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 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 , scholars at 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 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, , 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 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 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 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 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 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. And ity. Now, with the help of private sponsors, yet this is the simplest, most logical way to they have published an enlarged edition of explain the strange mixture of modern and their original best-seller from 1965. medieval thinking that characterizes this The new material consists of a publish- map. One can only assume that someone er’s note (vii–viii), an introduction to the who knew the Icelandic sources concerning new edition by George Painter (ix–xix), and Vinland managed to procure a genuine articles by Wilcomb E. Washburn (“The Case medieval world map, originally made to of the Vinland Map,” xxi–xxvii), two physi- illustrate the Tartar Relation, and that this cists (Thomas A. Cahill and Bruce H. Kusko, person — who probably lived in the twenti- “Compositional and Structural Studies of the eth century — decided to fill an empty space Vinland Map and Tartar Relation,” xxix– on the map with drawings of Vinland, xxxix), and Laurence Witten (“Vinland’s Greenland, and Iceland. Saga Recalled,” xli–lviii). In the latter essay, Upon publication of the second edition, first published in 1989, Witten provides a a conference on the Vinland Map was held lengthy account of his dealings with Enzo in New Haven on 10 February 1996. Among Ferrajoli in Barcelona, but he is unable to other speakers there, Garmon Harbottle shed new light on the map’s provenance and from Brookhaven National Laboratory pre- in several key points flatly contradicts the sented a statistical analysis of the distribu- version of events which he promulgated in tion patterns for trace elements in the ink his paper of the same title in 1966 and 1971 and concluded that the ink used for drawing (for example, he now denies ever having met the Vinland part of the map in fact has a the previous owner). The weightiest of the composition which differs from the ink in new contributions in the second edition is a the rest of the map: “I don’t attribute much new, thorough discussion of the ink problem to this in terms of the authenticity question. by Cahill and Kusko, who try their utmost to Maybe someone came along a few years later show that anatase could, after all, have been and added Vinland to a map that already an ingredient in a genuine medieval ink. existed. The island does seem to be stuck out However, they do not provide any convinc- on the edge. Maybe a monk copying the map ing proof that the ink is in fact genuine. ran out of ink and made up a new batch Thus there is not very much which is at that point. But the ink is different, no new in this edition, and hardly anything in it question about it” (quoted by John Noble is likely to convince serious scholars that the Wilford, “Disputed Medieval Map Called map is authentic. The book is evidently writ- Genuine After All,” New York Times, 13 ten for true believers, not for people who February 1996, section C, pages 1 and 11, want to discuss pro and con. Clearly the au- here C11). To show that the Vinland part thors have failed to seek the advice of any has been added, however, it is hardly neces- scholars whose views differ from their own. sary to make a chemical analysis of the ink: Perhaps that is the reason why they failed to it is quite sufficient to see how the map is consult any Scandinavianist or expert on the structured and how it is related to other Vinland sagas; although there are many Old medieval maps. alvíssmál 7 (1997): 115–20 118 Rezensionen

It should then first be observed— as was The Vinland Map’s presentation of in fact shown in detail by Raleigh A. Skelton Europe and is very similar to that of in his contribution to the book under review other fifteenth-century maps from southern (“The Vinland Map,” 107–240 in both edi- Europe, also with regard to its errors and tions) — that most of the land shown in the misconceptions concerning the Nordic Vinland Map has been confined within an countries. The original mapmaker evidently oval outline. The oval — or, more common- did not have much independent knowledge ly, circular — outline of the three known about that part of the world, so he mechani- continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa) was, cally copied what he found in older, not very in turn, part of a medieval tradition which reliable maps. His presentation of Asia, on tended to imagine God’s creation in geo- the other hand, is quite original and full of metrical forms. The large oval outline on the unusual information, since it is based on the Vinland Map is thus not only “unnaturally” Tartar Relation and obviously intended to symmetrical in itself but is also symmetri- illustrate its account of the Mongol expan- cally divided into three segments of nearly sion from Mongolia and China to eastern equal dimensions: Europe to the left of the Europe. At several points in this part of the center, Asia to the right, and Africa below map, explanatory texts have been added in the horizontal diameter. People who used order to give more information about the such maps in the Middle Ages either be- Mongols and about Catholic missionary ex- lieved that the world was created in this peditions to Asia. Such concerns are ob- symmetrical fashion, or they deliberately viously the driving force behind the drawing simplified their world picture to make it of this particular world map. easier to remember. In the western part of the map there are Only a small part of the world shown on no such explanatory texts except in one the Vinland Map falls outside of this sym- place: the upper left-hand corner. The legend metrical framework, and this is precisely the there differs from the others in several ways. part comprised of Vinland, Greenland, and First of all it is much longer. Secondly, it is Iceland. These three large islands in the placed far outside the oval-shaped world pic- North Atlantic are the only ones which ture together with Vinland and Greenland. lie outside of the oval. Furthermore, both Thirdly, it has nothing to do with the Tartar Greenland and Iceland are drawn with a Relation. The legend reads — in Skelton’s modern realism and precision that is com- transcription and translation — as follows: pletely different from the way in which the “Volente deo post longu¯ iter ab insula rest of the northern countries have been Gronelanda per meridiem ad / reliquas ex- drawn on the Vinland Map. Note, for tremas partes occidentalis occeani maris iter example, that the Scandinavian countries, facientes ad / austru¯ inter glacies byarnus et unlike Greenland and Iceland, have been leiphus erissonius socij terram nouam uber- drawn so crudely and unrealistically that rima¯ / videlicet vinifera¯ inuenerunt quam they can hardly be recognized by modern Vinilanda¯ [?or Vimlanda¯] insula¯ appellaue- readers. Sweden has been misplaced south runt. Henricus / Gronelande regionumq fini- of the Baltic, and Norway has been twisted timaru¯ sedis apostolicae episcopus legatus in and turned around to conform with the oval hac terra / spaciosa vero et opulentissima in outline to the north. Whoever made this part postmo anno p. ss. nrj. [= pontificis or patris of the map certainly had a very dim idea of sanctissimi nostri] Pascali accessit in nom- northern Europe. And yet we are asked to ine dei / omnipote¯tis longo tempore mansit believe that the same person could draw estiuo et brumali postea versus Gronelanda¯ Greenland and Iceland almost as well as a redit / ad orientem hiemale¯ deinde humilli- modern cartographer! It is certainly much ma obediencia superiori vo- / lu¯ tati proces- more natural to assume that Scandinavia be- sit” [By God’s will, after a long voyage from longs to the original and genuine map made the island of Greenland to the south toward in the Basel area, while Greenland, Iceland, the most distant remaining parts of the west- and Vinland have been added by a modern ern ocean sea, sailing southward amidst the forger. ice, the companions Bjarni and Leif Eiriks- alvíssmál 7 (1997): 115–20 Rezensionen 119

The Vinland Map, MS 350A, Collection of Early Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Rare Book and Manu- script Library, Yale University son discovered a new land, extremely fertile Grœnlendinga saga, where Bjarni Herjólfs- and even having vines, the which island they son makes the same discovery. The second named Vinland. Eric (Henricus), legate of sentence is based on information in the Ice- the Apostolic See and bishop of Greenland landic annals concerning Bishop Eiríkr of and the neighboring regions, arrived in this Greenland, often mentioned in books about truly vast and very rich land, in the name of the Vinland expeditions and especially in Almighty God, in the last year of our most American works trying to prove that the blessed father Pascal, remained a long time Kensington Stone (another well-known in both summer and winter, and later re- hoax) had been erected in Minnesota by turned northeastward toward Greenland and medieval Christian Scandinavians who were then proceeded (i.e. home to Europe?) in supposedly the descendants of Bishop most humble obedience to the will of his su- Eiríkr’s original congregation. The Latin periors] (140). phraseology of these sentences, however, is This text is cleverly composed, but there simply lifted from the Tartar Relation or can be little doubt that it was concocted in from those parts of the map that have to do modern times by somebody who tried very with the Tartar Relation. hard to make it look like the genuine texts The person who made this forgery — or, about Asia. It is thus written in the same to be more precise, who forged the sen- clerical style, sometimes even using the same sational Western additions to the original pious wordings, even though its content is medieval map — was probably an academic. based on well-known Old Norse sources He evidently had some knowledge of Latin which still exist and are available in English and of the Vinland sagas, and he was prob- translation. The first sentence represents a ably familiar with the controversy about the sort of compromise between the two con- Kensington Stone. I do not believe that a flicting Icelandic accounts of the Vinland person answering to this description is likely story found in Eiríks saga rauða, where to have studied at a Spanish university. He Leifr Eiríksson makes the discovery, and may have had dealings with Enzo Ferrajoli, alvíssmál 7 (1997): 115–20 120 Rezensionen but he did not necessarily live in Barcelona usanne Kramarz-Bein, editor. or Switzerland. Hansische Literaturbeziehun- One early suspect was a Dalmatian gen: Das Beispiel der Þiðreks Franciscan friar, Luka Jelic´ (1863–1922), saga und verwandter Literatur. who was proficient in Latin and interested in S Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der the Vinland Problem, but Kirsten A. Seaver has recently argued that we should regard Germanischen Altertumskunde 14. the German priest Josef Fischer, S.J. (1858– Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996. 339 1944), as a more likely candidate (“The pages. ‘Vinland Map’: Who Made It, and Why? New Light on an Old Controversy,” The Someone with a bibliographical penchant Map Collector 70 [1995]: 32–40; “The Mys- will eventually write a (perhaps largely sta- tery of the ‘Vinland Map’ Manuscript Vol- tistical) study of how the collaborative vol- ume,” The Map Collector 74 [1996]: 24–29; ume came to replace the single-author sur- “The Vinland Map: A $3,500 Duckling That vey in the latter part of the twentieth Became a $25,000,000 Swan,” Mercator’s century. That trend is clearly called for by World 2, no. 2 [March/April 1997]: 42–47). increasing specialization and growing biblio- Fischer was proficient in Latin and knew graphical pressures. It has gone hand in much about medieval maps and also about hand with the popularity of theme confer- the Vinland problem, so he could certainly ences over the last twenty years and has have forged the map, but the evidence provided a welcome opportunity for closer against him is hardly more conclusive than cooperation among colleagues in particular the evidence against Luka Jelic´. To me it subfields. The present volume is an excellent seems more likely that the forger was an example of the trend. It grows out of a sym- American who had some contacts with the posium with the same title that was held in Scandinavian-American community and was Bonn on November 19–21, 1992. familiar with the strange modern Midwes- Þiðreks saga, which had not received tern mythology surrounding Leifr Eiríksson much scholarly attention for several decades, and the Kensington Stone. He might have came back into fashion about ten years ago. been a Yale man, but he could have studied The 1992 symposium therefore afforded a elsewhere, at the University of Minnesota or good opportunity to take stock and suggest Saint Olaf College, for instance. new directions. The conference volume as- However that may be, we can safely sembles fourteen papers of overall high qual- conclude that the so-called Vinland Map has ity, subdivided into five sections. The fullest no value for the discussion about the discov- section (six papers) deals with particular ery of America. It may be of great value for problems in Þiðreks saga, whereas the re- the study of the Mongols and early mission- maining eight papers, symmetrically grouped ary expeditions to Asia, and contain other in four subsections of two each, are contex- unsolved mysteries, but the part of the map tual or tangential in nature. The first sub- containing Vinland may now be disregarded section provides a large literary context by by serious medievalists. Alois Wolf and a similarly broad historical background piece by Thomas Behrmann. Lars Lönnroth Wolf, with his characteristic encompassing view of medieval letters, explores the growth of the “long form” in medieval narrative and the question of whether the long form in Scandinavia is merely parallel or perhaps in some sense conditioned by literary develop- ments elsewhere in Europe. He does not subscribe to Clover’s tracing of interlace structure in the Icelandic kings’ sagas and family sagas but locates a similar esthetic in the Norwegian version of Þiðreks saga. That alvíssmál 7 (1997): 115–20