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More Vinland maps and texts. Discovering the New World in Higden’s Polychronicon

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.jmedhist.2003.12.001

1873-1279

Michael Livingston,

Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies

Abstract Over four decades have passed since an antiquarian bookseller brought a medieval map to Yale University Library and set into motion a series of events that would end in a controversy that continues to this day: is the so-called Vinland Map real and, if so, what is its significance? This present essay seeks to contribute to the debates over the early mapping of America by investigating the possibility that the Vinland Map (regardless of authenticity) is not the sole visual representation of Norse America, and certainly not the earliest. Rather, the earliest surviving maps of America appear to be a series of T–O derivative maps produced roughly 150 years before the voyages of Columbus as illustrations to Ranulf Higden's Polychronicon. Further, largely ignored descriptions of Vinland can be found not only in Higden's text, but in four additional texts as well, two of them in the vernacular. These various appearances of Vinland indicate the continuing remembrance or rumour of another land to the west, a record of the New World that demands additional study. Keywords: VinlandRanulf Higden Polychronicon AmericaDiscoveryMaps Acknowledgments I owe a great debt of thanks to John Block Friedman of the University of Illinois. Not only did his precise scholarship make this present work possible, but he also provided me with his own reproduction of the Popilton map so that I might complete my study. Thanks are also owed to Thomas Hahn and Andrew Wadowski of the University of Rochester, who each made a number of substantive points after initial readings of this work, and Andrew Galloway of Cornell University, who heard the first version of this work delivered at the 2002 Rochester–Cornell Symposium and provided welcome encouragement and suggestions. Notes 1 The Vinland Map and the Tartar relation, ed. R. A. Skelton et al. (New Haven, 1965; 2nd ed. 1995). The authenticity of the Vinland Map has been under suspicion since its existence was first revealed to the world. For a brief overview of the arguments against its authenticity, see Lars Lönnroth’s review of Skelton’s second edition in Alvíssmál, 7 (1997), 115–20. Academic opinion remains thoroughly divided, and scientific examinations have further clouded the matter. The most recent radiocarbon dating shows the parchment to date to 1434 (plus or minus 11 years), while recent spectroscopy has shown that the map’s ink is probably modern (post-1923). See D. J. Donahue et al., ‘Determination of the radiocarbon age of parchment of the Vinland Map’, Radiocarbon, 44 (2002), 45–52; and Katherine L. Brown and Robin J. H. Clark, ‘Analysis of pigmentary materials on the Vinland Map and Tartar relation by Raman microprobe spectroscopy’, Analytical Chemistry, 74 (2002), 3652–61. For the many scholars that regard the map as a fake, the pertinent question is not whether it is authentic but who perpetrated such a brilliant hoax. One of the most interesting theories is that of Kirsten A. Seaver, who argues that it was made in Germany between 1933 and 1941 by a retired Jesuit priest playing a complicated joke on the Third Reich’s Teutonic obsessions; see ‘The “Vinland Map”: who made it, and why? New light on an old problem’, The Map Collector, 70 (1995), 32–40. 2 For reproductions of some of the earliest maps of America, see America: Early maps of the New World, ed. Hans Wolff (Munich, 1992); and The mapping of America, ed. Seymour I. Schwartz and Ralph E. Ehrenberg (New York, 1980). 3 These sketch maps are now thought to be in the hand of Alessandro Zorzi and dating to circa 1520 at the earliest. See George E. Nunn, ‘The three maplets attributed to Bartholomew Columbus’, Imago Mundi, 9 (1952), 12–22. 4 Gunnar Thompson, The Friar’s map of ancient America (Seattle, 1996). Thompson’s identifications have been decisively rebutted as his ‘North America’ is clearly Lappland and is, indeed, labelled as ‘Norvega’ (Norway), and his ‘South America’ is Java (and labelled as such). For a reproduction and a discussion of the map, see Marcel Destombes, Mappemondes, A.D. 1200–1500: Catalog preparé par la Commission des Cartes Anciennes de l’Union Géographique Internationale, Monumenta cartographica vetustioris aevi, vol. 1, Suppl. 4 (Amsterdam, 1964), 206–7. 5 Armando Cortesão, The nautical chart of 1424 and the early discovery and cartographical representation of America (Coimbra, 1954). 6 Controversial as these tentative identifications might be, it is not my intention to enter into a discourse for or against the accomplishments of Columbus. In addition to the moral questions surrounding the treatment of the native Americans in the wake of Columbus’ arrival, much ink has been spilled concerning the legitimacy of his ‘discovery’. Besides the fact that the native population was already here and the still unresolved issue of whether or not Columbus claimed a new discovery at any point or merely thought he was in India, a great number of individuals are said to have beat him to the punch in crossing the Atlantic from Europe. See, for example, Patrick Huyghe, Columbus was last (New York, 1992). 7 Geraldine Barnes, Viking America: the first Millennium (Cambridge, 2001), x. 8 I have largely relied on the translations of Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson for all Norse saga materials; see The Vinland sagas: The Norse discovery of America (London, 1965). Where relevant, I have checked this against the following editions: Ólafur Halldórsson’s edition of Eiriks saga rauða in Texti Skálholtsbókar AM 557 4to, Íslenzk fornrit suppl. 4 (Reykjavík, 1985); Matthías Þórðarson’s edition of Grœnlendinga saga in Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, eds, Eyrbyggja saga, Grœnlendinga sogur, Íslenzk fornrit 4 (Reykjavík, 1935). I will refer to these texts by their English titles: Eirik the Red’s saga and Saga of the Greenlanders. Both of these sagas are deeply indebted to the Icelandic Landnámabók, or The Book of Settlements; see Hermann Pálsson and Paul Geoffrey Edwards, trans., The Book of Settlements: Landnámabók (Winnipeg, 1972), 109–17. 9 On the role of Christianity in Greenland, see Kirsten A. Seaver, The frozen echo: Greenland and the exploration of North America, ca. A.D. 1000–1500 (Stanford, 1996), 61–90. 10 Seaver, The frozen echo, 45. 11 On this point, see Seaver, The frozen echo, passim. It was previously thought that the medieval Greenlanders were either massacred by the native population or simply starved to death. As Seaver illustrates, however, neither theory fits the data currently available about medieval Greenland. 12 Some scholars have argued that the first syllable was short (vin instead of vín), thereby making the name ‘grass-land’; this argument has met with substantial resistance from scholars who believe it to be linguistically and historically unlikely. See Erik Wahlgren, The Vikings and America (London, 1986), 139–46. 13 This summation is based on the events as described in the Saga of the Greenlanders. For another summary of Viking voyages to America, deftly comparing the saga accounts, see Tryggvi J. Oleson, Early voyages and northern approaches 1000–1632 (Toronto, 1963), 18–28. 14 Anne Stine Ingstad, The discovery of a Norse settlement in America: Excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, 1961–1968, I (Oslo, 1977), passim. 15 For an overview of the ‘solid’ facts we have to go by and one of the more likely scenarios that fits them, see Wahlgren, 153–67. 16 Many of these references can be found in Oleson, 28–30. 17 Adam of Bremen, History of the archbishops of Hamburg–Bremen, trans. Francis J. Tschan (New York, 1959), 219. 18 Barnes, xiii. 19 The etymology of this term is rather uncertain. E. V. Gordon notes possible connections to modern Norwegian skræla ‘scream’ and Icelandic skælna ‘shrink’, whereas modern Scandinavian languages use the term skræling to refer to a weakling or a churl. See E. V. Gordon, An introduction to Old Norse, ed. A. R. Taylor, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1956), 218. 20 The Oxford illustrated history of the Vikings, ed. P. Sawyer (Oxford, 1997). 21 Encyclopedia of the Viking Age, ed. J. Hayward (London, 2000). 22 Mary Campbell, The witness and the other world: Exotic European travel writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, 1988); and Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous possessions: The wonder of the New World (Chicago, 1991). 23 Anthony Pagden, European encounters with the New World: From renaissance to romanticism (New Haven, 1993), 5, 11. 24 An amusing collection of critical responses to the Viking presence in America is provided by Barnes, xvii–xix. 25 Wahlgren, 172. Wahlgren’s discussion about the location of Vínland is one of the most thorough available. 26 Ibid. See also Douglas McNaughton, ‘A world in transition: early cartography of the North Atlantic’, in: Vikings: The North Atlantic saga, ed. William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward (Washington, 2000), 258. 27 Copenhagen, Royal Library MS G. K. S. 2881. A similar map, probably drawn from the same source, was produced by Icelandic bishop Hans Poulson Resen in 1605 and is now on display in the map room of Copenhagen’s Royal Library. See Samuel Eliot Morison, The European discovery of America: The northern voyages (Oxford, 1971), 72. 28 McNaughton, 265–7. 29 I do not mean to imply that these various appearances represent independent sources. Rather, they simply represent multiple witnesses, related or not, to the existence of knowledge about Vínland at a late stage in the history of medieval Europe; it is the dissemination of the idea of the New World that is of importance to my arguments here. 30 Evelyn Edson, Mapping time and space: How medieval mapmakers viewed their world, The British Library studies in map history, vol. I (London, 1997), 126. On Higden in general, see John Taylor’s still unsurpassed The Universal Chronicle of Ranulf Higden (Oxford, 1966) and the more recent work by Antonia Gransden, Historical writing in England; vol. 2, c. 1307 to the early sixteenth century (London, 1982), 43–57. As Taylor points out (96–102), the precise dating of the versions (and, indeed, the number of versions) of Higden’s work are still subject to debate; see, for example, the discussion of the matter in Gransden, 44–5. 31 Edson, 100–1. 32 Edson, 127. 33 Ranulf Higden, Polychronicon, 1.31, ed. Churchill Babington, Rolls series no. 41 (London, 1865), 320–9. 34 Dacia est insula boreali parti Germaniae contigua. Ibid., 320. 35 Wyntlandia insula, ad occasum Daciae, terra sterilis est, gens barbara et idolatra, quae navigantibus ad eorum portum ventum vendere solent, quasi sub nodis fili inclusum; quorum enodatione ventus augebitur, ut voluerint. Ibid., 322. 36 Ibid., 323. 37 Ibid., 323. 38 Ibid., xxxv. 39 Ibid., xxxv (note 3). 40 On the Eulogium in general, see Gransden, 101–5 and 158. 41 Eulogium historiarum, 2.91, ed. Frank Scott Haydon, Rolls series no. 9 (London, 1860), 78–9. 42 Winlandia est patria juxta montana Norwegiae versus Orientem sita, super litus Oceani; non multum fertilis nisi in graminibus et silvis. Gens illa barbara, agrestis, saeva, magicis artibus occupata; unde navigantibus per eorum litora vel apud eos propter venti defectum moram trahentibus ventum venalem offerunt et vendunt. Globum de filo faciunt et nodos multos in eo connectunt, secundum quod ventum volunt habere fortiorem vel leviorem; quibus propter incredulitatem illorum illudentes daemones aerem quaesitant et ventum majorem vel minorem excitant, secundum quod plures nodos de filo extrahunt vel pauciores; et quandoque ita ventum commovent ut illi miseri fidem adhibentes submerguntur. 43 It is possible that Haydon is also relying on the interchangeability of F and W that can occur during portions of the middle ages. Such an argument, however, would be made on somewhat tenuous paleographic and linguistic grounds in this manuscript. 44 Higden, xxxvi. 45 Ibid. 46 James Robert Enterline makes brief comment on the possible connections between the Geographica and Vínland in his recent book Erikson, Eskimos and Columbus: Medieval European knowledge of America (Baltimore, 2002), 114–5. Fridtjof Nanson also notes the possibility, though he is reluctant to acknowledge the Vínland tales as anything more than a set of primarily mythological texts. See: In northern mists, 2 vols. (New York, 1911), 1.192, 2.31–32, 2.189–91. 47 For a brief overview of Cabot’s voyages, see Morison, 157–209. 48 It is possible, though unlikely, that this description could also be translated as ‘beyond the shores of Ocean’, in which case Finland would not fit at all—only Vínland would make sense. On the perspective of Scandinavian geography in both the Skölholt and Resen Maps; see above and note Footnote27. 49 George Woods reports a similar story that may go back to Holinshed’s Chronicles about witches living on a hill near Peel on the Isle of Man. See An account of the past and present state of the Isle of Man (London, 1911) (Chapter 12). Sir James George Frazer records instances of the legend appearing not only on the Isle of Man, but also in Lerwick, in Lapland, on Shetland, and on the Isle of Lewis. See Golden bough: A study in magic and religion (New York, 1922) (Chapter 5.4). 50 See Enferline, 115, who notes Diamond Jenness, ‘Eskimo string figures’, Report of the Canadian arctic expedition (Ottawa, 1924), 13 (B), 181. 51 A good reproduction of one of these maps can be found in Morison, 21. 52 See Cortesão, passim. 53 David N. Parsons, ‘How long did the Scandinavian language survive in England? Again’, in: Vikings and the Danelaw, ed. James Graham Campbell, et al. (Oxford, 2001), 299–312. 54 Edson, 128. 55 For a full catalogue of the Higden maps, see The history of cartography, vol. 1, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, 1987), 364–5; a stemma of these maps appears on 313; a catalogue is also provided by A. S. G. Edwards in ‘Geography and illustration in the Polychronicon’ in: Art into life: Selected papers from the Kresge Symposia, ed. Kathleen Scott and Carol Fisher (East Lansing, 1995), 95–113. 56 On the discovery of the textual sources for the Hereford Map, see Scott D. Westrem’s The Hereford Map: A transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (Turnhout, 2001). 57 Harley and Woodward, 347. 58 Taylor, 64. 59 I have been able to access six quality reproductions of Higden maps: British Library MS Royal 14.C.ix, fols. 1v–2r; British Library MS Royal 14.C.ix, fol. 2v; British Library MS Royal 14.C.xii, fol. 9v; British Library MS Harley 3673, fol. 84r; Huntington Library MS HM 132, fol. 4v; and Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Lat. 4126, fol. 1v. Of these MSS, only the simple sketch map in Harley 3673 does not include Vínland—of Europe it includes only Paris, Rome, Naples, Constantinople, Germany, Norway, Spain, and Ireland. Even without the Harley sketch map, the remaining five reproductions represent every branch of the Higden map stemma (see Harley and Woodward, 313). For reproductions of most of these maps, see Destombes. 60 Very fine reproductions of both maps can be found in Edson. Ironically, the best of these reproductions is of the map on 2v, which is the cover illustration. 61 Taylor, 64 and Edson, 128. 62 Harley and Woodward, 312. This conclusion stands against that of V. H. Galbraith, who argued that the entire Higden manuscript currently housed in the Huntington Library (HM 132, fol. 4v), including the map, is an autograph copy; see V. H. Galbraith, ‘An autograph MS of Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 34 (1959), 1–18. Nevertheless, the opinion that the map in HM 132 is in Higden’s own hand is still maintained by the Huntington Library, as conveyed in a recent personal correspondence with curators William Frank and Mary Robertson. For a proposed stemma in addition to that of Harley and Woodward, that includes a recently discovered map related to Higden’s but found apart from the text, see Peter Barber, ‘The Evesham world map: a late medieval English view of God and the world’, Imago Mundi, 47, (1995), 13–33. 63 Previous descriptions of the map in general can be found in Edson, 128–9; Taylor, 64–6; Konrad Miller, Mappaemundi: die ältesten Weltkarten, III (Stuttgart, 1898), 94–109; and Youssouf Kamal, Monumenta cartographica Africae et Aegypti (Leiden, 1935). Fridtjof Nansen briefly discusses the connection of Higden with Vínland, but he regards both the textual and cartographic evidence as geographically confused. We have already seen that there is no necessary confusion in the texts, and the Higden maps, as illustrations of those texts, are no different. See Nansen 2.188–92. 64 My identification of Thule as Greenland is subject to question. Thule, a northern land where the sun never sets, was first reported by Pytheas of Massilia around 325 BCE and is cited in almost every text of medieval geography, including Higden. Various locations seem to have held the name during the Middle Ages, but the 14th century appears to have favoured Greenland. But given that two of the other most prominent ‘Thule’ candidates (Iceland and Norway), also appear on the map, and that Greenland’s bishopric would almost surely warrant inclusion on such a map, the identification seems quite likely. See Roger T. Macfarlane, ‘Thule’, in: Trade, travel, and exploration in the Middle Ages: An encyclopedia, ed. John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg (New York, 2000). 65 See note Footnote62, above. 66 See the map stemma in Harley and Woodward, 313. 67 John Pinkerton provides almost a complete catalogue of the manuscript’s contents in An enquiry into the history of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1814), 1.471–76. John Block Friedman includes a more descriptive discussion of both the manuscript and much of its contents in Northern English books, owners and makers in the late middle ages (Syracuse, 1995), 40–52. As Friedman notes, the excerpt of Higden’s Polychronicon is the 26th item in the codex, appearing on folios 120v–133r. I am very much indebted to Friedman’s scholarship for much of my palaeographical information about this manuscript. 68 Friedman, Northern English books, 41. A copy of Higden’s text is known to have been in the Austin Friars’ Library at York in the 14th century. See The Friars’ Libraries, ed. K. W. Humphreys, Corpus of British medieval library catalogues (London, 1990), 11–154. 69 For more information on Popilton’s career, see the information provided by John Block Friedman in ‘Cultural conflicts in medieval maps’, in: Implicit understandings, ed. Stuart B. Schwartz (Cambridge, 1994), 87–90 and in: Northern English books, 41–3. 70 Friedman views this shape, which extends across half of the map, as an enormous, ethnocentric depiction of England. While this theory is interesting, the shape and position clearly dictate otherwise, as does the labelling on Popilton’s exemplar maps. One might point to extremely similar shapes for the water dividers in many other medieval maps, as well: the Cottoniana Mappamundi, an Anglo-Saxon world map of circa 995, is one very good example. See Friedman, ‘Cultural conflicts’, 93. 71 For an overview of the discovery of the Canary Islands and the attribution of the name ‘Fortunate Isles’, see Joseph P. Byrne, ‘Canary Islands’, in: Trade, travel, and exploration, ed. Freidman, et al. The first Higden map labels them Insule Fortunate, the second labels them Fortunata Insula. 72 Friedman produces a similar list of the countries in which Vínland is mentioned, but he does not seem to have realised the full import of that identification. He also misreads ‘Arani’, meaning the Aran Isles, for ‘Man’. See ‘Cultural conflicts’, 92. 73 It is possible that Huntington Library MS HM 132, fol. 2v includes the Orkneys, but the map is badly faded. 74 This mandorla map is not in the same line in Harley and Woodward’s stemma. See Harley and Woodward, 313. 75 The post-medieval history of this manuscript is a bit more interesting, as it is thought to have found its way into the hands of Henry VIII (1509–1547), who had ‘a cheap unillustrated edition of Higden close to hand in his study, and an illustrated deluxe edition with a map with his “fine” books’ (Edson, 128). It is generally accepted that the king’s deluxe edition was none other than BL MS Royal 14.c.ix. 76 Quoted by Huyghe, 207. 77 Morison, 1–157. 78 Additionally, Morison assumed ‘Tile’ to be Iceland. As the preceding discussion has shown, however, Thule is more likely to be identified as Greenland in this context since both Thule and Iceland appear on most maps of the period. If Fernando is to be believed, we are left with the rather intriguing, though remote, possibility that Columbus sailed beyond Greenland and perhaps predated his own ‘discovery’ of America by 15 years; see note Footnote64 above.