In 1911, a sword was dug up in the prairie of Minnesota. Not long after, it was declared a Viking-Age sword. But in 2007, that all changed. This talk explores what happened and what it can tell us about Nordic-American Life in the Upper Midwest.
Marcus Cederström earned his B.A. from the University of Oregon in Sports Business, History, and Scandinavian Studies and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Scandinavian Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a folklorist working in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic at UW-Madison as the community curator of Nordic-American folklore for the “Sustaining Scandinavian Folk Arts in the Upper Midwest” project. His research interests include immigration to the United States, identity formation, North American Indigenous communities, and sustainability.