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.
L'anse aux meadows in Newfoundland was discovered in 1960 by Helge Ingstad of Norway to be the site of Leif Ericsson's settlement. "Vin" in Vinland is Old Norse for meadows. The area is similar to Greenland's coastal areas.
Thanx, it looks like the Vikes also discovered the west coast of Europe and North Africa.
If the clan of Eric the Red settled Greenland in 986 and stayed there until 1400, there's a fair chance they ventured further West. At least that's what my Great Grandfather Gustavis Adolphis Svenson said...
I know what you mean. My brother watched Fargo and thought we were being laughed at, but I loved it, felt at home. Mom would have just said, "Oofda".
here's a Viking...
Thanx, it looks like the Vikes also discovered the west coast of Europe and North Africa.
I wish they'd discover the end zone more often...
http://www.vikingage.com/vac/about.html
SONS OF NORWAY CLUB
The kitties will be impossible to live with now. They'll insist that they're in charge and we are their subjects. Oh... wait... they already do. (Never mind.)
Good. Then you've confirmed my worst fears.
:::SIGH:::
No kibble tonight - guess it will be shrimp and salmon.
Here kitty, kitties......
Ironically, the vikings were apparently forced to abandon Greenland when it became increasingly difficult to send ships there from the European mainland during the "mini-Ice Age" of the 12th or 13th century.
I agree. It also became increasingly hard to grow any kind of crop for food and for food for animals. Even in this day and age, with the current technology, it's awfully hard to scratch out a living in Greenland. I would very much like to go to Iceland and Greenland and Labrador via ship, just to see what they saw.
"The U.S.E. The United States of Eriksen."
make that Erikssen.
As in Erik's sen (son)
How does a Viking landing in 1400's re-write the history of a country that wasn't yet in existence?
not enough moss on the field.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
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Here is a summary of a recent book that studies the map and such.
Seaver, Kirsten A.
Maps, Myths, and Men: The Story of the Vinland Map.
Stanford Univ. 2004.
c.462p. illus. bibliog. index.
ISBN 0-8047-4962-0. $65;
pap. ISBN 0-8047-4963-9. $24.95. HIST
Seaver, an independent historian and fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London, has traveled the globe in her quest to ascertain the authenticity of the Vinland Map in Yale University's Beinecke Library. The map has been published with a companion manuscript in R.A. Skelton and others' The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (1965; new ed., 1995). After introducing readers to the Norse colonies in Iceland and Greenland as well as contemporary reports of voyages west to North America, Seaver begins a detailed and scholarly study of the controversy surrounding the map, including its uncertain provenance, the position of its worm holes, the chemical composition of its ink, the nature of its parchment, and its relationship to the accompanying manuscript. Seaver concludes that the manuscript is genuine but that the map is a modern fake created on cleaned parchment from the manuscript. In the final and most interesting chapter, the author explores the life and career of her candidate for the map's creator, Father Josef Fischer, S.J. (1858-1944). Most suitable for academic libraries. (Index not seen.)
I have not come to a conclusion to the map yet
Don't forget the bunch of voyages the Chinese made in 1421.
Chinese, Vikings, Basques, Greeks, it doesn't matter. They all failed to make a comtemporary record of it. Tough noogies.
Columbus discovered a continent of savages, Europeans came over and tamed the place. The rest is history as they say.
Vikings, Chinese and others are simply curiosities.
"The significance of Columbus was not that he was here first -- he wasn't -- but rather that he brought news of the area back to Europe, sparking an historical period of settlement and colonization."
I read that the significance of Columbus was: He embodied true modern business enterprise.
His effort combined the best science and technology, with fundraising.
Maps from previous Atlantic explorers yielded the route to take.
Queen of Spain gave the Italian money.
Alotof American history sure skips quickly from 1492 (discovery by latin-types) to 1620 (settlement by decent north-western europeans).
Lief came in 1000. He left, rather than get clobbered by Skraelings. By 1000 Lief was believed to be a Christian. A Norwegian, by way of Iceland and Greenland.
Mayflower 620 years later.
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