Re: Morison on Vinland Map

David J. Starr <dstarrboston@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Dom wrote:
>> The following is from Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of
>> America: The Northern Voyages, Oxford Univ. Press (1971) pp. 69-70.
>>
>> <<It may yet be proved genuine by chemical analysis of the ink, etc.;
>> but I have serious reservations about it-the polite scholarly term
>> for saying that you suspect fakery. The ground for my suspicion is
>> this: Whilst the greater part of the map, supposed to illustrate the
>> Tartar Relation, is an Andrea Bianco mappemonde type of around 1436,
>> with the usual Ptolemaic errors and mythical islands, the
>> "Isolanda," "Gronelanda" and "Vinlanda" correspond so
>> closely to the outlines and relative positions of Iceland, Greenland
>> below 72? N, and Baffin island on modern maps, that they must have
>> been dubbed in by some clever forger at a much later date. Note the
>> close resemblance of "Vinlanda Insula" to Baffin
>> Island-Cumberland Sound and Frobisher Bay are there, and Nettining
>> Lake, draining east instead of west to look like the Norsemen's H?p.
>> Note that Greenland is an island. It was never so depicted on a map
>> prior to 1650, but as a peninsula of Asia. Note the remarkable accuracy
>> of Iceland, and of the east coast of Greenland, which on the Canino map
>> of 1502 is correctly shown as shrouded with ice. Note the east coast
>> fjord of Angmagssalik (about 65?30' N, and Scoresby Sound at 70? N,
>> which could not by any stretch of the imagination have been explored
>> that early; and on the west coast, indentations which correspond
>> closely to the modern S?ndre, Str?mfjord, Disko, Bugt, Karrets Fjord;
>> note the westerly trend of the coast north of Upernavik. No this map of
>> the northern regions is just too accurate to have been drafted in 1450
>> or for a least two centuries thereafter. It is a sharp contrast to the
>> grotesquely inaccurate Eurasian part of the map, which is supposed to
>> illustrate the Tartar Relation. And what do the three northern islands
>> illustrate, other than some forger's appetite for dollars? Not one of
>> the Danish and Icelandiv scholars whom I consulted at Copenhagen in May
>> 1969 believes the Vinland Map to be genuine, although they have every
>> national and sentimental reason to accept it as such.>>
>>
>> Domenico Rosa
>>

>I too just finished reading Morison's European Discovery of North
>America and had considered posting that very passage to this news group.
> Morison is writing in 1971, without the benifit of later chemical
>analysis. He correctly calls the Vinland map a forgery based on a
>seaman's knowledge of cartography. Morison is great historian, co
>author of my college textbook, and many other standard works. I have the
>greatest respect for Morison's views.
> Just to keep the pot boiling I ought to post Morison's words
>concerning the Kensington Rune Stone...

Don't. It will start another war.

Many (including me) have pointed out that almost all
scholars familiar with maps, the cartography of the
time, and the literature of the time, pronounced the
map "questionable" on seeing it.

"Questionable" is of course a scholarly euphemism for
"who sold you this bit of manure?".

---- Paul J. Gans
.