History in the Margins

History on Display: The Vinland Map

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On October 11, 1965, just a few hours before Columbus Day,* Yale University announced that it owned a newly discovered map of the world, dating from approximately 1440 AD, that showed an island named as Vinland, the Vinilandia insula of the Icelandic sagas/ off the coast of North America. The timing was not accidental: if the map was real it proved that the Vikings had landed in North America several centuries before Christopher Columbus.** Indignant Italian Americas denounced the map as a fraud. Scholars at the time debated the map’s authenticity and provenance, with an emphasis on technical aspects of its production and condition. (Think ink composition and the placement of wormholes.)

My friend Karin and I were luckily enough to see the map itself during our visit to Mystic Seaport.**  Science Myth & Mystery: The Vinland Map Saga is a fascinating look at a subject where public opinion, “comic book history,” and scholarship collide. The small excellent exhibit considers the history of the map as an artifact, the work of the scholars who attempted to authenticate it, the brouhaha that surrounded Yale’s very public and consciously controversial announcement, public reactions to the announcement and the archaeological finds at L’Anse aux Meadows. The most interesting aspect of the exhibit from my perspective was the timeline showing the different scientific tests applied to the document over the last fifty years as new technologies became available, ending with new tests performed by a team at Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage earlier this year. (For those of you with scientific minds, one of the new tests is called “reflectance transformation imaging“.)

The final conclusion? The map is a forgery but the Vikings did reach North America.

Science Myth & Mystery: The Vinland Map Saga will be on display at Mystic Seaport through September 30.  Well worth the time if you’re in the general area.

*Which at the time was a minor holiday that had not yet become a focus for discussions about social justice, racism, etc. That would soon change.
**In fact, archaeological discoveries at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland had confirmed the presence of Viking settlements in North America the year before. But no one had deliberately rubbed Columbus’s nose in it.  Personally, I don’t see that one achievement lessens the other.
***An unplanned piece of history bugg luck.

From the Archives: In which I consider soccer, or at least books about soccer

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I first ran this in 2014. Looks like it’s time to run it again.

soccer The World Cup is over and some of you are suffering from soccer* withdrawal. Unlikely though it may seem to those of you who know me in real life,I have some reading suggestions that will let you feed both lingering soccer mania and history curiosity.

Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains The World: An {Unlikely} Theory of Globalization looks at soccer as both an international phenomenon and as rooted in “local cultures local blood feuds and even local corruption”. (Think British soccer hooligans, the role of soccer in the Balkan Wars of 1990s, and the success of Jewish soccer clubs in 1920s Europe.) How Soccer Explains the World is a wonderful piece of social/historical reporting and totally accessible for the soccer-challenged.

David Goldblatt’s The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer directly addresses historian Eric Hobsbawm’s observation that “The twentieth century was the American century in every way but one: sport.” Goldblatt describes his work as the only history of the modern world in which the United States is “a transatlantic curiosity rather than a central attraction.” Beginning with ancient games involving a man kicking a ball and ending with soccer in Africa post-Cold War, The Ball is Round is an exhaustive account of history as a game, with a heavy emphasis on “American exceptionalism”.*** At 900 pages, this is a work for the hard-core soccer fan, or perhaps someone with ulterior motives for learning more about the game.

A lagniappe: Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch is a brilliant account of one fan’s relationship to the game, set in a specific time and space. This one is worth reading even if you are sports averse.

Score!

*Or football, depending on where you kick the ball.

**A term normally applied to the relative failure of socialism in America. And now that I think of it, there are some interesting parallels between the distribution of soccer and socialism in America. Any social scientists out there looking for a research topic?

History on Display: The Vikings Begin

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Photo credit: Joe Michael/Mystic Seaport Museum

While we were at Mystic Seaport, we were lucky enough to see an exhibit titled The Vikings Begin: Treasures from Uppsala University, Sweden. Curated by the Gustavianum Museum at Uppsala University, the exhibit is based on a ten-year research project that began in 2016. Known as “The Viking Phenomenon”, the project is designed to study the emergence of Viking society by looking at Iron Age culture in Scandinavia prior to the Viking era. The resulting exhibit tells a slightly different story than the version of Vikings with which most of us are familiar.*  Among other things, they do a nice job of changing ideas about women in Viking society, with a special emphasis on the upset surrounding the “Birka Man”.**

At first I sputtered a bit: The first Viking raid took place in Estonia in 750? Really?”*** Then I told myself to shut up and learn. Once I calmed down, I was particularly fascinated by the suggested relationship between Viking culture and that in other Baltic countries.**** Subsequent poking around revealed that archaeologists have been studying the connection between Estonia and the Vikings since 2008, when utility workers discovered Viking remains in the course of laying cables. In some ways the real lesson I learned here is that the popular understanding of history often lags behind what scholars are working on. Not a new lesson, but one I have to learn over and over.

The Vikings Begin is visually spectacular. Most of the artifacts on display have never traveled outside of Sweden before. The exhibit will be at Mystic Seaport through September 30. The exhibit will then travel to the Nordic Museum in Seattle and the American Swedish Museum in Minneapolis. Well worth the effort if it comes to a museum near you.

*Raids on the British Isles. Explorers landing in North America. Dragon boats. Etc.

** Who turned out to be the Birka Woman.

***As opposed to the raid on Lindisfarne in 793, which is generally considered the start of the Viking era.

****It makes sense if you look at a map. Suddenly the idea that the Vikings made their way to Russia doesn’t look so surprising.