Great Website!

["Spirit One Email" <laurel@spiritone.com>]

Ahhhh, I enjoyed the Vineland Saga.  A book I use often for reference is
"The History of the Vikings" by Gwyn Jones who is the translator of the
Sagas.

    Also let's not forget that Norwegian, Thor Heyderdahl and his voyage on
the Kon Tiki.  Heard him speak about it in Indianapolis when I was a little
girl.
Laurel
-----Original Message-----
From: John S. Quarterman <jsq@mids.org>
To: sinclair@mids.org <sinclair@mids.org>
Date: Thursday, August 05, 1999 7:56 PM
Subject: Re: A Canadian perspective - Pohl


>>In fact all the
>>history we were taught was based on Nordic  folktales retold through
>>generations of bards of over a thousand years .  But this does not mean
>>that these voyages did not exist. A scientist may dismiss this evidence
>>but a historian can not.  Despite there being not a shred of physical
>>proof the voyages to the new world were appreciated. Was the history
>>wrong? No.
>
>Homer's Troy was considered completely mythical for many years because
>the only evidence for it was literary.  Then Heinrich Schliemann went
>and dug up evidence that a civilization at least resembling the one
>Homer described did exist in the right time and places.
>
>(No, I'm not recommending Heinrich Schliemann's methods, which were
>often crude at best; I'm merely saying that literary evidence can be
>correct.  And no I'm not saying that the Iliad is a historical document;
>there are too many anachronisms and contradictions in it for it to be
>a correct and accurate record of the Trojan War.  But I am saying that
>the kind of civilization that Homer described did exist when and where
>he said it did.)
>
>For that matter, many of the Mesopotamian rulers and empires mentioned
>in the Bible were widely considered to be mythical by scientists until
>archaeologists started finding concrete evidence of them, mostly in the
>nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
>
>Similarly, for many years westerners believed the myth they made up about
>the Aryan invasion of India, ignoring the extensive evidence in the Rig
Veda
>that it didn't happen that way and that Indian civilization is much older
>than westerners thought.  Excavations over the last half century in the
>Indus valley have led to some rethinking on both scores.
>
>And the Vinland sagas of Iceland were written down long before a
>thousand years had passed since the first voyages from Iceland and
>Greenland to Vinland; more like less than 200 years.
>
>Those voyages are better attested than many events in ancient Greece
>and Rome that are commonly accepted as history, and for the most part
>contain fewer fabulous elements than, for example, Herodotus.
>
>> In the 1960's when Pohl was writing his "heretical stuff"
>>about pre Columbian crossings an excellent archeologist made a
>>remarkable find which supported Pohl in some of the histories.
>
>The archaeologist's name was...?
>
>>  To show
>>that a blend of archeology and history is complimentary I enclose an
>>excerpt from one of the many tourist web sites on the discovery of the
>>physical evidence that Vikings made it to North America and created
>>settlements. You will appreciate the scientific approach.
>
>And the URL is...?
>
>Meanwhile, here's one with much of the same information:
> http://www.athenapub.com/vinland1.htm
>
>>Now from the Candian perspective let me share with you the information I
>>shared with Peter Cummings when we corresponded on this. Again there is
>>a Canadian bias. Henry was well documented as being the Earl with a
>>direct aligence to Norway. The King of Norway. Would the voyages to the
>>eastern shores of North America and Greenland be known? You bet. In fact
>>official deputations to Greenland had been something of a regular
>>occurance. Was Henry the first. No, he was following the sailing paths
>>of others from Norway. If he voyaged to Greenland and then south, was
>>the route in keeping with trade winds and current technologies. Yes.
>
>The Vinland sagas give explicit sailing directions for voyages among
>Norway, Ireland, Iceland, and Vinland, approximately of the form
>
> Start at glacier X in Iceland.
> Sail west 4 days.
> Sight glacier Y in Greenland.
>
> Start at glacier A in Greenland.
> Sail west 2 days.
> Sight glacier B in Vinland.
>
>(The above are examples I just made up to illustrate the form;
>they are not the actual directions from the sagas.)
>
>The nordics were quite good at sticking to a given latitude by looking
>at the sun and stars and sailing due west or east, so the above kind
>of instructions were quite workable and dependable.  This is not to
>say that they were infallible; the first nordic to discover Vinland
>did so because he was blown off course, and he didn't even land, which
>caused him much ridicule.
>
>We are not talking the Eddas here; some sagas were about gods and myths,
>but the Vinland sagas are historical sagas, with considerable detail on
>known historical events such as the conversion of Iceland to
>Christianity.  My favorite line is this:
>
> "This same summer Eirik went off to colonize that land he had discovered,
>  calling it Greenland, for he argued that men would be all the more drawn
>  to go there if the land had an attractive name."
>
>Erik the Red, Land Speculator.  Sounds just like Stephen F. Austin talking
>about the "mountains" here in his town.
>
>The Vinland sagas were written about 1190 and about 1260,
>so they were composed well before Henry's time and would have
>been available to him as an educated prince of the nordic realm.
>They are readily available to everyone now in paperback;
>you can get them from Amazon.com for $9; look for Vinland Sagas.
>
>Some of them are available online, such as:
> http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/north/nor-i/thule/017e.htm
>
>John
>[ This is the Sinclair family discussion list, sinclair@mids.org
>[ To get off or on the list, see http://www.mids.org/sinclair/list.html

[ This is the Sinclair family discussion list, sinclair@mids.org
[ To get off or on the list, see http://www.mids.org/sinclair/list.html