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Review of the Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation , Second Edition Rezensionen 115 that “Ágrip is the only testimony to this aleigh A. Skelton, Thomas E. Norwegian victory. According to Theodricus Marston, and George D. (61–62) there were two separate attacks, the Painter. The Vinland Map second of which ended in defeat for Magnús, and the “Tartar Relation,” while in Heimskringla (III 225–29), Fagr- R Foreword by Alexander O. Vietor, skinna (310–11) and Morkinskinna (323– 30) Magnús is defeated in both.” This infor- New Edition, with an Introduction mation is incorrect: Morkinskinna (324, 328) by George D. Painter and Essays by records two battles against Ingi at Fuxerna, Wilcomb E. Washburn, Thomas A. one in which Magnús was victorious (324= Cahill and Bruce H. Kusko, and Ágrip); the outcome of the second battle is Laurence C. Witten II. New Haven: not explicitly stated (328). According to Yale Univ. Press, 1995. 395 pages. Fagrskinna (Íslenzk fornrit 29, 310–11), Magnús went on two campaigns to Sweden and on the second fought one indecisive In October 1965, scholars at Yale University battle against Ingi at Fuxerna (= Morkin- announced to an astonished world that they skinna 328). Heimskringla also records two were in possession of a medieval world map expeditions and one battle against Ingi at showing America several decades before Fuxerna, a battle which Magnús lost Columbus under the name of “Vinland” and (Heimskringla, ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, described as having been discovered by the vol. 3, Íslenzk fornrit 28 [Reykjavík: Hið Icelanders Bjarni Herjólfsson and Leifr íslenzka fornritafélag, 1951], 226–28). Eiríksson. The map — now known as the 106n148: According to the author, “Vinland Map” — had reached Yale in mys- “Both Scandinavian and foreign sources in- terious ways which are still not completely dicate that Sigurðr [Jórsalafari] left Norway known. According to the experts, it had been in the autumn of 1107, spent that winter in drawn somewhere in the neighborhood of England and arrived in Palestine in August Basel, Switzerland, around 1440, evidently of 1109.” The year Sigurðr left Norway is dis- in ecclesiastical surroundings. In the media, puted (1107 or 1108). He arrived in Palestine the Vinland Map was hyped as the ultimate in 1110, and the siege of Sidon took place proof that Scandinavian Vikings, not Ital- from 19 October to 5 December 1110. ians, were the first to make the long journey 107n158: “Sæheimr” is not “the place from the Old to the New World. now called Jarlsberg in Vestfold”; rather, it is In fact, older and better sources existed modern Sem in Jarlsberg, Vestfold. already in the form of Icelandic sagas from As stated at the beginning of this re- the thirteenth century, telling about the jour- view, the present edition and translation of neys of Leifr Eiríksson and Bjarni Herjólfs- Ágrip is a welcome contribution to the field son across the Atlantic to Vinland — and of medieval historiography and literature about their encounters with a foreign people, because it makes an important but hitherto the “skrælingjar,” who seem to have been rather obscure historical work available to North American Indians. With the help of an audience outside of a small circle of Old information provided in these sagas, and Norse–Icelandic scholars. Driscoll should be even before the appearance of the Vinland commended for his careful edition of the Map, the Norwegian Helge Ingstad had manuscript and for the faithfulness of his found a Scandinavian settlement in New- English translation. The work is, however, foundland and dated it to the Viking Age, somewhat disappointing in the brevity of the around 1000. But even if the newly discov- introduction and the explanatory notes, es- ered map really did not provide much new pecially in view of the volume’s long gesta- knowledge about the Vinland expeditions tion period. per se, its discovery nevertheless became a first-class sensation. It seemed to prove that Kari Ellen Gade these expeditions had been known not only in Iceland or Norway, but also further south on the European continent where Columbus alvíssmál 7 (1997): 115–20 116 Rezensionen could have picked up the knowledge. Had edge about Greenland that he could present he in fact been inspired by the Icelanders? it with this amazing realism? Was it not For a while it seemed that the Yale Map more likely that the map had been forged in was everything it was made out to be. The our own century? part showing Asia was evidently closely con- Secondly, it seemed impossible to ob- nected with another recently discovered and tain reliable information about the origins of genuine-looking document found bound to- the Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation. gether with the Vinland Map, the so-called All that was known is that the documents Tartar Relation, a Latin report of the mis- had been obtained somewhere in Europe in sionary journey of the Franciscan Friar John the 1950s by a bookseller in New Haven, de Plano Carpini to central Asia 1245–47, Laurence C. Witten II, who subsequently which describes the Mongols and their con- sold them to a private collector, who in turn quests and was recorded and edited by an donated both documents to Yale. This same otherwise unknown Friar C. de Bridia fol- Laurence Witten pointed out to the librar- lowing the (presumably oral) report of a ians at Yale that wormholes in the docu- companion of Carpini’s, Friar Benedict the ments exactly matched the wormholes in Pole. The handwriting indicated that both a fifteenth-century manuscript of Speculum the map and the report had been copied historiale which the librarians had recently around 1440 by the same scribe. It was purchased from a London bookseller. “Coin- furthermore convincingly proved by Yale cidences” of this kind seemed a bit too scholars that the Vinland Map and the Tar- strange to be entirely reassuring. Witten tar Relation had been included as appen- could not say exactly where the Vinland dices in a fifteenth-century copy of part of Map and the Tartar Relation had been be- a well-known medieval encyclopedia, the fore they came into his possession, only that Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais. he had obtained them in September 1957 All of this information was presented by from their owner, a private collector whose the Yale University Press in a large and im- family library he visited, but whose identity pressively researched volume, The Vinland he was not at liberty to divulge. The owner’s Map and the “Tartar Relation” (1965), the representative was an eccentric bookseller first edition of the book under review, writ- named Enzo Ferrajoli, an Italian who had ten by three well-established scholars from served as a volunteer on the Fascist side in Yale and the British Museum, Raleigh A. the Spanish Civil War and then settled in Skelton, Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Barcelona and to whom Witten had been Painter. Their detailed and thorough presen- introduced by a respected Geneva bookseller tation of the facts seemed to guarantee that named Nicolas Rauch (for sketchy details of the Vinland Map was genuine. Their book the purchase, see Laurence Witten, “Vin- was widely read and quickly sold out. land’s Saga Recalled,” in Proceedings of the After some time, however, other schol- Vinland Map Conference, ed. Wilcomb E. ars began to suspect that the map was a Washburn [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, forgery. First of all, there were details in the 1971], 3–14, here 4–5; the conference at map that seemed rather suspicious: for ex- which Witten spoke was held on 15–16 ample, Greenland was presented almost as it November 1966 in Washington, D.C.). appears in modern maps, although its coast- After more and more people began to line is not known to have been explored and question the authenticity of the Vinland mapped properly until much later than 1440. Map, a chemical analysis of its ink was Scandinavian maps of Greenland from the undertaken in 1972–74. This analysis re- sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — gen- vealed that the brownish yellow parts of the erally assumed to have been the very best map’s outlines contained a high percentage from that area — are not nearly as good as of anatase, a crystalline form of titanium di- the representation of that vast island in the oxide which was not commercially produced Vinland Map. Was it then conceivable that before the 1920s and is therefore hardly the a fifteenth-century mapmaker in the Basel kind of thing one would expect to find in area had possessed such advanced knowl- genuine medieval ink. As a result of this new alvíssmál 7 (1997): 115–20 Rezensionen 117 discovery — which was obviously somewhat Norse scholars who have a rather good embarrassing not only to Laurence Witten knowledge of the Vinland problems, hardly but also to the scholars who had staked their any of them have ever believed in the au- reputation on the map being authentic — thenticity of the Vinland Map. official Yale spokesmen admitted that “the The greatest mistake of this book — famous Vinland Map may be a forgery.” Fol- now as in 1965 — is that it bases its entire lowing that admission, the map was absent argument on the tacit but false assumption for quite a while from serious scholarly dis- that the map is either totally authentic or cussion about Vinland and the discovery of totally forged. The authors do not consider America. Yet the original defenders of the the possibility that somebody may have map — and their followers at Yale and else- tampered with a genuine medieval map by where — continued their search for new adding new details to it, thus forging a small arguments in support of the map’s authentic- but essential part of it: the Vinland part.
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