A great swath of the country apparently favors the redbeards.
Modern tributes abound .
Some believe that a mysterious stone tower in Newport, RI , is the oldest building in America, built by the Vikings around AD 1050. Perhaps the most intriguing debris left by Nordic litterbugs are runestones, mighty slabs of rock with cryptic marks carved into them. Alexandria, MN , 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. 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.