VIKINGS IN AMERICA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19897, 17 September 1926, Page 11

VIKINGS IN AMERICA.

TALE OF ELEVENTH CENTURY EXPEDITION. A Norwegian scientist, Profesors Olai Opsjon, announces the discovery of a viking burial ground near Spokane, Washington, and runic inscriptions telling a dramatic story of the crossing of America in 1010 A.D. by a Norse expedition of 24 men, seven women, and a baby (states the New York correspondent of the Daily Mail). The story stands in indelible paint o.i a great boulder beside a spring just outside the city boundaries of Spokane. The paintings nave been seen by many people who believed them to be Indian markings, but Professor Opsjon declares them to be runic writings filled with a thrilling description of the sufferings of a Norse expedition which crossed the continent by a well-defined and heavily travelled train running from west to east and skirting the base of the cliffs near Spokane. Tlie runic paintings describe how a party, exhausted and thirsty, reached the spring and camped beside it. Indians came along. They, too, were thirsty and tired. They attacked the Norsemen. Placing the seven women and the bahy on tlie top of the boulder, the Norsemen grouped themselves around the base of the rock and defended themselves desperately. Twelve of them were killed and the others escaped. The Indians captured six of the women, but threw the other woman and the baby in her arms from the top of the rock, killing them. Later six survivors returned to the scene of the fight and buried the dead.