Read Vikings in America Online
Authors: Graeme Davis
6
. An account of Peary's discovery of the Cape York meteorite is in John Edward Weems,
Peary the Explorer and the Man
(Boston, 1967).
1
. The idea that Columbus visited Iceland was first proposed in J. K. Tornöe's
Columbus in the Arctic?
(Oslo, 1965).
2
. James Robinson,
The Lewis Chessmen
, (London, 2004, The British Museum Press); N. Stratford,
The Lewis Chessmen and the Enigma of the Hoard
(London, 1997, The British Museum Press).
3
. The Secret Archive of the Vatican has its own website,
http://asv.vatican.va/
, which includes some general information about the archive and the documents, but neither a catalogue nor access information. The Secret Archive is separate from the Vatican Library, whose website is at
http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/
. In theory it is possible for scholars to gain access to the Vatican Library, though as the website expresses it “At present, all of the Library's collections are unavailable for consultation” (2009). Closure of the library will continue at least until summer 2010.
4
. Sean McGrail,
Boats of the World From the Stone Age to Medieval Times
(OUP, 2004).
5
. Writing about John Dee is extensive. A recent overview is offered by Benjamin Woolley's
The Queen's Conjuror: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Adviser to Queen Elizabeth I
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001). His contribution to the creation of the British Empire is discussed in Nicholas Canny's
The Origins of Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume I
, Oxford University Press (1998).
6
. The major primary source for the voyage of the
Mayflower
and the establishment of the Plymouth colony is the account of William Bradford
Of Plimoth Plantation
, written 1620-1647 (and with the spelling
Plimoth
) though describing events from 1608. The most accessible edition is that by William Bradford and William T Davis (1908) with the title
Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, 1606-1646
. Numerous modern accounts of the Mayflower and the Colony exist, including Nathaniel Philbrick's
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
, (Viking, 2006).
1
. The Narragansett Indian Tribe's website is at
http://www.narragansett-tribe.org/
. The tribe now has around 2,500 members in Rhode Island, and is associated with an additional 2,500 members of related Mohegan tribes in Connecticut and Long Island.
2
. R E Wodehouse, “Tuberculosis in North American Indians”
Canadian Medical Association Journal
1926 June; 16(6); C W McMillen, â“The red man and the white plague”: rethinking race, tuberculosis, and American Indians, ca. 1890-1950',
Bulletin of Historical Medicine
, 2008, Fall:82(3).
3
. The primary source for Verrazano's voyage is “Voyage of John de Verrazzano, along the Coast of North America, from Carolina to Newfoundland, AD 1524”,
Collections of the New York Historical Society, Second Series, 1841, Volume 1
, pages 37-67. Verrazano's reputation as the explorer of coast including New York was long obscured, and the decision to name a New York bridge after him â the Verrazano Narrows Bridge â was controversial, and only happened because of extensive lobbying from the Italian Historical Society of America. The spelling Verrazano is now standard for his name, replacing the earlier Verrazzano.
4
. Charles Christian Rafn,
Antiquitates Americanae Sive Scriptores Septentrionales Rerum Ante-Columbianarum in America
(Copenhagen, 1837).
5
. The Chronognostic Research Foundation is a non-profit corporation interested in historical and archaeological investigation.
6
. A runic inscription on Norman's Island off the coast of Martha's Vineyard was “discovered” in 1926 and read “Leif Eiriksson MI” (ie 1001). It is now generally dismissed as there is a report of a Norwegian cook working in the area having carved it in 1913. Additionally it is most unlikely that the runes would survive around a thousand years (the rock is sea-covered at high tide), and because the use of Roman numerals for dates was not usual in Scandinavia at this time. It is of course possible to make a case of sorts for Viking presence from the evidence of the
Vinland Sagas
â Martha's Vineyard fits the description of mild winters, self sown corn and wild grapes. J R L Anderson's
Vinland Voyage
(1966) theorises that Native Americans living in Martha's Vineyard called the area Vinland, and when explorer Bartholomew Gosnold visited the area in 1602 he took a modified form of the native name, added the name of his daughter who had died in infancy and whom he wished to commemorate, and produced Martha's Vineyard.
7
. Waldseemuller's 1507 map
Universalis Cosmographia
is the only source for the link between the name America and Amerigo Vespucci. The key phrase is “⦠ab Americo Inventore ⦠quasi Americi terram sive Americam” which translates “⦠from Americo the discoverer ⦠as if it were the land of Americus, thus America”. Waldseemuller is clearly struggling in his misspelling of Amerigo and his erratic declension, as the continent's name is not Amerigo, Americo or even Americus but a wholly inexplicable America. Waldseemuller appears to have thought again about this dubious derivation, for in his 1513 re-issue of the map he removes both it and the name America. The one copy of the 1507 edition surviving today was discovered in 1901 by Joseph Fischer, curiously the man who has been proposed as a possible forger of the Vinland Map. There are however no grounds for considering the 1507 Waldseemuller map to be a forgery.
8
. Alistair Campbell,
Old English Grammar
, Oxford University Press.
9
. Laurence C Thompson and M. Terry Thompson, “Metathesis as a grammatical device”,
International Journal of American Linguistics
,
35
(1969).
1
. Katrin Niglas,
The Combined Use of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Educational Research
, (2004); J Mingers, J Brocklesby, “Multimethodology: Towards a Framework for Mixing Methodologies”,
Omega
, Volume 25, Number 5, October 1997.
The convention of indexing Viking and modern Icelandic names by first names has been observed here. For example
Leif Eiriksson
is indexed under his first name
Leif
, not his patronymic
Eiriksson
. Viking names and most modern Icelandic names do not contain a surname.
Active
134â135
Adalbert, archbishop
64
Africa
74
Agder
25
Agnar Helgason
127
Ahnighito
139
Aidan, saint,
20
Akureyri
34
Aleutian Islands
135
Alexander IV, pope
60
alexipharmic properties
143
Alf, bishop
55
Alfred, king of England
7
,
13
,
21
Algonquin
159
Algonquin Indians
72
Alicorn
95
Al Idrisi
49
Ambrose
96
Ambrosini, Maria Luisa
148
America, etymology
172â177
American dream,
179
American Museum of Natural History
140
Ameryke, Richard
174
Anatase
86â87
Andreas
65
Annealing
138
L'Anse aux Meadows
1
,
8â9
,
18
,
75
,
171
,
178
Antiquitates Americanae
166
Aquidneck Island
171
Arctic Circle
6
Arctic fox
92
Arctic Ocean
108
Arctic Small Tool Tradition
153
Aristotle
95
Asgard
14
Asiatic people
3
Astrakhan
14
Astrolabe
150â152
Aud Ketildottir
30
Auroch
97
Axel Heiberg Island
113
Babylon
see under
Baghdad
Baffin, William
90
Ballad of Sigmundur Brestisson
24
Ballista
72
Baltic Sea
17
Basil
96
Bede
20
Bede's Death Song
65
Belle Isle Strait
77â78
beluga
see under
whale
Beowulf
65
Beowulf
79
berserkers
145
Bertius, Petrus
146
Bjarni Herjolfsson
68â69
Black Death
54
,
56
black houses
44
Blaeserk
37
Book of Enoch
154
Bornholm
169
Bosphorus
15
Brattahlith
38
Britain, etymology
173
British Isles
17
British Museum
145
Brutus
173
Butt of Lewis
147
Byzantium
see under
Constantinople
Butternut
9
Cabot, John
155â156
Cabot, Sebastian
156
Caedmon's Hymn
65
Cairns
98
California
2
etymology of
172
Canadian Arctic Expedition
126
Canute
dynasty
7
Cape Dorset
134
Cape Farewell
37
,
43
,
48
,
50
,
68
,
104
,
136
,
147
Cape York meteorite
139â140
caribou
92
Carlton, Suzanne
167
Cartier, Jacques
172
Celtic
art
7
Christianity
20
kingdoms
19
Chesterton windmill
166
Chicago
42
Christian IV, king
103
Chronognostic Foundation
168
Chukchi
136
Chukov Peninsula
135
Churchill River
153
Claus Magnus, archbishop
151
Claussen, Peder
101
climate change
91
Cloisters Museum
96
Cluny Museum
96
Cnoyen, James de Boise-le-Duc
see under
Cnoven, Jacobus
Columba, saint
20
Columbus, Christopher
1â3
,
13
,
141
,
149â150
,
160
,
173
,
177â179
Coppermine River
138
Cormorant Lake
124
Cornwall
27
Coronation Gulf
138
Crusading Tithe
52
Ctesias
95
Cumberland Sound
70