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Kensington Runestone

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Greywacke or graywacke ( German grauwacke , signifying a grey, earthy rock) is a variety of sandstone generally characterized by its hardness (6–7 on Mohs scale ), dark color, and poorly sorted angular grains of quartz , feldspar , and small rock fragments or sand-size lithic fragments set in a compact, clay -fine matrix. It is a texturally immature sedimentary rock generally found in Paleozoic strata . The larger grains can be sand- to gravel-sized, and matrix materials generally constitute more than 15% of the rock by volume.

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85-734: 8 : göter : ok : 22 : norrmen : po : ...o : opþagelsefärd : fro : vinland : of : vest : vi : hade : läger : ved : 2 : skLär : en : dags : rise : norr : fro : þeno : sten : vi : var : ok : fiske : en : dagh : äptir : vi : kom : hem : fan : 10 : man : röde : af : blod : og : ded : AVM : frälse : äf : illü. här : (10) : mans : ve : havet : at : se : äptir : vore : skip : 14 : dagh : rise : The Kensington Runestone

170-462: A bill of sale showing Ohman sold them the stone for $ 10 in 1911. Holand renewed public interest with an article enthusiastically summarizing studies that were made by geologist Newton Horace Winchell (Minnesota Historical Society) and linguist George T. Flom (Philological Society of the University of Illinois ), who both published opinions in 1910. According to Winchell, the tree under which

255-761: A behind-the-scenes interview. The story's author, William Goldman , was born in Chicago and grew up in Highland Park a little more than ten miles north of Evanston. Evanston's growth occurred largely because of its accessibility from Chicago by rail. The Northwestern founders did not finalize their commitment to siting the university there until they were assured the Chicago & Milwaukee Railway line would run there. C&M trains began stopping in Evanston in 1855. Evanston later experienced rapid growth as one of

340-680: A book (and a follow-up in 1994) questioning the methods of its critics. Hall asserted that the odd philological problems in the Runestone could be the result of normal dialectal variances in Old Swedish of the period. He contended that critics had not considered the physical evidence, which he found leaned heavily toward authenticity. Hall is not a runologist; his errors in reading the runes have been described by two runologists, James E. Knirk  [ de ] and R. I. Page . In The Vikings and America (1986), Wahlgren again stated that

425-486: A building material and a sculptural material across many eras and societies. Its oldest known uses date to the early third millennium BCE , in Egypt's early dynastic period . Its wide use in sculpture and vessels is thought to have been due to its fine grain size and resistance to fracturing, making it suitable for fine detail and intricate shapes. Aside from its structural uses, greywacke stone (or molds taken from it)

510-408: A city to be named Evanston after John Evans , one of their leaders. In 1857, the request was granted. The township of Evanston was split off from Ridgeville Township; at approximately the same time, that portion of Ridgeville south of Devon Avenue was organized as Lake View Township . Evanston was formally incorporated as a town on December 29, 1863, but declined in 1869 to become a city despite

595-464: A female householder with no husband present, and 45.61% were non-families. 34.79% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.46% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.22 and the average family size was 2.40. The city's age distribution consisted of 19.9% under the age of 18, 16.0% from 18 to 24, 25% from 25 to 44, 23.1% from 45 to 64, and 16.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age

680-518: A general north–south direction through the area, and had at least some semi-permanent settlements along the trails. French explorers referred to the general area as "Grosse Pointe" after a point of land jutting into Lake Michigan about 13 miles (21 km) north of the mouth of the Chicago River . After the first non-Native Americans settled in the area in 1836, the names "Grosse Point Territory" and "Gross Point voting district" were used through

765-568: A great deal of geographical information. In the early 19th century, Carl Christian Rafn mentioned a priest named Ivar Bardarsson who had previously been based in Greenland and turns up in Norwegian records from 1364 onward. Furthermore, in 1354, King Magnus Eriksson of Sweden and Norway issued a letter appointing a law officer named Paul Knutsson as leader of an expedition to the colony of Greenland , in order to investigate reports that

850-452: A popular filming location. Evanston as of December 2008 is listed as a filming location for 65 different films, notably those of John Hughes . Much of the 1984 film Sixteen Candles was filmed in and around Evanston, the 1988 film She's Having a Baby , as was the 1989 film Uncle Buck , the 1993 film Dennis the Menace , and the 1997 film Home Alone 3 . A number of scenes from

935-642: A replica of the Gokstad ship , to Chicago. There was also friction between Sweden and Norway (which ultimately led to Norway's independence from Sweden in 1905). Some Norwegians claimed the stone was a Swedish hoax and there were similar Swedish accusations because the stone references a joint expedition of Norwegians and Swedes. It is thought to be more than coincidental that the stone was found among Scandinavian newcomers in Minnesota, still struggling for acceptance and quite proud of their Nordic heritage. A copy of

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1020-641: A strong apparent divergence between the runes used in the Kensington inscription and those in use during the 14th century. Similarly, the language of the inscription was modern compared to the Nordic languages of the 14th century. The Kensington Runestone is on display at the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota . The text consists of nine lines on the face of the stone, and three lines on

1105-543: A time when these unsimplified forms were still in use" and that he "was not a professional runic scribe before he left his homeland". A possible origin for the irregular shape of the runes was discovered in 2004, in the 1883 notes of a then-16-year-old journeyman tailor with an interest in folk music, Edward Larsson. Larsson's aunt had migrated with her husband and son from Sweden to Crooked Lake , just outside Alexandria, Minnesota in 1870. Larsson's sheet lists two different Futharks . The first Futhark consists of 22 runes,

1190-525: A total area of 7.80 square miles (20.20 km ), of which 7.78 square miles (20.15 km ) (or 99.72%) is land and 0.02 square miles (0.05 km ) (or 0.28%) is water. In October 2006, the city voted to sign the United States Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, and a number of citizen task forces convened to develop a plan to reduce the city's carbon footprint . The Evanston Climate Action Plan ("ECAP"), accepted by

1275-480: Is a loan from Low German * updagen , Dutch opdagen , which is in turn from High German aufdecken , ultimately loan-translated from French découvrir 'to discover' in the 16th century. The Norwegian historian Gustav Storm often used the modern Norwegian lexeme in late 19th-century articles on Viking exploration, creating a plausible incentive for the manufacturer of the inscription to use this word. Another characteristic pointed out by skeptics

1360-540: Is a slab of greywacke stone covered in runes that was discovered in Western Minnesota , United States, in 1898. Olof Ohman, a Swedish immigrant , reported that he unearthed it from a field in the largely rural township of Solem in Douglas County . It was later named after the nearest settlement, Kensington . The inscription purports to be a record left behind by Scandinavian explorers in

1445-402: Is a synthesis of older unsimplified runes, later dotted runes, and a number of Latin letters ... The runes for a, n, s and t are the old Danish unsimplified forms which should have been out of use for a long time [by the 14th century] ... I suggest that [a posited 14th century] creator must at some time or other in his life have been familiar with an inscription (or inscriptions) composed at

1530-516: Is consistent with a scribal abbreviation for a final -e used in the 14th century. Norse colonies are known to have existed in Greenland from the late 10th century to the 15th century, and at least one short-lived settlement was established in Newfoundland , at L'Anse aux Meadows , in the 11th century, but no other widely accepted material evidence of Norse contact with the Americas in

1615-615: Is difficult to characterize mineralogically, it has a well-established place in petrographical classifications because these peculiar composite arenaceous deposits are very frequent among Silurian and Cambrian rocks, and are less common in Mesozoic or Cenozoic strata. Their essential features are their gritty character and their complex composition. By increasing metamorphism , greywackes frequently pass into mica- schists , chloritic schists and sedimentary gneisses . The term "greywacke" can be confusing, since it can refer to either

1700-849: Is sometimes calcareous . Greywackes are abundant in Wales , the south of Scotland , the Longford-Down Massif in Ireland and the Lake District National Park of England ; they compose the majority of the main Southern Alps that make up the backbone of New Zealand . Both feldspathic and lithic greywacke have been recognized in Ecca Group in South Africa . Greywackes are also found in parts of

1785-594: Is the issue of Northwestern University's status as a tax-exempt institution. In the founding charter of Northwestern University, signed in 1851, the state granted the school an exemption from paying property taxes, and unlike other well-off private universities with statutory exemptions, it provides its own police services, but not firefighter/paramedic services. It pays water, sewer, communications, real property transfer taxes, and building permit fees, but not property taxes. Northwestern does not make Payments in Lieu of Taxes for

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1870-655: Is the text's lack of cases . Early Old Swedish (14th century) still retained the four cases of Old Norse , but Late Old Swedish (15th century) reduced its case structure to two cases, so that the absence of inflection in a Swedish text of the 14th century would be an irregularity. Similarly, the inscription text does not use the plural verb forms that were common in the 14th century and have only recently disappeared: for example, (plural forms in parentheses) wi war ( warum ), hathe ( hafðe ), [wi] fiske ( fiskaðum ), kom ( komum ), fann ( funnum ) and wi hathe ( hafðum ). Proponents of

1955-460: Is valuable to practitioners of traditional motion picture miniature photography , because due to its unusually mixed nature, it remains looking natural when portraying a wide range of miniature scale ratios, from 1:1 to as high as 1:600. Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( / ˈ ɛ v ən s t ən / EV -ən-stən ) is a city in Cook County, Illinois , United States, situated on

2040-822: Is within the boundaries of Evanston Township High School District 202. The school district has a single high school, Evanston Township High School , with an enrollment of just over 4,000, covering grades 9 through 12. Evanston-Skokie Community Consolidated School District 65 , covering all of Evanston and a small part of Skokie, provides primary education from pre- kindergarten through grade 8. The district has ten elementary schools (kindergarten through fifth grade), three middle schools (grades 6 through 8), two magnet schools (K through 8), two special schools or centers, and an early childhood school. Private schools located in Evanston, Illinois include: In 2006, National-Louis University closed its former main site, which had 6.5 acres (2.6 ha) of land, with about 33% in Evanston;

2125-686: The Dnieprovsky District of the City of Kyiv , Ukraine in 1988, and sister cities with Belize City, Belize in 1992. Evanston has a council-manager system of government and is divided into nine wards, each of which is represented by an Alderman, or member of the Evanston City Council. Evanston was heavily Republican in voter identification from the time of the Civil War up to the 1960s. Richard Nixon carried it in

2210-660: The Eastern Desert east of the Nile . They were an early object of geological study in Britain where the Geological Society was founded in 1807, and excited much public interest in geology. Greywacke was interesting because it was found in many places in Britain and its occurrence in particular places was evidence of the pattern of geological strata that had been laid down. Greywacke stone has been used as

2295-594: The Edens Expressway ( I-94 ), and McCormick Boulevard, although the first two of those do not extend to Evanston itself and require driving through Rogers Park (via Sheridan Road or Ridge Avenue) and Skokie, respectively. The main routes from the north are the Edens, Green Bay Road, and Sheridan Road. Active modes of transportation include miles of sidewalks and bicycle lanes. Two hospitals are located within Evanston's city limits: A perennial debate in Evanston

2380-609: The Linden station in Wilmette . Metra 's Union Pacific North Line also serves Evanston, with stations at Main Street , Davis Street and Central Street , the first two being adjacent to Purple Line stations. The CTA's Yellow Line also runs through the city, though it does not stop there. Evanston is served by six CTA bus routes as well as four Pace bus routes. Automobile routes from Chicago to Evanston include Lake Shore Drive ,

2465-503: The North Shore along Lake Michigan . A suburb of Chicago , Evanston is 12 miles (19 km) north of Downtown Chicago , bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, Wilmette to the north, and Lake Michigan to the east. Evanston had a population of 78,110 as of 2020 . Founded by Methodist business leaders in 1857, the city was incorporated in 1863. Evanston is home to Northwestern University , founded in 1851 before

2550-601: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union . Evanston is the birthplace of Tinkertoys , and is one of the locations claiming to have originated the ice cream sundae . Evanston was the home of the Clayton Mark and Company, which for many years supplied the most jobs. Evanston was a dry community from 1858 until 1972, when the City Council voted to allow restaurants and hotels to serve liquor on their premises. In 1984,

2635-455: The poverty line , including 7.5% of those under age 18 and 6.6% of those age 65 or over. 12.3% of Evanston's 9,259 businesses were Black-owned in 2012, and 24% of the city's 2,041 employer firms were women-owned in 2017. As of 2015, according to the State of Illinois Dept Commerce and Economic Opportunity and Individual Employers , the top employers in the city are: Once the home of one of

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2720-438: The 14th century (internally dated to the year 1362). There has been a drawn-out debate regarding the stone's authenticity, but since the first scientific examination in 1910, the scholarly consensus has classified it as a 19th-century hoax , with some critics directly charging Ohman with fabrication . Nevertheless, there remains a community convinced of the stone's authenticity. A Swedish immigrant, Olof Ohman, said that he found

2805-433: The 1830s and 1840s, although the territory had no defined boundaries. The area remained only sparsely settled, supporting some farming and lumber activity on some of the higher ground, as well as a number of taverns or "hotels" along the ridge roads. Grosse Pointe itself steadily eroded into the lake during this period. In 1850, a township called Ridgeville was organized, extending from Graceland Cemetery in Chicago to

2890-478: The 1968 presidential election. The city began trending Democratic in the 1960s, though it never elected a Democratic mayor until 1993. In the 2012 presidential election, Democratic incumbent Barack Obama won 85% of Evanston's vote, compared to 13% for Republican challenger Mitt Romney . In the 2016 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton received 54% of the votes of Evanston Democrats to Bernie Sanders ' 45%. During that year's general election, Clinton won 87% of

2975-595: The 1986 Garry Marshall film Nothing in Common were filmed on the Northwestern University campus and Evanston's lakeshore. Although not filmed there, the 2004 film Mean Girls is set in the Chicago suburbs, and makes several references to the area. The movie's screenwriter and co-star, Tina Fey , had worked at the Evanston YMCA when starting her comedy career. In the 2003 film Cheaper by

3060-601: The City Council in November 2008, suggested over 200 strategies to make Evanston more sustainable, principally by reducing carbon emissions associated with transportation, buildings, energy sources, waste, and food production. In June 2011, the United States Conference of Mayors awarded Evanston first place in the small city category of the Mayors' Climate Protection Awards, based largely on the city's use of

3145-608: The Council voted to allow retail liquor outlets within the city limits. In March 2021, Evanston became the first city in the United States to pay reparations to African American residents (or their descendants) who were victims of unfair housing practices. The city council of the city voted 8 to 1 to approve the reparations which consisted of a $ 25,000 payment to African American households that can be used as down payments on their homes, house payments or for home repairs. This

3230-530: The Dozen , the family moves to Evanston. Additionally, 1993 film Rookie of the Year , starring Gary Busey and Thomas Ian Nicholas , was partially shot at Haven Middle School . The 2015 ABC Family reality series Becoming Us was filmed in Evanston. In The Princess Bride , according to IMDb , the screenplay says that the boy and his grandfather live in Evanston. This was also stated by Mandy Patinkin in

3315-615: The ECAP, which the city asserts has reduced emissions by 24,000 metric tons per year. On September 15, 2011, Wal-Mart presented Mayor Tisdahl with a $ 15,000 award in recognition of the honor, which the mayor donated to Citizens' Greener Evanston. As of the 2020 census there were 78,110 people, 27,918 households, and 15,184 families residing in the city. The population density was 10,012.82 inhabitants per square mile (3,865.97/km ). There were 34,462 housing units at an average density of 4,417.64 per square mile (1,705.66/km ). The racial makeup of

3400-506: The Illinois legislature passing a bill for that purpose. Evanston expanded after the Civil War with the annexation of the village of North Evanston. Finally, in early 1892, following the annexation of the village of South Evanston, voters elected to organize as a city. The 1892 boundaries are largely those that exist today. In the late summer of 1912, the beaches in Evanston were infested with thousands of rats . The rats had burrowed into

3485-560: The Kensington inscription a fraud and forgery of recent date". The stone was then sent to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois . Scholars either dismissed it as a prank or felt unable to identify a sustainable historical context and the stone was returned to Ohman. Hjalmar Holand , a Norwegian-American historian and author, claimed Ohman gave him the stone. However, the Minnesota Historical Society has

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3570-550: The area around Kölsjön, and Larsson furthermore established that Öhman had relatives who owned land in Kölsjön, further increasing the proximity between Öhman and the runic inscriptions of 1870s Sweden. The abbreviation for Ave Maria consists of the Latin letters AVM . Wahlgren (1958) noted that the carver had incised a notch on the upper right-hand corner of the letter V. The Massey Twins in their 2004 paper argued that this notch

3655-408: The chisel marks were fresh. More recently geologist Harold Edwards has also noted that "The inscription is about as sharp as the day it was carved ... The letters are smooth showing virtually no weathering." Winchell also mentions in the same report that Prof. William O. Hotchkiss , the state geologist of Wisconsin, estimated that the runes were at least 50 to 100 years old. Meanwhile, Flom found

3740-414: The city was 59.06% White , 16.06% African American , 9.92% Asian , 0.67% Native American , 0.06% Pacific Islander , 4.46% from other races , and 9.78% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 11.24% of the population. There were 27,918 households, out of which 26.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 42.44% were married couples living together, 8.71% had

3825-530: The city's incorporation, one of the world's leading research universities . Today known for its ethnically diverse population, Evanston is heavily shaped by the influence of Chicago, externally, and Northwestern, internally. The city and the university share a historically complex long-standing relationship. Prior to the 1830s, the area now occupied by Evanston was mainly uninhabited, consisting largely of wetlands and swampy forest. However, Potawatomi Native Americans used trails along higher lying ridges that ran in

3910-580: The colonists who had settled the distant lands several generations earlier. Those early 19th-century books, which aroused a great deal of interest among Scandinavian Americans , would have been available to a late 19th-century hoaxer. Hjalmar Holand adduced the "blond" Indians among the Mandan on the Upper Missouri River as possible descendants of the Swedish and Norwegian explorers. This

3995-479: The edge, read as follows: Front: Side: The sequences rr , ll and gh represent actual digraphs. The AVM is written in Latin capitals. The numbers given in Arabic numerals in the above transcription are given in pentadic numerals . At least seven of the runes, including those transcribed a, d, v, j, ä, ö above, are not in any standard known from the medieval period (see below for details). The language of

4080-631: The farmer later said he thought they had found an "Indian almanac". During this period, the journey of Leif Ericson to Vinland (North America) was being widely discussed and there was renewed interest in the Vikings throughout Scandinavia, stirred by the National Romanticism movement. Five years earlier Norway had participated in the World's Columbian Exposition by sending the Viking ,

4165-399: The finer beds associated with them. Their component particles are usually not very rounded or polished, and the rocks have often been considerably indurated by recrystallization , such as the introduction of interstitial silica . In some districts, the greywackes are cleaved, but they show phenomena of this kind much less perfectly than the slates. Although the group is so diverse that it

4250-627: The first Marshall Field's and Sears stores in suburbia, Evanston has several shopping areas: The Evanston Public Library was established in 1873, and has a satellite branch at the Robert Crown Community Center. Heather Norborg is the Interim Library Director. The North and South Branches of the Evanston Library were closed in 2021. The City of Evanston became sister cities with

4335-568: The first streetcar suburbs . The North Shore Line , the interurban railroad that gave the area its nickname , ran through Evanston and continued to Waukegan and Milwaukee . The city is still connected to Chicago by rail transit. The CTA 's Purple Line , part of the Chicago 'L' system, runs through Evanston. From its terminal at Howard in Chicago, the line heads north to the South Boulevard , Main , Dempster , Davis , Foster , Noyes , and Central stations, before terminating at

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4420-723: The first appearance of street lights were lined and turned on. Today, the city is home to Northwestern University, Music Institute of Chicago , and other educational institutions, as well as headquarters of Alpha Phi International women's fraternity , Rotary International , the National Merit Scholarship Corporation , the National Lekotek Center, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, the Sigma Chi fraternity and

4505-420: The immature (rock fragment) aspect of the rock or its fine-grained (clay) component. Greywackes are mostly grey, brown, yellow, or black, dull-colored sandy rocks that may occur in thick or thin beds along with shales and limestones . Some varieties include feldspathic greywacke , rich in feldspar , and lithic greywacke , rich in other tiny rock fragments. They can contain a very great variety of minerals ,

4590-650: The impact of the runestone on Öhman and his family, but leaves the veracity of the carving up to the audience to judge. 45°48.788′N 95°40.305′W  /  45.813133°N 95.671750°W  / 45.813133; -95.671750 Greywacke The origin of greywacke was unknown until turbidity currents and turbidites were understood, since, according to the normal laws of sedimentation , gravel , sand and mud should not be laid down together. Geologists now attribute its formation to submarine avalanches or strong turbidity currents. These actions churn sediment and cause mixed-sediment slurries, in which

4675-428: The inscription is close to modern Swedish , the transliterated text being quite easily comprehensible to any speaker of a modern Scandinavian language . The language, being closer to the Swedish of the 19th than of the 14th century, is one of the main reasons for the scholarly consensus dismissing it as a hoax. The text translates to: "Eight Geats and twenty-two Norwegians on an exploration journey from Vinland to

4760-685: The inscription made its way to the University of Minnesota . Olaus J. Breda (1853–1916), professor of Scandinavian Languages and Literature in the Scandinavian Department, declared the stone to be a forgery and published a discrediting article which appeared in Symra in 1910. Breda also forwarded copies of the inscription to fellow linguists and historians in Scandinavia, such as Oluf Rygh , Sophus Bugge , Gustav Storm , Magnus Olsen and Adolf Noreen . They "unanimously pronounced

4845-520: The inscription. John Gran's story, however, was based on second-hand anecdotes he had heard about Ohman, and although it was presented as a dying declaration , Gran lived for several more years, saying nothing more about the stone. The possibility that the Runestone was an authentic 14th-century artifact was raised again, in 1982, by Robert Hall , an emeritus professor of the Italian language and Italian literature at Cornell University , who published

4930-454: The last two of which are bind-runes , representing the letter-combinations EL and MW. His second Futhark consists of 27 runes, where the last three are specially adapted to represent the letters å, ä, and ö of the modern Swedish alphabet. The runes in this second set correspond closely to the non-standard runes in the Kensington inscription. Another possible origin was discovered in 2019, when two short inscriptions with runes closely resembling

5015-543: The majority of the land was in Wilmette. Founded in 1855, Evanston is home to Northwestern University . Located along Lake Michigan, Northwestern's campus spans 240 acres with an estimated 250 buildings. Since 1908, Kellogg School of Management as well as Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (1853) have institutions, of which both share the campus with Northwestern. Evanston's variety of housing and commercial districts, combined with easy access to Chicago, make it

5100-420: The north shore up to Lake Forest, the committee was ready to purchase farmland to the west of the city when Orrington Lunt insisted on one final visit to the present location. They chose a bluffed and wooded site along the lake as Northwestern's home, purchasing several hundred acres of land from John Foster, a Chicago farm owner. In 1854, the founders of Northwestern submitted to the county judge their plans for

5185-492: The ones on the Kensington stone, dated 1870 and 1877 respectively, were discovered in a farm-hand's room in the village Kölsjön in the parish of Hassela , not too far from Olof Öhman's home parish Forsa. In 2020, Swedish archaeologist Mats G. Larsson discovered that Anna Ersson, cousin and childhood friend of Olof Öhman, lived in Kölsjön during 1878. Their relationship seems to have been close, as Öhman asked Ersson to marry him in 1879. More runic inscriptions were later discovered in

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5270-659: The other side of which is the source of the Minnesota River , which flows south to join the Mississippi River at Saint Paul/Minneapolis . This route was examined by Flom (1910), who found that explorers and traders had come from Hudson Bay to Minnesota by this route decades before the area was officially settled. In May 2022, the St. Paul–based History Theatre premiered Runestone! A Rock Musical . The show, written by Mark Jensen and composed by Gary Rue, explores

5355-752: The population was turning away from Christian culture. Another of the documents reprinted by the 19th-century scholars was a scholarly attempt by Icelandic Bishop Gisli Oddsson, in 1637, to compile a history of the Arctic colonies. He dated the Greenlanders' fall away from Christianity to 1342 and claimed that they had turned instead to America. Supporters of a 14th-century origin for the Kensington Runestone argue that Knutson may, therefore, have travelled beyond Greenland to North America in search of renegade Greenlanders, whereupon most of his expedition

5440-466: The pre-Columbian era has yet emerged. Still, there is some limited documentary evidence for possible 14th-century Scandinavian expeditions to North America. In a letter by Gerardus Mercator to John Dee , dated 1577, Mercator refers to a Jacob Cnoyen, who had learned that eight men returned to Norway from an expedition to the Arctic islands in 1364. One of the men, a priest, provided the King of Norway with

5525-495: The principal ones being quartz, orthoclase and plagioclase feldspars, calcite , iron oxides and graphitic, carbonaceous matters, together with (in the coarser kinds) fragments of such rocks as felsite , chert , slate , gneiss , various schists , and quartzite . Among other minerals found in them are biotite , chlorite , tourmaline , epidote , apatite , garnet , hornblende , augite , sphene and pyrites . The cementing material may be siliceous or argillaceous and

5610-477: The quantity of dead fish that was cast to shore by the waves. The weather also played a role since the close proximity to the beaches allowed the rats to swim out in the water during the hot summer. During the 1960s, Northwestern University changed the city's shoreline by adding a 74-acre (30 ha) lakefill . In 1939, Evanston hosted the first NCAA basketball championship final at Northwestern University's Patten Gymnasium . In August 1954, Evanston hosted

5695-451: The real estate it removes from property tax rolls. Its backers, like former Evanston mayor and Northwestern alumna Lorraine H. Morton, contend that the benefits of having an elite research institution justify Northwestern's tax status. These supporters highlight the fact that Northwestern University is the largest employer in Evanston, and that its students and faculty constitute a large consumer base for Evanston businesses. This controversy

5780-444: The resulting deposits may exhibit a variety of sedimentary features. Supporting the turbidity origin theory is the fact that deposits of greywacke are found on the edges of the continental shelves , at the bottoms of oceanic trenches , and at the bases of mountain formational areas. They also occur in association with black shales of deep-sea origin. As a rule, greywackes do not contain fossils , but organic remains may be common in

5865-622: The same time, Scandinavian linguists Sven Jansson, Erik Moltke , Harry Andersen and K. M. Nielsen, along with a popular book by Erik Wahlgren, again questioned the Runestone's authenticity. Along with Wahlgren, historian Theodore C. Blegen flatly asserted Ohman had carved the artifact as a prank, possibly with help from others in the Kensington area. Further resolution seemed to come with the 1976 published transcript of an interview of Frank Walter Gran, conducted by Paul Carson, Jr. on August 13, 1967, that had been recorded on audio tape . In it, Gran said his father John confessed in 1927 that Ohman made

5950-586: The second assembly of the World Council of Churches , still the only WCC assembly to have been held in the United States. President Dwight Eisenhower welcomed the delegates, and Dag Hammarskjöld , secretary-general of the United Nations , delivered an important address entitled "An instrument of faith". Evanston first received power in April 1893. Many people lined the streets on Emerson St. where

6035-424: The sides of the lake banks, dug holes in the sand, and hid under piers. Most of the rats were extremely large and savage, attacking people who disturbed them. Local bathers struggled to navigate the shores, constantly stepping into the hidden rat holes. John Morgan, the manager of an extermination company tasked with removing the vermin, stated that it was not uncommon for rats to live around the lake's shore because of

6120-551: The southern edge of the Ouilmette Reservation , along what is now Central Street , and from Lake Michigan to Western Avenue in Chicago. The 1850 census shows a few hundred settlers in this township, and a post office with the name of Ridgeville was established at one of the taverns. However, no municipality yet existed. In 1851, a group of Methodist business leaders founded Northwestern University and Garrett Biblical Institute . Unable to find available land on

6205-541: The stone late in 1898 while clearing land which he had recently acquired of trees and stumps before plowing. The stone was said to be near the crest of a small knoll rising above the wetlands , lying face down and tangled in the root system of a stunted poplar tree estimated to be from less than 10 to about 40 years old. The artifact is about 30 × 16 × 6 inches (76 × 41 × 15 cm) in size and weighs 202 pounds (92 kg). Ohman's 10-year-old son Edward noticed some markings, and

6290-466: The stone was found had been destroyed before 1910. Several nearby poplars that witnesses estimated as being about the same size were cut down and, by counting their rings, it was determined they were around 30 to 40 years old. One member of the team who had excavated at the find site in 1899, county school superintendent Cleve Van Dyke, later recalled the trees being only 10 or 12 years old. The surrounding county had not been settled until 1858, and settlement

6375-481: The stone was quickly dismissed by Swedish linguists. For the next 40 years, Holand struggled to sway public and scholarly opinion about the Runestone, writing articles and several books. He achieved brief success in 1949, when the stone was put on display at the Smithsonian Institution , and scholars such as William Thalbitzer and S. N. Hagen published papers supporting its authenticity. At nearly

6460-578: The stone's authenticity pointed to sporadic examples of these simpler forms in some 14th-century texts and to the great changes of the morphological system of the Scandinavian languages that began during the latter part of that century. The inscription contains pentadic numerals . Such numerals are known in Scandinavia, but nearly always from relatively recent times, not from verified medieval runic monuments, on which numbers were usually spelled out as words. S. N. Hagen stated "The Kensington alphabet

6545-535: The text bore linguistic abnormalities and spellings that he thought suggested that the Runestone was a forgery. One of the main linguistic arguments for the rejection of the text as genuine Old Swedish is the term opthagelse farth ( updagelsefard ) 'journey of discovery'. This lexeme is unattested in either Scandinavian , Low Franconian or Low German before the 16th century. Similar terms exist in modern Scandinavian ( Norwegian oppdagingsferd or oppdagelsesferd , Swedish upptäcktsfärd ). Opdage

6630-413: The vote in Evanston, while Republican Donald Trump received just 7%. Evanston's turnout for presidential elections has grown steadily since 2004, with 80% of registered voters voting in the 2016 general election. In the 2020 presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden received 90% of the vote, while Republican Donald Trump received only 7%. Most of Evanston (and a small part of the village of Skokie)

6715-461: The west. We had camp by two skerries one day's journey north from this stone. We were [out] to fish one day. After we came home [we] found ten men red of blood and dead. AVM ( Ave Virgo Maria ) save [us] from evil." "[We] have ten men by the sea to look after our ships, fourteen days' travel from this island. [In the] year 1362." Holand took the stone to Europe and, while newspapers in Minnesota carried articles hotly debating its authenticity,

6800-410: Was 36.2 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.3 males. The median income for a household in the city was $ 82,335, and the median income for a family was $ 130,494. Males had a median income of $ 56,582 versus $ 42,589 for females. The per capita income for the city was $ 53,685. About 4.6% of families and 11.7% of the population were below

6885-588: Was dismissed as "tangential" to the Runestone issue by Alice Beck Kehoe in her 2004 book The Kensington Runestone, Approaching a Research Question Holistically . One possible route of such an expedition, connecting the Hudson Bay with Kensington, would lead up either Nelson River or Hayes River , through Lake Winnipeg , then up the Red River of the North . The northern waterway begins at Traverse Gap , on

6970-458: Was killed in Minnesota, leaving just the eight voyagers to return to Norway. However, there is no evidence that the Knutson expedition ever set sail (the government of Norway went through considerable turmoil in 1355) and the information from Cnoyen as relayed by Mercator states specifically that the eight men who came to Norway in 1364 were not survivors of a recent expedition, but descended from

7055-495: Was revived in 2003 when the university purchased an eight-story office building downtown, removing it from the tax rolls. An advisory referendum put on the April elections ballot, dubbed by supporters as a "Fair Share Initiative", received a majority, but was not passed into ordinance by the City Council. During the tenure of Elizabeth Tisdahl as mayor, relationships between the university and Evanston improved. Upon arriving at Northwestern in 2009 president Morton O. Schapiro forged

7140-507: Was severely restricted for a time by the Dakota War of 1862 (although it was reported that the best land in the township adjacent to Solem , Holmes City , was already taken by 1867, by a mixture of Swedish, Norwegian and "Yankee" settlers). Winchell estimated that the inscription was roughly 500 years old, by comparing its weathering with the weathering on the backside, which he assumed was glacial and 8,000 years old. He also stated that

7225-420: Was the initial payment, with plans to distribute $ 10 million in reparations payments to Black residents over the next decade. In August 2021, Evanston became one of the first cities to approve a pilot project providing a guaranteed income to select residents, drawing upon a combination of public funds and a partnership with Northwestern University. According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Evanston has

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