The famous Viking Map of North America is Absolutely False

A thorough analysis of Vinland’s conflicting maps has proved to be a fabrication of the 20th century.

“The Vinland map is false,” said Raymond Clemens, director of the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University, told Yale News. “There is no clear doubt here. This new analysis should address this issue. ”

Clemens, along with Marie-France University of Marie-France Lemay and Paula Zyats, and scientists from Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, analyzed the Map of Vinland, which became known in 1957 when the British Museum, suspected of fraud, denied it. purchase from the seller. Yale eventually found a map of the skins, announcing his public availability in 1965. A textbook was written on this subject, and it was able to decorate first page of the New York Times.

The map, which is said to date back to the 15th century, was a major factor as it added to the idea that the Vikings had arrived in North America before Christopher Columbus arrived. A well-known part of the North American coast, called the “Vinlanda Insula,” is located southwest of Greenland. In fact, the evidence — the Vikings’ arrival in America long ago — was overwhelming at the time but not overwhelming. In the 1960s, excavations in the ruins of Viking villages in L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland had already stated this.

That the Vinland Map might be a forgery was suspected from the get-go. Scholars immediately pointed out inconsistencies with other medieval texts, while work done in the 1970s hinted at the presence of modern inks. The purpose of this most recent investigation was to perform the most thorough analysis yet and to examine the parchment from top to bottom with newly available high-tech tools, such as X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and Raman microscopy. A big bonus was that the team could hold onto the map for as long as the investigation required.

Radiocarbon dating of the parchment placed it to between 1400 and 1460 CE, which matched well with previous efforts to date the Vinland Map. But while the parchment was old, the ink was most certainly not. Medieval scribes used ink containing iron sulphate, powdered gall nuts, and a binder. The ink found in the lines and text on the Vinland Map, however, had barely any iron or sulfur, and instead contained lots of titanium. Previous work had showed titanium at specific points, but the new study showed the extent to which the compound existed across the entire map.

An analysis of dozens of 15th-century central European manuscripts revealed levels of titanium that were far lower, and levels of lead that were much higher, than the levels detected in the Vinland Map. At the same time, inks with titanium pigments were only made available in the 1920s. FE-SEM analysis led the scientists to conclude that the particles on the map were produced in Norway in 1923.

A damning piece of evidence was also found on the back: A Latin inscription with modified instructions on how to bind the map within the Speculum Historiale—a genuine manuscript from the 15th century. For the unknown creator of this map, the attempt at forgery was very much real.

“The altered inscription certainly seems like an attempt to make people believe the map was created at the same time as the Speculum Historiale,” Clemens told Yale News. “It’s powerful evidence that this is a forgery, not an innocent creation by a third party that was co-opted by someone else, although it doesn’t tell us who perpetrated the deception.”

With the map now proven to be a forgery, the question turns to why anyone would bother. Writing in the Smithsonian, David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele, authors of The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe, offered some possible description:

A … Viking nostalgia wave in the early 20th century may have inspired a reporter to create an old map. As Lisa Fagin Davis, executive director of the Medieval Academy of America and an expert in handwriting, says, “What motivates copying is often financial or political. In the case of Vinland Maps, all of this is possible.” […]

As historian Dorothy Kim wrote of Time in 2019, 19th-century politicians who wanted to create new political and ethnic legends turned to Viking history as their source. American poets wrote new Viking epicies, and, in 1893, a Norwegian captain boarded a Viking ship to the Chicago World’s Fair, triumphing in his homeland and among the immigrants to Scandinavia in the United States.

In the northern cities, local groups strongly influenced and opposed Catholic Catholics (and, later, anti-Columbus and Italian antichrists) set up Viking statues. Unexpectedly, Yale’s announcement of the acquisition of Vinland Maps came on the eve of Columbus Day’s 1965 fall.

We do not know the exact reason or the person who wrote the map, but it is refreshing that scientists have finally been able to prove falsehoods with the best of evidence. As Clemens pointed out, such things “elevate the vast expanse of space,” and his organization “does not want this to continue to be contradictory.” The researchers have now drafted a research paper for the project and submitted it to peer-reviewed journals.

Details: Jack’s Ripper Letters Were False Stories, Language Research.