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Ah, an ideal (genuinely un-engineered) opportunity to throw into the ring news of an article hot off the press (i.e. last Thursday/Friday):- Faking history : the Vínland Map / Kirsten Seaver. In: Journal of the International Map Collectors Society [aka IMCoS Journal], Winter 2009, 119, 33-37 : ill., maps, portr. 15 refs & notes. NB. This article is based on a lecture given by Kirsten Seaver at the IMCoS International Symposium in Norway this autumn. The articles substance concentrates rightly, as the object is a geographical map on Norse cultural history, with certifiable points on history of cartography and geography/exploration from someone who does know Norse (Old and New). Without this fundamental factual background to the visible (naked eye) map as an arte-factual symbolic representation the ink is of considerably (but not entirely) less a contentious matter. And no maps, as we probably all know by now (thanks to J. Brian Harley, Mark Monmonnier, et al.), are made without an incentive whether it be propaganda, political or pecuniary. Yale might (should?) actually be proud of being the owner of the most (?) costly fake in history . . . Yours, from a secret bunker, Francis Herbert -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Seaver Sent: 14 December 2009 00:04 To: Discussion group for map history Subject: Re: [MapHist] Vinland Map - iron gall ink Dear Andrew Brown, Indeed there are those who will not accept the scientific evidence that the Vinland Map ink contains anatase crystals with properties demonstrating that they were manufactured in the twentieth century for the paint industry. But there are also those who understand that this fact -- discovered by Walter and Lucy McCrone in 1974 and subsequently confirmed by top level scientists such as Dr. Kenneth Towe and Dr. Robin Clark -- necessarily means that the Vinland Map is a modern fake and not of the mid-fifteenth century Other aspects of this map, visible to the naked eye, also provide ample evidence that the Vinland Map does not reflect medieval Norse geographical and historical knowledge of any sort, but constitutes a monument to nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century ideas and preoccupations about Norse activities in Greenland and North America. The longer text by the "Island of Vinland" contains not only a series of deliberate riddles, but many examples of the map maker's fundamental lack of knowledge about the medieval Norse -- all of which I have noted in Maps, Myths, and Men: The Story of the Vinland Map if anyone cares to pursue that aspect of the map. At least as important to our discussion on this list is surely the fact that we are dealing with a MAP - a map that fails to show the long American coastlines with which the Norse Greenlanders became familiar during several centuries of sailing to Canada in search of American produce from what they called Helluland (=Slab Land) and Markland (= Forest Land). It shows only Vinland -- the southernmost American area with which the two "Vinland sagas" concern themselves. (Nor does it show Norse familiarity with the route from Norway to the White Sea Region). The Norse expedition to the area around Newfoundland and Nova Scotia generally covered by the Vinland label did not go on for more than a couple of decades at most (as demonstrated by the ruins at L'Anse aux Meadows), because the visitors were heavily outnumbered by hostile American natives. Nineteenth- and twentieth century historians focused on Vinland to the exclusion of both Helluland and Markland until archaeologists recently found evidence for continued Norse travels to the more northerly areas. The medieval Greenlanders and Icelanders knew this -- but the maker of the Vinland Map did not. Ask any museum curator, and he or she will tell you that just like genuine artefacts, every fake, without exception, in some way reveals ideas and concerns characteristic of the time the object was made. Best regards, Kirsten A. Seaver But (and it's a very very big But) the "ink" of the Vinland Map was shown by the first scientists permitted to study the map- the British Museum investigators in 1967, well over a year after after the official book about it was published- to be neither iron-gall nor any other formulation they had ever seen. Am I right in thinking that there is a difference of opinion on the Vinland map? That some think it genuine -- in which case my Swedish wife probably owns half of Manhattan, or perhaps Newfoundland -- and that some don't? Any chance of a five-line summary on the matter? A[ndrew] B[rown]
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