The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, by R.A. Skelton, T.E
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REVIEWS 279 THE VINLAND MAP AND THE TAR- times in history, even if their expansive- TARRELATION. By R. A. SKELTON,ness was caused by populationpressure T. E. MARSTONAND G. D. PAINTER.New on a frail homeland or by religious or Haven:Yale University Press, 1965. capitalisticpersecution. Scandinavia (Distributed in Canada by McGill Uni- held the field from the ninthto the versity Press). 11% x 9 inches. 291 twelfth century; Italy, Spain and Portu- pages.Maps. $20.00. gal fromthe fourteenth to thesixteenth. The publication of this impressive Britain and Francelater; the United volume, compiled by scholars from Yale States and Russia today. Why quarrel University and the British Museum, is therefore, with the established facts that certainly a noteworthy occasion for his- at certain periods in history nation X torians: it comprises a new account of was tops but is not necessarily so today Papal Legate Carpini’s journey to East or in any given previous century? Asia together with the earliest map that The authors of this volume have es- shows part of North America. tablished through a wealth of carefully It brings into focus the incredible examinedevidence that the Relation gullibility of the mediaeval travellers to and the Map were produced in about the Mongol capitalwith their tales of 1440 somewhere in theupper Rhineland unipeds and shaggy-dog husbands, and area, and done by the same scribe. the Vinlandmap, though unique as such, givesus no new arctic information that was not already in the literature- GREENLAND in fact does not try to identify some of the difficult points of the sagas. What amazes one is the reaction that this scholarlypublication has aroused in the popular press - in North Ameri- ca and in Italy and Spain.Nowadays any successful manhas to have a public relations officer behind him to “project his image” evenif he is as caustic as the 6 biographer of Lord Thomson of Fleet (Street). Every school boy or girl has heard of Columbus and MarcoPolo. How many of them know of Bjarni Her- julfsson or Brother Carpini? Columbus and MarcoPolo have, through their public relations men- the historiopedants - held their field for many years, despite the knowledge for It is of course the map that is of chief well over a century that the Norsemen interest to readers of Arctic. The Atlan- were certainly the first Europeans to tic is scattered with the usual mythical land somewhere in North America and islands as wellas more certain Canaries that Carpini and William of Rubruck and Azores, but in thenorth west appear had visited the Great Khan before Polo two islands - Greenland, complete in made his journey. Columbus was a bold outline, and Vinland “as discovered by andoriginal navigator with the keen Leif and Bjarni together”. The former promotional character that in this pres- has alwaysbeen shown by mediaeval ent age is capable of getting a large cartographers (almost up to the nine- grant from NASA. But he never visited teenthcentury) as a land masscon- North America.He did however dis- terminous with Spitzbergen with no cover Cuba; today many Americans find visible northern boundary. Why then this regrettable. does this mapgive itan insular and Various nations have reached a posi- reasonably correct shape,albeit the tion of power and expansion at different scale is much too small? 280 REVIEWS This leads to speculation that Green- RUSSIANSETTLEMENT INTHE land had been circumnavigated, if not NORTH. BYTERENCE ARMSTRONG. Cam- by the Scandinavian settlers then by bridge University Press (Macmillan of Eskimo andtheir information trans- Canada). 1965.9% x 6Y4 inches, xii plus mitted - eventually to Europe. We 224 pages, 16 plates, 12 maps. $8.50. know that Eskimosometime went Dr. Armstrong has been recognizedas around northern Greenland with boats. a leading authority on the Soviet north The umiak discovered by Knuth at the since the appearance of hisbook The eastern tip of Peary Land appeared to Northern Sea Route in 1952. In turning date from less than three hundredyears his attention to the history of human ago and contained iron nails.At that settlement he has produced a work of time we believe climate and ice condi- no less scholarlyvalue but more general tions were worse than at present - in appeal, since people generally are more the eleventh century they should have interested inpeople than inice and been much better, and circumnavigation economics. with or without dragging boats over the The book deals with Russian expan- ice might have been achieved. Several sion inthe north and particularly in Dorset culture sites have been found in Siberia, and traces the settlement pat- far northern Greenland but these are tern first in the Tsarist era and then the peoplemost historians (excepting under the Sovietregime. The longest TryggviOleson) believe the Scandi- andmost fascinating sections of the navians did not meet but whose relics book deal with the types of people- they found in Greenland. furtraders, cossacks,peasants, civil But Vinland is also marked asan servants, miners,exiles and convicts, island, so it may bepure convention not to mention some most original reli- that led our map maker to draw Green- gious sects- whoopened up and to land as insular. As stated earlier, the some extent peopled this vast area of outline of this further island does not northern forest. And an interesting as- help us greatly in elucidating the much sortment of characters they are. argued points in the Sagas -we have It is interesting to compare the pat- only the three promontories with bays tern of development describedhere with between, and thelatter are probably that in the Canadian North. One strik- given a conventionaloutline. Baffin ing difference is the fairly large num- Island, Labrador, Newfoundland? - or bers of peasant settlers whofollowed could the southern bay be Hamilton In- the fur traders into at least the southern let? We are not greatly helped. fringes of northern Siberia. Nothing of A lengthy legend in very minute cal- this kind happened in Canada until the ligraphy appears in the northwest cor- opening up of the farming lands in the ner of the map aboveVinland which clay belt of northern Ontario and Que- relates not only the voyage of Leif and bec, and in the Peace River country, in Bjarni southward through the ice - “ad the present century. This movement of austru inter glacies byarnus et leiphus peasants was possible in feudal Russia, erissonius” (their names look queer in where serfdom was not abolished until Latin),but the visit there of Bishop 1861, becauseon the one hand state- Erik in a year that from papal reference owned serfs could be and were deliber- must be 1117. The latter triphas already ately re-settled in remote areas, and on been recorded in the Icelandic Annals the other the peasant himself was at- but a date of 1121 was ascribed to it. tracted by the absence of serfdom in Thesetwo pieces of land and the Siberia. It is largely to this peasant set- legend make up the sum total of our tlement that Dr. Armstrong attributes Arctic information in this book. But it’s the stability of occupation in Siberia, in the stuff that dreams are made of. contrast toAlaska, where there was little or no peasant settlement. It is an interesting point and no doubt an im- P. D. BAIRD portant contributing factor,though .