Lögberg-Heimskringla - 01.10.2018, Page 7

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Lögberg-Heimskringla • 1. október 2018 • 7
What were you doing on October 11, 1965?
If you were around in Canada, you might
have been preparing for Thanksgiving. If
you were around in the United States, you might have
been watching a Columbus Day parade. And then the
news hit the media. The Vinland map was released.
The Vikings might have come to North America
before Columbus. What? This shocked the historical
and scientific worlds, but also the cultural fibre that the
U.S. was based on.
The Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic,
Connecticut, is currently hosting this Vinland map. The
map has a strong connection to Connecticut (through
Yale University) and is rarely on display. This exhibit
shows the map and explains the various opinions of
the map, including very recent examinations. Did
you know that the map is much smaller than you
would expect? In hindsight, it makes sense. Material
to write on was a hot commodity. There’s also a
timeline showing where the map has been since first
“discovery” and then into the hands of Yale.
This exhibit is anything but boring. When you
walk into the building, you are transported into a
1965 living room, complete with a TV sitting on the
floor. What appears to be an ordinary program on TV
is then broken into by news coverage of the Vinland
map. You’re watching what people saw on TV back
in 1965. This includes interviewing people on the
street about what they thought. Since some of these
interviews were conducted with Italians (Columbus’s
heritage) during a Columbus Day parade in downtown
Chicago, you can imagine what they thought. They
also had a display of headlines from newspapers and
magazines. Everyone was talking about this map.
As you work your way through the exhibit, they
talk about the theories of people who believe in
the map and people who don’t. They talk about the
different studies the map has gone through. They’re
honest. Yale is currently working on some more tests
of the map. Towards the end, you get to another fun
piece entitled, “Meanwhile, in Canada.” As expected,
this talks about the find of L’Anse aux Meadows in
the 1960s. Whether people believed in the map or not,
they had to think some more once that evidence turned
up.
Whether it was my age, growing up in Canada, or
being of Icelandic descent, I thought it was just fact
that the Vikings arrived before Columbus. However,
I spoke to a friend who grew up in New Jersey and
never heard anything contrary to the Columbus story
until the 1990s. In hindsight, that was probably
around the time we met!
This was an American-focused exhibit, so I don’t
know what people in Canada or other countries heard
and thought at the time. Do any readers have memories
of hearing about the Vinland map? A quick look online
showed a tiny story in the lower left of the first page
of the Winnipeg Free Press, dwarfed by a photo of a
Thanksgiving dinner.
The map is on display at the Mystic Seaport
Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, until October 31.
Merrill Albert
Providence, RI
THE VINLAND MAP SAGA
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MERRILL ALBERT