Was 'Old' Map Faked to Tweak the Nazis?

[Dave Monroe]

The New York Times
Saturday, September 14, 2002
Was 'Old' Map Faked to Tweak the Nazis?
By EMILY EAKIN

The Vinland Map must be the world's most contested
piece of parchment. Donated to Yale University by the
philanthropist Paul Mellon in 1957, the map, which
famously describes the Viking discovery of North
America, has been stuck in scholarly deadlock ever
since. The subject of endless studies and
counterstudies, the map is either a rare medieval
artifact — the first cartographic representation of
the continent — or else a modern fake. 

Consider the two conflicting studies that appeared in
scientific journals last month. One, published in
Radiocarbon, gives a date for the map's parchment of
1434, suggesting to the researchers that the map could
well be authentic. The second study, published in
Analytical Chemistry, comes to the opposite
conclusion, arguing, as previous studies have, that
the presence of a mineral called anatase in the map's
ink indicates a 20th-century origin — even if the
parchment is far older. And just last Sunday, in The
Boston Globe, the rival factions were rehashing the
debate once again.

But now the forgery camp may have some fresh
ammunition. A Norwegian historian says she has
fingered the forger: a German Jesuit priest named
Josef Fischer, whom she believes made the map partly
to protest the Nazi regime. 

"He would have made the map not for profit and not to
flaunt it publicly, but mostly as a private protest,"
said the historian, Kirsten A. Seaver, an independent
scholar based in Palo Alto, Calif., who is the author
of a well-regarded book about the Viking exploration
of North America. "I'm very convinced it was done to
tease the Nazis."

Politics and religion are at the heart of Ms. Seaver's
intricate case against Father Fischer, which she has
laid out in several scholarly articles and is turning
into a book that she hopes to publish next year. And
though her evidence is mostly circumstantial — Father
Fischer left no confession — experts say her theory
merits serious attention. 

"He seems pretty plausible," said Robert W. Karrow,
curator of special collections and maps at the
Newberry Library in Chicago. "It may have been
intellectual arrogance or just a game, but he was in
pretty much the right place at pretty much the right
time and had the right information. I think it all
hangs together."

As Ms. Seaver points out, in many ways the Jesuit is
an obvious suspect. He was an avid scholar and
collector of old maps, credited with discovering the
now legendary Waldseemüller world map from 1507 — the
first to use the word America.

He was also passionately committed to the idea that
the Norse had been to this continent long before
Christopher Columbus, publishing a book on the subject
in 1902. At the time, there was little evidence for
Father Fischer's theory. Yet he was convinced a
cartographic record of the venture must exist. 

These facts alone might qualify as probable motive,
but Ms. Seaver's theory is more elaborate. Father
Fischer, she argues, would have been outraged by the
Nazis' persecution of Jesuits. 

In 1938, Nazi officials forced the sale of Stella
Matutina, the Jesuit College in Feldkirch, Austria,
where Father Fischer had taught and was living in
retirement. (He moved to Munich the next year and died
in 1944.)

At the same time, Ms. Seaver contends, Father Fischer
would have been appalled to see ancient Norse history
put to use as Nazi propaganda. The Third Reich did a
bustling traffic in ersatz Norse art and artifacts,
she points out, as German officials saw in the Vikings
an Aryan people with territorial ambitions much like
their own. In particular, a Viking conquest of North
America would supply a perfect rationale for the
Reich's empire-lust overseas. 

By making the Vinland Map, Father Fischer would thus
seem to be fulfilling a cherished Nazi dream. But —
and here's the rub — the map is laden with Catholic
imagery. The legend in the top left corner refers not
only to the discovery of "Vinland" by "the companions
Bjarni and Leif Eiriksson," but to a trip there soon
after by Eric, "legate of the Apostolic See and the
bishop of Greenland." 

This, Ms. Seaver argues, was Father Fischer's ruse: to
give the Nazis — and history — a Viking conquest of
the New World but to make clear that it was a Catholic
one as well. 

"The map shows two things clearly," she said. "The
Roman Catholic Church was here first, long before
Hitler and the Third Reich could claim any rights to
the region, and it showed the Norse had discovered
America long before Columbus. Whoever the Nazi
authority was who was going to pronounce on such a map
in the public eye would have to make a choice. Should
the map be discarded because of its Catholic
symbolism? Or should they go with the lovely idea of
the Norse discovery of America?"

Anomalies in the map's legend — including its
idiosyncratic account of Norse history — further
implicate Father Fischer, Ms. Seaver says, who would
have relied on inaccurate secondary sources. But her
most tantalizing clue concerns a Czech library that
may once have housed the Vinland Map parchment.

When Mr. Mellon purchased the map from a Connecticut
rare books dealer in 1957, he also acquired two
associated 15th-century works: "The Tartar Relation"
and "Speculum Historiale." The latter volume was
incomplete, however, consisting of just the first four
sections. 

But in a Swiss auction catalog from 1934, Ms. Seaver
found a listing for a manuscript fragment that appears
to be the volume's missing fifth section. The catalog
attributed the fragment to the Mikulov Castle library
in Brno, a collection that was known for its antique
maps and that Father Fischer consulted. 

When the library was sold in the early 1930's, Ms.
Seaver speculates, Father Fischer either bought or was
given a bound edition containing both"The Tartar
Relation" and "Speculum Historiale," later converting
some of the parchment — into the Vinland Map.

"If correct," said Peter Barber, head of map
collections at the British Library, Father Fischer's
connection to "Speculum Historiale" "is close to a
smoking gun." 

Close may be the best Ms. Seaver can do. Like her,
Father Fischer was interested in map forgeries, and
even published an article on some Renaissance world
maps that he suspected were fakes. And like her, he
lacked a smoking gun. 

"As far as I can see, none of these maps has an
absolutely impossible appearance," he was obliged to
concede. 

"But all of them are to a greater or lesser degree
strange and different from all other hitherto known
maps." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/14/arts/design/14MAP.html

Detail of the Vinland Map, which supposedly describes
the Viking discovery of America. New data suggest it
was forged by a Jesuit priest as a political protest.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2002/09/14/arts/184map.jpg

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
http://news.yahoo.com