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Culture Documents
NARRATOR: Bertram Schofield refused to give the British Museum's stamp of approv
al to the Vinland Map. Without authentication, Ferrajoli and Davis would not be
able to ask a high price. They decided to try another strategy.
Geneva was one of the hubs of the European rare book trade. One Swiss dealer, th
e firm of Nicolas Rauch, was holding a series of auctions of books and manuscrip
ts relating to the discovery of America. But without proof that it was genuine,
Rauch would not sell the Vinland Map. He did, however, introduce Ferrajoli to a
young American dealer, Laurence Witten.
KENNETH NEBENZAHL (Rare book dealer): He was extremely knowledgeable. He was a l
inguist, familiar with most Western European languages. He was a Latinist. And h
is catalogue descriptions were erudite. He was a very knowledgeable dealer.
NARRATOR: Away from the close scrutiny of the sales room, Ferrajoli offered Witt
en the Vinland Map. Despite the map's lack of a proper pedigree, Witten, as he l
ater wrote in a publication for Yale, was captivated.
VOICE OVER READING FROM LAURENCE WITTEN RECOLLECTION Whatever the Vinland Map an
d the Tartar Relation may ultimately prove to be, I fell under their spell in 19
57.
NARRATOR: Witten paid Ferrajoli $3,500 for the Vinland Map volume. In 1957, that
was big money, but if he could prove that the Vinland Map was drawn before Colu
mbus arrived in America in 1492, he stood to make a fortune.
At his home near Yale, where he had been a graduate student, Witten turned detec
tive. He started by trying to date the manuscript with which the map was bound,
the Tartar Relation. The Tartar Relation was mainly written on paper, and Witten
discovered faint watermarks of an ox's head. By finding the watermark in a refe
rence book, he could show that the paper had been made in 1441. This indicated t
hat the Tartar Relation was an authentic medieval manuscript, but the map was dr
awn on parchment, animal skin, and had no identifying watermark. What was its da
te?
Witten's strategy was to prove that the Vinland Map had always been bound with t
he Tartar Relation, which scholars generally agree is authentic. While examining
them he found an important clue, wormholes. If he could show that the holes eat
en by bookworms lined up from one document to the next, it would prove the Vinla
nd Map and the Tartar Relation had always been bound together and had to be conn
ected in time. But try as he might, Witten could not make the wormholes line up.
Witten had come to a dead end.
A year later, his fortunes would be transformed by a remarkable coincidence. A f
riend from Yale's Stirling Library brought Witten part of a well-known medieval
history by a Dominican Friar named Vincent of Beauvais. It was called the Specul
um Historiale or Mirror of History.
That night, after dinner, he sat down with the manuscript and compared it to the
Tartar Relation and the Vinland Map. Immediately, he was struck by an amazing c
oincidence.
VOICE OVER READING FROM LAURENCE WITTEN RECOLLECTION My adrenaline began to flow
as it dawned on me that the wormholes through the Vinland Map exactly matched t
hose at the front of Vincent de Beauvais's Speculum, while the ones in the Tarta
r Relation just as perfectly matched those at the end of the same volume. As far
as I was concerned, the Vinland Map was authenticated then and there, beyond an
y reasonable shadow of doubt.
NARRATOR: It now appeared that the Vinland Map had once been part of a medieval
volume containing two authentic ancient documents. The map was at the front of t
he volume, next came the Speculum Historiale, and finally, the Tartar Relation.
Bookworms had eaten through the manuscripts, leaving the wormholes as evidence l
inking the map with the Speculum and the Speculum with the Tartar Relation. Witt
en was convinced. The Vinland Map was real.
Witten offered it for sale to Yale University. Alexander Vietor, the curator of
the map collection, turned to one of the university's wealthiest and most genero
us alumni for help. Billionaire Paul Mellon was intrigued by the idea that one m
ap could radically rewrite history. The exact price he paid has never been revea
led, but in return for what has been estimated as hundreds of thousands of dolla
rs, according to Alexander Vietor's wife Anna, Mellon set one crucial condition,
secrecy.
ANNA GLEN VIETOR (Alexander Vietor's Wife): Well, he wanted it to burst on the w
orld, and everybody would be thrilled, and this would change all history. So my
husband came back and said, "You've got to keep it a secret and not tell anybody
about it, because I'll be in great trouble with Mellon."
NARRATOR: Yale selected three scholars to quietly try to authenticate the map. W
hile they were working, a remarkable find lent further support to the Vinland Ma
p's message that the Vikings were the first Europeans to reach America.
Since 1960, Norwegians Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad had been searching the Canad
ian coast for evidence of a Viking presence. At the fishing village of L'Anse au
x Meadows in Newfoundland, they were taken to the remains of what locals describ
ed as an Indian camp. The Ingstads began excavating.
Over the
cal 11th
r doubt.
ked like
The Ingstad's announcement provided the archaeological proof that the Vikings ha
d beaten Columbus to America.
By 1965, Yale was prepared to reveal its closely guarded secret to the world. Th
e three scholars had completed a lavish book in preparation for the Vinland Map'
s unveiling. The only decision that remained was the exact date for the launch.
Yale's benefactor, Paul Mellon, was consulted.
ANNA GLEN VIETOR: Everybody in those days had a featherweight diary, and Mellon
got his out. "I'm going to be shooting, I'm going to be fishing, I'm going to be
...," and so forth and so on. And suddenly, on October 11th, he was going to be
at a meeting up near New Haven, and so he said that would be the perfect time.
NARRATOR: Mellon's choice of date could not have been more provocative. October
11th was the eve of Columbus Day, the holiday commemorating Columbus' discovery
of America.
The launch party was a lavish affair. Its centerpiece was an ice sculpture of a
Viking longboat created by Yale's chefs. As ambassadors mingled with academics,
Alexander Vietor playfully donned a helmet sent as a gift by the King of Norway.
The Vinland Map was toasted as a crowning achievement for Yale and its billiona
ire benefactor.
But from the press and certain sectors of the public, news of the map was greete
d with hostility.
MICHAEL HENCHMAN (Brandeis University): The public was firmly convinced that Col
umbus had discovered America, because that's what they'd learned in school. And
suddenly they were told that it was not Columbus who discovered America but the
Vikings. And particularly, the Italian Americans were very upset that Columbus h
ad been removed from center stage.
JOHN LA CORTE (President Italian American Historical Society, Newsreel Footage)
The twenty one million Americans will resent this great insult to Columbus, espe
cially released on a day that we're honoring him.
NARRATOR: Beyond bruised pride and public outrage, there were serious concerns a
bout the secrecy surrounding the map prior to its unveiling.
MICHAEL HENCHMAN: Authenticating the map is a very big task. It requires one to
have a lot of knowledge about orthography, paleography, material science, histor
y, and in particular, Old Norse history. And it was really ridiculous to think t
hat any three people could pass a professional judgment on all these aspects.
NARRATOR: A year after the map's formal unveiling, Yale, with the Smithsonian In
stitution, held a conference, inviting a wider range of specialists to examine t
he map. These scholars pointed out strange anomalies and raised serious question
s. Why was the Viking's own Scandinavian homeland drawn so crudely? Why was Gree
nland accurately portrayed as an island even though it was not circumnavigated u
ntil the late nineteenth century? And perhaps the most damaging piece of evidenc
e to challenge the Map's authenticity? The fact that Vikings had never been know
n to make maps their navigation skills relied instead on their knowledge of the en
vironment.
SIR ROBIN KNOX-JOHNSTON (National Maritime Museum, UK): They'd have been far mor
e aware of what was going on around them. If it suddenly clouded over and you co
uldn't navigate, what direction was the wave coming in? Well, just keep the wave
the same aspect as the boat and we know we're going to stay on course. Whereas
we link up to a satellite to know where we are, they would use all these natural
things around them to say "Look, I'm about here."
KIRSTEN SEAVER: They had their sailing knowledge in their heads and they conceiv
ed of their world...not in terms of drawing diagrams that other people could see
. There's literally not a single map that shows any kind of cartographical drawi
ngs from the Norse in the Middle Ages.
NARRATOR: As the chorus of doubt around the map's legitimacy grew, Yale decided
that scientific tests might help prove the Vinland Map real. At New Years, 1967,
the map, the Speculum and the Tartar Relation were flown to London, back to the
British Museum.
There, all three manuscripts were examined under ultraviolet light. The test rev
ealed that inks from the Tartar Relation and Speculum Historiale absorbed the ul
traviolet light and, therefore, appeared deep black, but the lines on the Vinlan
d Map did not appear black. Instead, they fluoresced. Scientists at the British
Museum reported that the ink on the Vinland Map was not the same as the ink used
in the other two authenticated manuscripts, or, for that matter, any other docu
ments of the period. So what was it?
Yale had the map flown back to the U.S., and contacted the Chicago firm of McCro
ne Associates. Dr. Walter McCrone was famous for pioneering the use of the micro
scope for forensic analysis. He achieved international fame for investigating th
e mysteries surrounding the deaths of Napoleon and Beethoven, and for uncovering
evidence that the Shroud of Turin, with its image of Jesus, was a fake.
Now McCrone and his colleague Anna Teetsov turned their investigative skills on
the Vinland Map. Under low magnification, they found that the outlines on the ma
p seemed to consist not of a single line, but two, one on top of the other.
ANNA TEETSOV (McCrone Associates): There was a yellow line, and wandering back a
nd forth, was a black line or little pieces of black pigment. The yellow line wa
s very distinct while the black line was flaking off.
NARRATOR: McCrone asked Teetsov to lift tiny samples of the yellow line for anal
ysis. With the polarized light microscope Teetsov can control the angle of the l
ight passing through the substance, and identify it by the special way it refrac
ts and absorbs that light. On the Vinland Map, when the light was shone onto the
map's surface, the yellow ink particles appeared white. But when the light was
shone through the map, the yellow ink appeared dark. These unique refractive qua
lities were a vital clue to the ink's ingredients.
ANNA TEETSOV:
like anatase.
NARRATOR: Besides its extreme accuracy, this technique has an added benefit.
KATHERINE BROWN: Raman microprobe spectroscopy is particularly good for examinin
g documents because it's non-invasive, it's non-destructive, so it causes no dam
age to the manuscript or document that you're examining, which is very important
if it's valuable.
NARRATOR: It was the perfect technique to settle the debate on the authenticity
of the most valuable map in the world. Brown and Clark shot their laser light at
the Vinland Map.
ROBIN CLARK:
In the Vinland Map, we confirmed that there was anatase on the y
ellowish-brown lines under the black. We could certainly detect that on the ink
but not on the body of the map.
NARRATOR: The presence of anatase in the ink and not on the parchment, and the f
act, already established by McCrone, that the anatase was synthetic could only m
ean one thing.
ROBIN CLARK:
It wasn't something which could have fallen off the ceiling. It
was deliberately placed as part of the ink. That confirmed absolutely what McCro
ne had found.
KATHERINE BROWN: The only conclusion that we could draw from the evidence that w
e saw is that the Vinland Map was produced sometime after about 1920.
NARRATOR: So what does all this evidence add up to? The lack of any other maps m
ade by the Vikings, McCrone's findings that the ink on the Vinland Map contains
synthetic anatase manufactured after 1917, and now Brown and Clark's confirmatio
n.
MICHAEL HENCHMAN: To date, every conceivable test that could be done has been do
ne, and the conclusion today is that the map is a fake.
KATHERINE BROWN: It's a modern forgery.
NARRATOR: But if the Vinland Map is a fake, who is the forger? Can science help
solve another mystery at the heart of the Vinland Map story?
One man seems central, Italian book dealer Enzo Ferrajoli. It is through Ferrajo
li that the Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation come together. And later it was
revealed that Ferrajoli was involved in brokering the Speculum Historiale. Ferra
joli made Spain his adopted country, and it is there where important clues to th
e forgery can be found.
The Cathedral of La Seo, in the city of Saragossa, contains one of Spain's great
est libraries. In 1957, a scholar noticed that manuscripts he had previously con
sulted had disappeared. An investigation revealed that over a hundred priceless
texts were missing. The police swiftly arrested their prime suspect, Enzo Ferraj
oli.
At a special tribunal, the prosecution claimed that Ferrajoli had charmed the li
brarians, who allowed him to roam at will through their collection.
ELOY FERNNDEZ CLEMENTE: Apparently, Ferrajoli took away the books very slowly. So
me he would borrow and wouldn't return. But other books, he would smuggle away h
idden in newspapers, in a bag or a briefcase. And then, of course, the perfect s
ystem was to destroy the record cards, so nobody could ask for these books. The
answer from the archivists was, "These books are not here because they don't app
hem have enough pointers to Father Fischer to make it worth investigating on tha
t alone.
NARRATOR: But what would have been Father Fischer's motivation? Seaver contends
that Fischer believed so firmly that the Vikings discovered America that in the
mid-1930s he set out to create the map that he thought should exist.
KIRSTEN SEAVER: He would not have looked upon it as falsifying the cartographic
record. I also doubt very much that he made the map deliberately for others to s
ee. I think it was an essentially a private exercise.
NARRATOR: But Father Fischer's private scholarship was about to collide with wor
ld history. For in 1938, German forces marched into Austria, seized Stella Matut
ina College, evicted the priests and confiscated everything of value including a
rt, rare books and, Seaver believes, Father Fischer's Vinland Map.
Hitler's campaign of world conquest was fueled by a belief in an Aryan master ra
ce, embodied by Germans who traced their cultural roots to the Vikings. In the h
ands of the Nazis, the Vinland Map would be a historic claim to America and a po
werful political weapon.
If Seaver is right, Father Fischer used his knowledge of ancient maps and Viking
history to draw the Vinland Map on an authentic piece of medieval parchment. Fi
scher's Vinland Map was then confiscated by the Germans, and after their defeat,
the map found it's way into the hands of known fascist and Nazi sympathizer, En
zo Ferrajoli. A first step in determining if Father Fischer was the actual forge
r is to see if the parchment on which the Vinland Map is drawn is medieval in or
igin.
One way to date parchment is by carbon-14 analysis. Since parchment is smoothed
animal skin, this technique uses the regular decay of carbon atoms to arrive at
a date within a probable range of accuracy. The only problem is the process dest
roys the sample. But Yale agreed to let a group of scientists under the directio
n of Garman Harbottle cut the smallest sliver from the map.
GARMAN HARBOTTLE: Here was this thing worth many millions of dollars. It was hor
ribly unnerving. I was a nervous wreck during the time the thing was going on. I
calculated later that the value of the piece we sliced off was forty or fifty t
housand dollars and, of course, one doesn't do that lightly, one does it very ca
refully.
NARRATOR: Harbottle sliced a thin sliver from the map into six samples. The firs
t sample tested dated to the 1950s. Thinking the modern date a mistake, perhaps
due to contamination or a poor attempt at conservation, Harbottle's team cleaned
off the surface of the remaining samples with acetone.
GARMAN HARBOTTLE: Acetone, which should have no effect on parchment at all, was
extracting about 30 percent of the weight. In other words, the weight of the par
chment was one third foreign matter. That's a lot, 30 percent.
NARRATOR: With the foreign matter removed, he then tested the remaining parchmen
t samples. Instead of 1950, these dated to around 1440. Harbottle concluded that
the Vinland Map was drawn on authentic medieval parchment. But other scientists
were puzzled by the discrepancy.
MICHAEL HENCHMAN: When I first heard about the results from this, what I heard w
as crazy. One measurement had said that the map was modern and the other measure
ment had said that the map was old.
NARRATOR: What could account for such radically different test results? One poss
ible answer is a crude attempt at conservation carried out in the 1950s. Another
answer lies in a centuries old process for turning rough animal skin into finis
hed parchment by adding a coating that provides a smooth writing surface.
MICHAEL HENCHMAN: Somebody took an old piece of parchment, dating back to 1440,
stripped off the surface, and replaced it with a new surface.
NARRATOR: This new surface could explain why the first sample, which was not cle
aned with acetone, dated to 1950. The body of the parchment is ancient but the s
urface is modern.
MICHAEL HENCHMAN: The map we see today was put down on the surface of the parchm
ent and therefore we can only conclude that the map was put on the parchment sin
ce 1950.
NARRATOR: These findings suggest that a forger took an ancient parchment, resurf
aced it in the 1950s, and, upon it, drew the infamous Vinland Map. If true, this
would eliminate Father Fischer who died in 1944 as a suspect. Ferrajoli remains at
the center of the mystery, but any information he had about the identity of the
forger went to the grave with him in 1966.
For nearly fifty years, the Vinland Map has been both celebrated and damned. Whe
n it first appeared, it challenged the gospel that Columbus discovered America a
nd proclaimed the Vikings as the earliest Europeans to visit the New World. It's
ironic that, even though the Vinland Map is most likely a fake, we now know, th
rough archeological evidence, that the Vikings were the first. So why does the d
ebate over the Vinland Map refuse to die?
GARMAN HARBOTTLE: The Vinland Map is still discussed as though it was a life and
death matter. I think this is just a very natural human trait to argue over the
se things. I don't think the argument will ever stop.
ROBIN CLARK:
I think it's all part of the scientific ethos, that we're intere
sted in knowing answers to questions and finding out what's true and then dismis
sing speculation that is clearly not true.
MICHAEL HENCHMAN: Scientific data has shown that it's a fake. The scientists are
just reluctant to accept it.
NARRATOR: Even now, new studies are underway, but it is unlikely they will settl
e the debate.
KATHERINE BROWN: Science doesn't really deal in truths. But science does deal in
facts. How you choose to interpret those facts is up to you. Given the facts th
at we have seen with the Vinland Map, I conclude that it's a forgery; other peop
le still disagree.