Viking Statue & Runestone Museum

Because nothing says Minnesota like a massive Viking!!
History of the area via its historic buildings and consumer goods,
and… the rune-stone

Cute local museum: Essentially, it’s a combination of the trend of collecting historic buildings to one central location in order to save them from demolition and a history of the area via consumer goods. However, there is also a massive ‘rune-stone‘ which a farmer ‘dug up’ from his farm that he claimed is supposed to be proof that the Vikings came to America way before Columbus — while the museum refuses to say it, and some in the local community believe it’s the real deal… the fact is that it’s never been considered anything but a hoax by serious researchers.

If you dial the number below, or scan the QR code (the box thing) you’ll hear about the stone and a translation of what it says.

In fact one of the most interesting points, from my perspective, was how local small budget museums are able to utilize these technologies to upgrade the customer experience. Throughout this museum there are descriptions you can access via your cell phone or smart phone (using a QR scanning program), which are available in English AND Norwegian.

I had previously seen a TV show, I forget where, that talked about how in Norway there is a very popular reality TV show about kids who come to Minnesota to try to find their families and experience their lives in the USA. Apparently there’s a huge tourist population of Swedes and Norwegians discovering small town MN, and these narrations in Norwegian are the proof of that.

Granted, this place is nowhere near as well laid out is the last local museum I went to, but they’ve done a fairly decent job of collecting junk from all of the surrounding town members and housing it in a way that at least people can see it and understand what it is.