Posted on 11/26/2004 12:01:26 PM PST by blam
Viking map may rewrite US history
Agençe France-Presse
Friday, 26 November 2004
Experts are testing the map to see if it is really evidence for Vikings landing in the New World first, not Columbus (Image: Climate Monitoring & Diagnostics Lab) Danish experts will travel to the U.S. to study evidence that the Vikings landed in the New World five centuries before Columbus.
A controversial parchment said to be the oldest map of America could, if authentic, support the theory that the Vikings arrived first.
The map is said to date from 1434 and was found in 1957. Some people believe it is evidence that Vikings, who departed from Greenland around the year 1000, were the first to land in the Americas.
The document is of Vinland, the part of North America believed to be what is today the Canadian province of Newfoundland, and was supposedly discovered by the Viking Leif Eriksen, the son of Erik the Red.
Three researchers from the Danish Royal Library and School of Conservation hope that modern techniques developed in Denmark will be able to "shed more light on this document whose authenticity is questioned worldwide", said Rene Larsen, head of the School of Conservation in Copenhagen and the leader of the project.
The trio will on Monday begin their work on the map, which is kept at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Connecticut.
The three have been "authorised to, for two to three days, photograph, analyse with microscope and undertake various studies of the document and its ink, but not alter it", Larsen said.
He said the results of the study would be presented early next year.
The Vinland map, possibly the first map showing the New World, at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Image: Brookhaven National Lab/Yale University Press)
"We hope that the new techniques that we have developed in Denmark ... will help to better [date] the document and ink with which the map was drawn in order to lift the veil on its authenticity or counterfeit," he said.
The map was considered a sensation when it was found. Experts largely agree that the parchment dates from the 1400s, but by the 1970s some experts had begun arguing that the ink used contained materials that were only developed in the 20th century.
U.K. chemist Professor Robin Clark, from University College London, has meanwhile said he believed the document was a fake.
He based his conclusion on the work of another researcher, Dr Walter McCrone, who in the 1970s found that the ink contained a derivative of titanium dioxide, which did not exist until the 1920s, according to the journal Analytical Chemistry.
You bet, and if it weren't for our ancestors poor America would have been deprived of lutefisk.
Not only that but I am one hundred percent Native American, born in Minnesota of Norwegians all. And the Vikings were here before me.
The affect?
Don't anger the Viking Kitty!
Yeah, the 4 horseman would have been here earlier :)
Yeah, the 4 horseman would have been here earlier :)
LOL! She's such a *cutie*
(Kitty, not the troll)
It was covered a few nights ago on either the History or Discovery Channel. The ink proved to be out of date for the time as well as artificially aged. There were also several cartographic and linguistic errors.
Beware the cute kitty with an attitude!
Lefse BUMP
I didn't do it!
Everyone knows you go to Fresno for culture if you live in Clovis!
The historians entirely miss the point the layman grasped long ago. The layman knows that who first discovered America doesn’t matter as much as whose discovery stuck.
Did Yale pay the Danes to validate the Hoax?
Thanks for that picture. I remember going on a summer vacation with my parents to Alexandria ('69 or '70??) and all I really remember about it was the big Viking. It's a pleasant shot of nostalgia to see him again.
That's five centuries before columbus?
Those are the ones that are *really* dangerous! :-)
Just over 60 years if you ask me...who did the math?
I have a whole branch of the family, my grandfather's brother and sister, that are in NoDak. I'm far enough removed that I really don't know any of them. Ja, I like yelly on my toast.
I watched Fargo with my mom and she didn't notice the parody accent. That's how Norsky my family is.
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