
Below the letter a translation had been supplied:
I saw that the stone was thin , Olaf Ohman, who was fifty-five at the time, had written. I simply put the grubbing hoe under it and turned the under side up…My boy Edward was about 10 years old. He was the first to see that there was something inscribed on the stone. The boys believed that they had found an Indian almanac…
I read some more and found out a few additional details, such as the name of the other son, Olof Jr., then age eleven. Magnus Olsen wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the book, but perhaps no one had remembered—or thought to mention—the presence of a neighborhood kid. There was a Sam Olson, a neighbor, but presumably there were quite a few families with the last name of Olsen or Olson on the plat maps and town records of the time. I wondered in passing how historians kept track of all the similar names. Magnus Olsen, Olof Ohman, Olof Jr. A lot of them seemed to begin with O .
The detail about the roots having a square kink to them, aside from seeming like a math joke, struck me as authentic. But perhaps that was the hallmark of the true hoaxer, and he had supplied the detail to hide his sleight of hand, like a magician would. I wondered how Olof’s wife, Karin, had felt about the runestone, but there were no quotes from her.
I pounced on the farmer’s words from the letter in Swedish: The boys believed that they had found an Indian almanac. I myself also saw that there was something written. But to read it was a mystery to me. How could someone born in Sweden, who had spent the first twe nty-fi ve years of his life there, not have recognized runic writing?
Unfortunately for my theory of the farmer’s guilt, he wasn’t the only one. After being dug up, the stone was moved to the local bank, where the public viewed it, with its strange symbols and ancient look. An enterprising townsperson, thinking the inscription was, of all things, Greek, sent a copy to a Minneapolis newspaper. The editors forwarded it to University of Minnesota, where the Greek scholars recognized that the text was, well, Greek to them and got it to the right place, a university expert in Scandinavian languages, who gave the stone a thumbs down. After hearing the news, Olof Ohman promptly stored the stone in his grain shed.
That was how things went before STEWie.
I leafed through a few more pages. A half-hearted effort had been made to excavate the spot and to look for the skeletons of the ten dead men, but neither they nor any additional artifacts had been found. Two witnesses, both
I came across a sworn affidavit that Olof had given to the county register or someone of similar official standing regarding his unusual find. It began with his swearing in and continued,
I am fifty-four years of age, and was born in Helsingeland, Sweden, from where I emigrated to America in the year 1881, and settled upon my farm in Section Fourteen, Township of Solem, in 1891. In the month of August, 1898, while accompanied by my son, Edward, I was engaged in grubbing upon a timbered elevation, surrounded by marshes…Upon moving an asp, measuring about 10 inches in diameter at its base, I discovered a flat stone inscribed with characters, to me unintelligible. The stone laid just beneath the surface…with one corner almost protruding. The two largest roots of the tree clasped the stone in such a manner that the stone must have been there at least as long as the tree…
I turned the page and found a letter written in the farmer’s own hand in his native Swedish, dated December 9, 1909. The four pages of tightly scribbled text included a small sketch, which showed the stone-harboring tree—the tree’s thick roots had grown horizontally over the width of the stone, making a right angle before continuing deeper into the ground.
Below the letter a translation had been supplied:
I saw that the stone was thin , Olaf Ohman, who was fifty-five at the time, had written. I simply put the grubbing hoe under it and turned the under side up…My boy Edward was about 10 years old. He was the first to see that there was something inscribed on the stone. The boys believed that they had found an Indian almanac…
I read some more and found out a few additional details, such as the name of the other son, Olof Jr., then age eleven. Magnus Olsen wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the book, but perhaps no one had remembered—or thought to mention—the presence of a neighborhood kid. There was a Sam Olson, a neighbor, but presumably there were quite a few families with the last name of Olsen or Olson on the plat maps and town records of the time. I wondered in passing how historians kept track of all the similar names. Magnus Olsen, Olof Ohman, Olof Jr. A lot of them seemed to begin with O .
The detail about the roots having a square kink to them, aside from seeming like a math joke, struck me as authentic. But perhaps that was the hallmark of the true hoaxer, and he had supplied the detail to hide his sleight of hand, like a magician would. I wondered how Olof’s wife, Karin, had felt about the runestone, but there were no quotes from her.
I pounced on the farmer’s words from the letter in Swedish: The boys believed that they had found an Indian almanac. I myself also saw that there was something written. But to read it was a mystery to me. How could someone born in Sweden, who had spent the first twe nty-fi ve years of his life there, not have recognized runic writing?
Unfortunately for my theory of the farmer’s guilt, he wasn’t the only one. After being dug up, the stone was moved to the local bank, where the public viewed it, with its strange symbols and ancient look. An enterprising townsperson, thinking the inscription was, of all things, Greek, sent a copy to a Minneapolis newspaper. The editors forwarded it to University of Minnesota, where the Greek scholars recognized that the text was, well, Greek to them and got it to the right place, a university expert in Scandinavian languages, who gave the stone a thumbs down. After hearing the news, Olof Ohman promptly stored the stone in his grain shed.
That was how things went before STEWie.
I leafed through a few more pages. A half-hearted effort had been made to excavate the spot and to look for the skeletons of the ten dead men, but neither they nor any additional artifacts had been found. Two witnesses, both
Similar Books
![A Dangerous Moon [Tales of the Werewolf Clan]](https://fs.dianahicksbooks.online/610785/thumbs/152x264/a-dangerous-moon-tales-of-the-werewolf-clan.jpg)
