The Vinland Map is awash in 20th-century ink | Hacker News Reader

The Vinland Map is awash in 20th-century ink

news.yale.edu

155 pointsweare13822 comments

The backstory is interesting. The map first showed up in the 1950s, bound into a book that was owned by a Spanish-Italian dealer, Enzo Ferrajoli. He did not explain where it had come from, but that wasn't uncommon in the years after the chaos of WWII.

Ferrajoli sold the book and map for $3,500 to a US dealer, Laurence Witten, who also further obscured its origins[0]. Later, a benefactor purchased it on behalf of Yale, for $300,000

Notably, when Yale announced their discovery of the map, in 1965. The original source, Ferrajoli, was already in prison in Spain, charged with stealing other manuscripts (which he had also sold to Yale the year before)[1]

edit: added a citation

[0] https://www.maphistory.info/saenger.html para. 13-

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/07/archives/dealer-defends-r...

The story is somewhat similar to that of Drake's Plate of Brass, shifted by a few decades

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake%27s_Plate_of_Brass

This is more a conclusion of something suspected since it was first revealed, and not something that will rock the foundations of science.

I'm really curious what this means in the larger context: does it refute the fundamental evidence that Norsemen reached the New World before Colombus, or is there enough other evidence that this is no big deal?

No, we have archaeological remains from where the Norsemen camped in North America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows

This doesn't change any understanding of history.

I hoped as much...so what are the repercussions, if any?

None, really. People will still pay extraordinary amounts of money for old documents with shaky provenance on the basis that they'll have it and you can't, only to find out they've been duped. T'was ever and t'will ever be thus.

At least people know an NFT is genuine when people pay extraordinary amounts for a number on the basis that they’ll have it and you “can’t”.

Except everyone has access to any NFT in the same quality as its "owner", you just have to look up the transaction to access it.

An NFT is just a number on a ledger. The fact it represents ownership of anything is an agreement, and there’s nothing about the NFT itself that enforces that agreement. What are you going to do about it if someone, maybe the artist or their estate decides to disagree?

I agree of course. That’s what the quotes around ‘can’t’ was intended to convey.

Given that most NFTs of artwork are created without the knowledge or permission of the artist, I wouldn't call them genuine either.

Yale spent a lot of money to prove that their expensive piece of paper is worthless.

As have so many of their graduates.

It doesn't have any significant impact. The map was already assumed to be fake by most scholars. We have both historical and archeological evidence for the Norsemen reaching the new world, so that is not in doubt.

It is beyond doubt that Norsemen reached North America before Colombus. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows

It means nothing.

Archeological evidence found in the 1960s proves quite clearly that Norsemen reached the Americas 500 years before Columbus. In fact this evidence turned up - and got quite a lot of attention - in the 1960s, which is when this map was first published. But by the 1970s, analysis of the ink made it fairly clear it was a forgery.

This news is just that a more detailed analysis has been done, proving the map long believed to be a forgery was definitely a forgery. But the map was never really considered evidence of anything in particular; it was always questionable.

'I have "serious reservations" about it--the polite scholarly term for saying that you suspect fakery.... Not one of the Danish and Icelandic scholars who I consulted at Copenhagen in May 1969 believes the Vinland Map to be genuine, although they have every national and sentimental reason to accept it as such.'

Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, notes to Chapter III, "The Norsemen and Vinland".

Y'd think if you had access to 1400 "paper", the effort of making your own gall ink for your forgery. It ain't hard. Maybe the galls aren't common in Norway?

Otoh the deception lasted 100yrs.

> Otoh the deception lasted 100yrs.

Not really. Pretty much from the inception, the academic community was strongly skeptical of its authenticity. While Yale has only recently admitted that it's a forgery, that's probably due in large part to reluctance to admit that they spent a lot of money on a pretty clear forgery.

So many "artefacts" appeared in the early 20th century, many of which are now cornerstones of our understanding of various different histories, that one has to wonder just how many are fabrications that haven't been subjected to sufficient scrutiny due to their reified status. I mean, the Vinland Map was always out on the fringes, but less "revelatory" fakes could pass as real with little to no controversy, and have a significant impact on historical studies if not identified as a fake at the time of "discovery".

Tis why scientists and historians when presented with a single "fact" throw up their arms and exclaim "Well that proves it!" No point in looking for collaborating or conflicting evidence. Or, to reexamine when new technology or techniques arise.

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