Letter From The Editor (June 1974 | Volume: 25, Issue: 4)

Letter From The Editor

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Authors: Oliver Jensen

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June 1974 | Volume 25, Issue 4

As this issue goes to the printer, the world of cartography is still recovering from Yale University’s regretful announcement that its famous Vinland Map is an apparent fraud. We shared in the announcement of the map’s discovery in our October, 1965, issue.

To reprise the story, back in 1957 Laurence Witten, a respected rare-book dealer of New Haven, Connecticut, came to Alexander O. Victor, curator of maps in the Yale Library, and Thomas E. Marston, a friend and collector of medieval manuscripts, with a book he had recently obtained. It had electrified him. It contained a manuscript, partly paper, partly parchment, about a church mission to Tartary in the Middle Ages (now known as the “Tartar Relation”) and bound in with it a parchment map of the world. In the northwest corner it showed Iceland, a remarkably accurate representation of Greenland, and—here was the exciting discovery—a representation to its west of Vinland, or, since the map was naturally in Latin, Vinlanda Insula . Above it was an inscription which stated that Vinland had been discovered by Leif Ericson and Bjarni Herjolfsson. It also referred to the later visit there of Bishop Eirikr Gnupsson.

If authentic, that would be the first actual representation of any part of America before Columbus, for on the basis of analyses of the paper and watermarks in the accompanying Tartar Relation the manuscript could be dated and traced to a conference of religious scholars at Basel about the year 1440. The conclusion later drawn by the experts gathered together by Yale was that one scribe at that conference must have copied, as was then the custom, both the Tartar Relation and the map from earlier materials made available to him there.

At the outset the map was regarded only with suspicion, for it seemed to have little bearing on the accompanying manuscript. Even the wormholes at the bindings of the two items failed to match. While the Tartar Relation was undoubtedly genuine, it seemed entirely possible that the VinTand Map could have been done at almost any time and collated with it later, especially as the binding was of later vintage. But subsequently there came an amazing coincidence (perhaps too amazing, some now think). Quite independently Mr. Marston purchased by mail from a London bookdealer’s catalogue a fragment of another ancient document, a medieval history called the Speculum Historiale . He showed it to Mr. Witten, who was greatly excited by the similarity of the handwriting; he rushed home and found that by rearranging the three documents together the Wormholes matched. So did the exact size of the sheets of paper and parchment.

Keeping all this dark for eight years, Yale enlisted such experts as the late R. A. Skelton, superintendent of the map room at the British Museum; George D. Painter, assistant keeper in charge of incunabula at the British Museum; and others. Eventually they came up with a large and handsome book entitled