Historian discovers earliest evidence of a Scottish ship sailing to North America
An entry in a late sixteenth-century register has revealed that a ship known as “William” of Aberdeen made a voyage to “the new fund land” (Newfoundland) in 1596
Dorset, Norse, or Thule? Technological transfers, marine mammal contamination, and AMS dating of spun yarn and textiles from the Eastern Canadian Arctic
Norse woven textiles definitely were acquired by Thule people much farther to the north and during the late 13th century. The AMS date received from Skraeling Island helps to narrow the age of the woven woolen cloth recovered there, and implies that interactions between the Norse and Thule Inuit may have begun almost as soon as these Arctic pioneers arrived from Alaska
The Norse Penny Reconsidered: The Goddard Coin—Hoax or Genuine?
This article considers the penny’s numismatic and archaeological context, and engages with the debate from a Norwegian perspective.
The gargoyles of San Francisco : medievalist architecture in Northern California 1900-1940
This thesis examines the development from the novel perspective of medievalism—the study of the Middle Ages as an imaginative construct in western society after their actual demise.
The Extent of Indigenous-Norse Contact and Trade Prior to Columbus
The full extent of Norse exploration in North America is a growing field and the extent of their contact and trade with Indigenous Americans is becoming increasingly known.
Teaching Magna Carta in American History: Land, Law, and Legacy
I invite readers to consider the place Magna Carta holds in American heritage. My aim is not to demonstrate without flinch or pause that Magna Carta brought us to this day, or that Magna Carta is the ‘mother ship’ of liberty, but rather to explore how Magna Carta was woven into the American fabric.
‘Black Men and Malignant-Looking’: The Place of the Indigenous Peoples of North America in the Icelandic World View
As they headed back to the ship they saw three hillocks on the beach inland from the cape. Upon coming closer they saw there were three hide-covered boats, with three men under each of them.
Medieval Baltimore: Using American Medievalism to Teach about the European Middle Ages
The article describes the experience of teaching undergraduate college students the history of Medieval Europe through individual research projects using the city of Baltimore (USA), its buildings, monuments, museums, and the professional medievalists working and residing in the area.
Magna Carta: The Road to Runnymede
A look at the creation of the British Library’s Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy exhibition.
Medieval Manuscripts: The Universal Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado
Vaz Dourado authored at least four different nautical atlases, each of them including 20 maps, painted between 1568 and 1580, which is to say at the pinnacle of Portuguese cartography.
A 16th century view of North America in the Vallard Atlas
The scene above shows the second American map, which is of the East Coast of North America, and is one of the most significant of the Vallard Atlas.
Vikings in Manitoba?
Manitoba bound? Not likely!
Bad Heritage: The Vikings in North America
I’ll propose that few times are more Immemorial than the medieval, which I think helps explain why the North American Norse have been promoted so heavily. It’s not just their priority among European arrivals; it’s that they’re medieval arrivals.
Thousand-year-old crucible provides more evidence of the Vikings in Canada’s Arctic
Although it was found about fifty years ago, archaeologists have just determined that a small stone container discovered on Baffin Island in Canada’s Arctic region was actually part of metallurgical equipment used by the Vikings around the year 1000 A.D.
Vikings Red with Blood and Dead: White Martyrs and the Conquest of the American Frontier
In 1898, a Swedish American immigrant unearthed a mysterious stone from a Minnesota farm field.
Did Marco Polo go to Alaska?
A set of documents, brought to United States by an Italian immigrant, may reveal new details about Marco Polo’s travels in Asia, including that he possibly explored and mapped Alaska.
Viking Canada
Newfoundland is at the heart of what we may consider to be ‘Viking Canada.’
Christopher Columbus’ flagship may have been found
An underwater archaeological search may have discovered the Santa Maria, the flagship of Christopher Columbus when he sailed across the Atlantic reaching the New World in 1492.
Arctic encounters between Norse and Natives
Contact between the Norse and Native peoples in Canada’s Arctic was more extensive and earlier than first believed, according to recent archaeological evidence.
Why did Vinland fail?
Brigitta Wallace, one of the leading scholars on the Vikings in North America, examines why their settlements failed.
North America’s First Contact: Norse-Inuit Relations
The interaction between the Norse and Inuit was sparse, at times hostile, and could have possibly doomed the Greenland colonies to extinction.
Vínland and Wishful Thinking: Medieval and Modern Fantasies
Reevaluating the wishful reality of the Vinland islands requires that the stories of the Vinland journeys be squarely situated in the context of the world geographic system adopted by those who told those stories.
The Vínland sagas as propaganda for the Christian Church
Over the last two centuries, the Vínland Sagas have become some of the most discussed of Medieval Nordic documents. There are arguments about every aspect of the sagas: What the name Vínland means, if Vínland existed, where it would have been geographically, and how much of their content is historically accurate.
