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Rediscovering Vinland: Evidence of Ancient Viking Presence in America

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Fred Brown has done his homework. I wish his editor had done as well. His arguments regarding the Viking voyages have the solid feel of someone who had walked the land and sailed the seas in question. I think. I say that I think this is so because he jumps all over the place both geographically and temporally. The many digressions tend to lend credence to his arguments, but they also introduce doubts as to his judgment. (Really, what has the fact that Roger Williams may have seen his mentor burned at the stake to do with the Viking voyages?)

Brown calls his small boat the Wave Cleaver meant to symbolize his cutting through the legends to the truth. Well, the reader will need his own cleaver to get to the meat of the argument.

The question of exactly where in North America was the true location of Leif Eriksson's Vinland has over the years has consumed a great deal of ink. But few books on the subject -- and this by an amateur, not a professional academic -- are as well-reasoned as this one. Fred Brown has built his theory on two strong legs: a careful study of the Norse sagas matched by a detailed coastline search from a small boat, and the cultural and seeming genetic anamolies among the tribe of Narragansett Indians. In "Rediscovering Vinland" Brown presents a persuasive argument that Vinland is to be found at an obscure inlet at the entrance to Narragansett Bay in southern Rhode Island. This is not an airtight, ironclad case, to be sure; for absolute proof, solid archaeological evidence would be necessary. But Brown has certainly identified a site which deserves further exploration to see whether such firm proof might indeed be found.