KRS and the 1890's

Kensington Rune Stone was found in 1898, during the last decades of National
Romanticism. What's specific for that time, then ?
Through art, litterature, music, architeture, etc, national identities were
built throughout Europe. National anthems were written, and also litterature
about a glorious past ( like "Fänrik Ståls sägner" in Sweden ). Old folk
tales ( like Kalevala in Finland ) were collected and recorded ( and
published and read ), old folk songs were saved, folk costumes were
determined, and museums ( like Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo from 1894 and
Skansen in Stockholm from 1891 ) were built to display old tools that were
used on farms 100 years ago - from a time when most of the population lived
on the countryside and not in the cities ; when farming and not working in
industries were the major place of work.

As for the immigrants that had moved to the U.S, I'm sure that they wanted
to keep themselves updated to what happened in the old country. Unlike
people nowadays, that can just point the satellite dish in the right
direction to get all the world ( or rather the specific part of the world
that they want - the country they left behind ) into their living room, or
check the online newspapers, the people that lived in U.S 100 years ago had
to rely on snail-mail and ordinary newspapers. I'm pretty sure that there
are more than one article in any of these newpapers
http://www.augustana.edu/swenson/Newspapers/NewspaperGuideQry_1.html
that could have supplied the appropriate futhark-font, and inspired someone
to create a fake rune stone....

Peo



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