Customer Reviews

The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation: New Edition

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The Vinland Map purports to be a 15th century map depicting Vikingexploration of North America centuries before Columbus. If genuine,the Vinland map is one of the great documents of Westerncivilization; if fake, it's an astoundingly clever forgery and Yale University has egg on its face. The first edition of the book in question, The Vinland Map and Tartar Relation, announced the discovery to the world in 1965. To commemorate the thirtieth anniversary, YUP published a second edition, adding a few new essays in support of the map's authenticity.

Of the controversy over its authenticity little more can be said in this review. The book itself covers some of the important objections (e.g. the presence of titanium in the ink), but slights or ignores much of the philological and historical criticism of recent years. (The web contains a certain amount of such criticism.) Lay readers may come away with the impression that the academic world is solidly behind the map, although this is far from the case.

Nevertheless, if you're interested in the Vinland Map this is the one essential book to own. It includes high-quality black and white plates of the map, together with text and translation of the legends and suchnot. The map was at one point bound with a manuscript known as the Tartar Relation (Historia Tartorum), itself a fascinating specimen of medieval geographical knowledge. As the circumstances of its production and replication are critical to the authenticity of the map, a full text and translation is also included.

When the so-called Vinland map was first revealed to the public in 1965 by Yale University, who had purchased it under still mysterious circumstances (the original owner/seller wanted to remain anonymous) it threatened to overturn everything one believed about pre-Columbian nautical knowledge of the lands westward across the Atlantic from Europe. It was more or less accepted that Viking expeditions had explored Canada's northeastern shore centuries before Columbus and even set up a short-lived colony among the Intuit. But the map, if authentic, would mark the first time (circa 1450, if the advocates are to be believed) that the New World is represented on a world map based on exploration rather than theology or fable. It would be a bombshell indeed if the map could be authenticated. The Viking expeditions of the 11th and 12th centuries had thus far not yielded any maps and charts, as the Northmen were not cartographers but "sea sense" navigators. So Yale commissioned a conference of scholars to present a thorough examination of all points of contention. The published proceedings are represented in this fascinating volume. I had tried to obtain the updated (1995) edition, but the bookseller sent me the original edition by mistake. However, reviews of the updated version have claimed that it did not present anything radically new from the 1965 version. I would recommend this book (or the new edition) to anyone who is interested in this still unsettled controversy. One school argues for authenticity, while another claims the map is a very clever and painstaking forgery. After reading this book, it might still be useful to consult more recent studies, such as that by Karen Siever, as well as the proceedings of a 1970s conference to further debate the findings.