[okie01]

I'll support the notion that the stone, if it weighs only 220 lb, could readily be transported in a canoe.

Is there any history, though, of canoe "skin-and-frame" technology among the Vikings? Might they have travelled by dugout, instead. Or actually hewed logs and constructed a plank boat? A raft doesn't seem feasible, since the trip would be upstream.

In any case, transporting the stone via water from Lake Winnipeg up the Red to within fifty-or-so miles of Kensington doesn't seem insuperable.

Lugging it on a sled those last fifty miles would've been the hard part.

[crystalk]

If you think that is bad, a caller has suggested that not only did their wooden plank pinnace float in the Red River (which I have never seen, I live in Florida)...but that it was taken up the Buffalo River east of Fargo, then brought down a chain of lakes to Kensington and/in the Pomme de Terre (ie Potato?) River.

I would hate to have had to carry it, these sound like little more than prairie wet spots to me, but some are saying that the water table was a lot higher before the farms broke the land, and this was all just awash in those days.

Go figure.

[Free Trapper]

Vikings made many sizes of boats.They surely would have been familiar with skin boats from Ireland but the Indian canoes were nice for our waters and easy to portage.They took some larger boats into Russia where they had to portage,which would seem much harder than transporting one stone any number of miles.Now if you want to move the Heavener Stone by water or land I'm just going to bring a cold beer and watch.

[DensaMensa]

>Lugging it on a sled those last fifty miles would've been the hard part.

Compared to the difficulty of bringing back dressed game, the weight of the stone does not seem at all out of line, and I think is a non-issue.