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Bert Rose named the Vikings because many people in the surrounding area were from scandanavian heritage.

Historically, the Homestead Act of 1862 provided the opportunity for settlers to get free of very cheap land in the Great Plains area of the United States. To stimulate use of their railroad lines, railroad companies sent recruiters to Europe and promised free transportation to Swedish (and other) immigrants who wanted to start a new life in America, settle near, and use the railroad's lines. The promise of free land and other claims (often false or exaggerated) lured many Europeans to the Great Plain. They tended to settle down in areas where others from their country or that spoke the same language lived. The Scandanavian people settled largely in Nebraska and Minnesota.

ALSO!!!

Perhaps the most intriguing debris left by Nordic litterbugs are runestones, mighty slabs of rock with cryptic marks carved into them. Alexandria, Minnesota, has the Kensington Runestone, and the story goes that it was found under the roots of an aspen tree by Olaf Ohman, an illiterate local farmer, in 1898. Real or Forgery?

Locals believe that the marks are a runic inscription describing a Viking expedition in 1362. The Smithsonian Institution was less enthusiastic about the runestone's authenticity, but they couldn't disprove it, either. And what about the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Indians that missionaries later reported, living in huts "in the Viking style"?

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15y ago

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