Since the 1830s, scholars have accepted that the Norse were likely the first Europeans to have reached North America, around 1000 CE, and after the discovery of a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Canada, this conclusion was all but certain. This fact has appeared in American textbooks since the mid-1800s, and yet this hasn’t been good enough for generations who sought a grander role for America’s Nordic explorers. In his new book Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), scholar of religion David M. Krueger explores why so many have become so devoted to the Kensington Rune Stone (KRS), an alleged record of a Norse expedition to Minnesota in 1362, which, if genuine, would change very little about our understanding of the tides of history.

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