Discovering Viking America

Critical Inquiry

Volumn 28, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 868-907

  Mancini, J M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK   (Ireland)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61449207398     PISSN: 00931896     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/341238     Document Type: Review

References (158)

1. Rasmus B. Anderson, America Not Discovered by Columbus: An Historical Sketch of the Discovery of America by the Norsemen in the Tenth Century (1874; Chicago, 1877), p. 63; hereafter abbreviated A
2. There is a vast and fraught literature on the question of the immigrant cultural response to relocation. In the main, historians have set up this problem as a dialectic between assimilation and resistance, exemplified at either pole by Oscar Handlin's seminal The Uprooted (1951; Boston, 1973)
3. and John Bodnar's The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington, Ind., 1985)
4. Even as "resistance" emerged as the dominant paradigm in the 1980s (seen, for example, in the hostile response to Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez [Boston, 1982]), however, it proved to be unsustainable as a fit-all theory and signs of its instability mark much of the literature of the past two decades
5. Both Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (New York, 1983)
6. and David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, 1991), two otherwise brilliant works, stumble on their inability to reconcile a desire for (authentic) immigrant resistance to the reality of assimilation
7. Thus when Rosenzweig's makers of ethnic saloons, fraternal associations, and foreign-language presses are inevitably ground down into a homogenized army of cinema-watching, motorcar-driving robots, and assimilation turns Roediger's music-sharing, race-mixing, land-loving Irish into psychologically damaged, race-baiting Irish Americans, both seem to suggest that this represents a falling away from immigrants' "true" selves. This problem is not limited to contemporary scholarship but is rooted in historical analyses of immigration and assimilation, such as Randolph Bourne's seminal essay "Trans-National America," in War and the Intellectuals, ed. Carl Resek (New York, 1964), pp. 107-24
8. Indeed, it is possible that Bourne furnished contemporary immigration scholarship with one of its central ironies: its insistence, on the one hand, on the "constructedness" of ethnicity - seen, for example, in Mary Waters's fascinating Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley 1990)
9. or David Hollinger, Post-Ethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York, 1995) - and its clear suggestion on the other that assimilation is defined by a loss of authenticity
10. See Millard L. Gieske and Steven J. Keillor, Norwegian Yankee: Knute Nelson and the Failure of American Politics, 1860-1923 (Northfield, Minn., 1995), p. 99
11. As David Emmons has shown, this consolidation of the margins can also be seen in Irish America in the case of Butte, Montana, where the fact that the Irish were the "first" immigrants meant that they were able in large part to create, rather than merely to bend to, the social, cultural, political, and economic structures of the community. See David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1925 (Urbana, Ill., 1989)
12. Clearly there were differences between the constituent Scandinavian immigrant groups, and I do not wish to suggest that there were not. What is important in this context, however, is that authors from a number of different backgrounds - Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, and mixed - used the Vikings and used the more general strategies outlined here
13. Of course, there were other factors that increased Scandinavians' "ethnic options." On the most obvious level, their ethnic and religious makeup make them less vulnerable to racism than other immigrants; as white Protestants, they managed to avoid the most abusive programs of assimilation other groups suffered, particularly before the First World War, and they were never in the racially liminal position occupied by Jewish or Irish immigrants. Nonetheless, the choices they made within this context were instrumental. For a fascinating look at how the limits placed on other immigrant groups could influence the outcome of such choices, see Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley, 1996)
14. O. M. Norlie, History of the Norwegian People in America (Minneapolis, 1925), p. 73
15. For a concise history of this revival as well as its transplantation to the United States, see Matti Enn Kaups, "Shifting Vinland - Tradition and Myth," Terrae Incognitae 2 (1970): 29-60. As Kaups notes, there was a long-standing Scandinavian and European debate on the Viking discovery of America well before such accounts became generally familiar to Americans, and as early as the late eighteenth century some Americans, most notably Benjamin Franklin, had a passing familiarity with the Vinland sagas. Still, it was not until the 1830s and 1840s that such accounts began to be widely spread
16. See Antiquitates Americanae sive scriptores septentrionales rerum ante-Columbianarum in America, ed. Carl Christian Rafn (1837; Osnabrück, 1968)
17. selections of which appear in The Discovery of America by the Northmen, in the Tenth Century, with Notices of the Early Settlements of the Irish in the Western Hemisphere, trans. North Ludlow Beamish (London, 1841)
18. see also Snorre Sturlason, The Heimskringla, or the Sagas of the Norse Kings, trans. Samuel Laing, 4 vols. (London, 1839)
19. Another popular translation was The Finding of Wineland the Good: The History of the Icelandic Discovery of America, trans. Arthur Middleton Reeves (London, 1895)
20. This included William Morris's handsomely produced Saga Library, published between 1891 and 1905. See The Saga Library, ed. Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon, 6 vols. (London, 1891-1905)
21. The Vikings enjoyed a similar popularity at this time in Germany, leading to the translation of several accounts of Viking discovery into English. See, for example, Joseph Fischer, The Discoveries of the Norsemen in America, trans. Basil H. Soulsby (London, 1903)
22. and J. G. Kohl, A Popular History of the Discovery of America, trans. Major R. R. Noel (London, 1865)
23. See Antiquitates Americanae sive scriptores septentrionales rerum ante-Columbianarum in America. Although the fact that this volume was initially published in Latin and Danish would have reduced its direct readership in the United States, soon after its publication extracts were translated and the volume was reviewed in English-language journals such as the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, the North American Review, the Knickerbocker, the New York Review, and elsewhere, so that many more Americans would have been exposed to the ideas therein. For bibliographic information on Rafn's reception in English, see Halldór Hermannsson, "The Northmen in America (982-c. 1500): A Contribution to the Bibliography of the Subject," Islandica 2 (1909): 6-7, 65-68
24. It also invited direct correspondence with Rafn himself on the part of American scholars eager to identify various archaeological finds that might point to Viking or other European presence. See, for example, Henry R. Schoolcraft, "Brief Notices of a Runic Inscription Found in North America," Memoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord (1840-44): 119-27
25. See Charles W. Elliott, New England History from the Discovery of the Continent by the Northmen, A.D. 986, to the Period When the Colonies Declared their Independence, A.D. 1776, vol. 1 of The New England History (New York, 1857)
26. See also the first volume of William Cullen Bryant and Sydney Howard Gay, A Popular History of the United States from the First Discovery of the Western Hemisphere by the Northmen, to the End of the First Century of the Union of the States, vol. 1 of The Popular History of the United States (New York, 1876)
27. A. Davis, A Lecture on the Antiquities of Central America, and on the Discovery of New England by the Northmen, Five Hundred Years before Columbus (New York, 1840), p. 21
28. See Robin Fleming, "Picturesque History and the Medieval in Nineteenth-Century America," American Historical Review 100 (Oct. 1995): 1061-94
29. See also Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny (Cambridge, Mass., 1981)
30. See Eben Norton Horsford, Sketch of the Norse Discovery of America (Boston, 1891), p. 25
31. and Leif's House in Vineland (Boston, 1893)
32. For information on Horsford, see Stephen Williams, Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory (Philadelphia, 1991), pp. 206-10
33. On the "Viking Revival" in architecture, see Richard Guy Wilson, "Oscar Wilde, Colonialists, and Vikings: Newport and the Aesthetic Movement," Nineteenth Century 19 (Spring 1999): 4-11
34. This organization, established in 1858, was an affiliated society of the New-England Historic, Genealogical Society, named in honor of the eighteenth-century antiquarian Thomas Prince. Its purpose was "the publication of rare works" relating to the history of America and particularly New England, with the purpose of, as Slafter put it, "the perfecting of what we have begun as a library of New-England history." Members included Charles Francis Adams, Charles Eliot Norton, and Francis Parkman (Edmund Slafter, Discourse Delivered before the New-England Historic, Genealogical Society [Boston, 1870], pp. 24, 31
35. see also Voyages of the Northmen to America, ed. Slafter [1877; New York, 1967], pp. 144-49)
36. See Slafter, The Discovery of America by the Northmen, 985-1015 (Concord, N.H., 1891)
37. See Slafter, Discourse Delivered before the New-England Historic, Genealogical Society, p. 12
38. This project began with the history of his own family in his Memorial of John Slafter, with a Genealogical Account of His Descendants (Boston, 1869)
39. Slafter, The Discovery of America by the Northmen, 985-1015, pp. 3-4
40. During his long life, Anderson (1846-1936) was also United States minister to Denmark (1885-1889) and long-time editor of Amerika, a prominent Norwegian-American newspaper (1898-1922). For biographical information on Anderson, see Lloyd Hustvedt, Rasmus Bjørn Anderson: Pioneer Scholar (1966; New York, 1979)
41. Paul Knaplund, "Rasmus B. Anderson, Pioneer and Crusader," Norwegian-American Studies and Records 18 (1954): 23-43
42. Einar Haugen, "Wisconsin Pioneers in Scandinavian Studies: Anderson and Olson, 1875-1931," Wisconsin Magazine of History (Autumn 1950): 28-39
43. and C. W. Butterfield, Literary and Biographical Sketch of Prof. Rasmus B. Anderson (Madison, Wis., 1879)
44. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, for example, chided Anderson for his uncritical acceptance of two particular "finds": the Dighton Rock, which Anderson claimed to have runic inscriptions, and the Newport Tower, which Anderson insisted was a Norse, rather than a colonial, edifice. See Thomas Wentworth Higginson, letters to Anderson, 5 May 1877 and 10 June 1877, Anderson correspondence, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison (SHSW), reel 1. See also Voyages of the Northmen, p. 137
45. For another skeptical view of the time, see Charles Rau, "Observations on the Dighton Rock Inscription," Magazine of American History 2, no. 1 (1878): 82-85
46. Although skeptics such as Higginson questioned Anderson's credulity he was hardly the last Viking theorist to see Norse ruins everywhere he looked. The Newport Tower, the Dighton Rock, and many other "Viking" sites and artefacts have had their promoters throughout the twentieth century and continue to inspire heated defences. See, for example, A. C. Clausen, Leif Eriksons Discovery of America (Spokane, Wash., 1938)
47. Barthinius L. Wick, Did the Norsemen Erect the Newport Round Tower? (Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1911)
48. and Carl H. Strandberg and Glyn Nelson, "Possible Norse Settlement Traces on Cape Cod," unpublished ms., 196-?, Minnesota Historical Society (MHS). Even the usually sober Royal Ontario Museum produced a pamphlet in the 1960s that giddily suggested that a trove of Viking swords and axes might actually have been left by Norse travellers to Northern Ontario. See A.D. Tushingham, The Beardmore Relics: Hoax or History? (Toronto, 1966)
49. For a more skeptical analysis of these remains, see Johannes Brønsted, "Norsemen in North America before Columbus," Smithsonian Institution Annual Report for 1953 (Washington, D.C., 1954), pp. 367-405
50. This fact is noted in Butterfield, Literary and Biographical Sketch of Prof. Rasmus B. Anderson, p. 4
51. For information on the Norwegian immigrant press, see Arlow W. Andersen, The Immigrant Takes His Stand: The Norwegian-American Press and Public Affairs, 1847-1872 (Northfield, Minn., 1953)
52. and Odd S. Lovoll, The Promise of America: A History of the Norwegian-American People, trans. Lovoll (Minneapolis, 1984)
53. See Rutherford B. Hayes, letter to Anderson, 15 Oct. 1878, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, reel 1
54. Longfellow refused on the grounds that he had never written a letter "of that nature" but assuaged Anderson's fears by writing that the book was "interesting and valuable," that it would "make its own way in the world," and that Anderson's work would give "name and fame to you and to your University" (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, letter to Anderson, 11 Aug. 1875, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, reel 1). Anderson continued to send later works and information to Longfellow, who received his correspondence enthusiastically. See Longfellow, letters to Anderson, 1 Nov. 1876, 28 Nov. 1876, and 15 Dec. 1879; see also Edith Longfellow, letter to Anderson, 19 May 1875, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, reel 1
55. George Bancroft, letter to Anderson, 26 Apr. 1877, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, reel 1. Even the doubter Higginson wrote, "the book as a whole seems to me of value as popularizing certain facts and traditions with which people ought to be familiar, and I thank you for your courtesy in sending it" (Higginson, letter to Anderson, 10 June 1877, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, reel 1; see also Charles W. Tuttle, letter to Anderson, 9 Mar. 1878, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, reel 1). Anderson also corresponded on Northern matters with Bayard Taylor, a self-described "admirer of the Scandinavian race and poetry" (Bayard Taylor, letter to Anderson, 12 Dec. 1874, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, box 19), successfully proposed a book swap with University of Pennsylvania anthropologist Daniel G. Brinton (see Daniel G. Brinton, letter to Anderson, 13 Dec. 1882, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, box 26), and had a lengthy correspondence with E. N. Horsford and his daughter Cornelia, who carried on the Viking project after her father's death
56. A dedication to which Longfellow seems to have responded favorably. The title of the volume was Norse Mythology: The Religion of Our Forefathers Containing All the Myths of the Eddas, Systematized and Interpolated (Chicago, 1875). See Longfellow, letters to Anderson, 10 Mar. 1873 and 11 Aug. 1875, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, reel 1
57. Sometimes, Anderson's pleas to the native born to accept the continuity of immigrant ways took a more direct form. In his First Norwegian Settlements in America within the Present Century, for instance, Anderson directly addressed the native-born reader with the admonition that "you should not blame the foreigners for clinging to their language and traditions
58. By doing so they bridge the Atlantic ocean and bring to this country the fruits of all the progress made from year to year in Europe," without which American society would be immeasurably poorer (Anderson, The First Norwegian Settlements in America within the Present Century [1898; Madison, Wis., 1899], p. 167)
59. For a thorough overview of Scandinavian immigrant literature in its other guises, see Dorothy Burton Skårdal, The Divided Heart: Scandinavian Immigrant Experience through Literary Sources (Lincoln, Nebr., 1974)
60. Due to the success of his Viking writings and his "authentic" position as a scholar of Scandinavian literature, Anderson also had something more concrete to offer to certain native-stock enthusiasts of the Vikings: positive reviews of their books. Rabid anti-Columbian Viking theorist Marie Brown Shipley for example, virtually begged Anderson to review her translations of Swedish literature, "and in the 'Nation,' by preference," so that she could successfully self-publish them and avoid the "treachery" of greedy publishing houses (Marie A. Brown, letters to Anderson, 29 Nov. 1878, 3 Feb. 1879, and 15 Mar. 1879, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, box 22)
61. And, it might be added, contrasts with the tendency of twentieth-century Viking theorists of immigrant descent to emphasize the hypothesis that, wherever they may have landed initially, the Vikings somehow managed to wind up in Minnesota or other parts of the Middle West with a deeper connection to the immigrant community itself
62. As Barbara Miller Solomon writes, the relative distance of most Scandinavians from the teeming masses of immigrants in the eastern cities did not always prevent them from being seen as objectionable. While Charles Francis Adams, Henry Cabot Lodge, and other late nineteenth-century defenders of Teutonic superiority frequently saw Scandinavians and Germans, particularly in the rural west, as the last hope for racially healthy immigration, other observers in the late nineteenth century blamed all non-English "'old'" immigrants, including Scandinavians, for "the degradation of American civilization," which the arrival of even stranger new groups in the last decades of the century had only furthered (Barbara Miller Solomon, Ancestors and Immigrants: A Changing New England Tradition [Cambridge, Mass., 1956], p. 159; see also pp. 31, 160)
63. For a comprehensive look at attitudes towards immigrants in the Midwest in the nineteenth century, see Jon Gjerde, The Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917 (Chapel Hill, 1997), esp. chaps. 1-2
64. Anderson was not the only ethnic writer to situate the Viking discovery of America within the context of an inevitable westward Aryan progression. This cause was also taken up by the Danish/Norwegian-American Harold W. Foght, who wrote that the Aryan migration, although it commenced thousands of years ago while the history of man was young, has not yet come to an end ... the overflow is being dispersed over the whole earth, peopling America and Australia, setting up there and elsewhere, a new and powerful dominion over the aborigines. Wherever they go the Aryans carry with them their enlightenment. [Harold W. Foght, The Norse Discovery of America, with Some Reference to Its True Significance (Blair, Nebr., 1901)] For a comprehensive discussion of the idea of the westward progression of the Aryan people and their origins, see Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny
65. Elsewhere, Anderson also made the more conventional claim that Norwegians were patriotic, industrious, and quick to learn English. See Anderson, First Norwegian Settlements within the Present Century, p. 167
66. Certain later Norwegian-American writers such as Olaf Morgan Norlie, who sweepingly attributed Norse origin to the "Pilgrim Fathers" and their descendants, did not show this restraint (Norlie, History of the Norwegian People in America, p. 24)
67. One other risk of this strategy was that it would lead to a cartoonish typecasting of Norwegians and their culture. Indeed, although Anderson's Viking campaign was successful in creating a positive image of Scandinavians, it did nothing to further his simultaneous goal of spreading the good word about contemporary Scandinavian culture. As it turned out, editors such as S. S. McClure and J. B. Gilder of the Critic wanted "stirring viking stories of adventure," but not Ibsen (S. S. McClure, letter to Anderson, 17 Oct. 1890, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, box 32; see also J. B. Gilder, letters to Anderson, 14 Apr. 1882 and 18 Dec. 1882, Anderson correspondence, SHSW, boxes 25 and 26)
68. It should be pointed out that at least one critic of Anderson and his fellow Viking theorists was unpersuaded by this line of argument not just because the critic disputed Anderson's evidence for Norse discovery but because he scorned the Norse character itself. Rather than a culture of "freedom and enlightenment," J. P. MacLean insisted that the Vikings were "lawless in a bad sense," their natures "more savage than that of any North American Indian at the time of the discovery" and ridiculed Anderson and others like him for attributing all progress and enlightenment to the "fable" of "our Saxon inheritance." As MacLean himself indicated, however, his view was not a common one (J. P. MacLean, A Critical Examination of the Evidences Adduced to Establish the Theory of the Norse Discovery of America [Chicago, 1892], pp. 52, 53, 54)
69. Olson himself was preoccupied with this issue and believed that the Viking discovery of America was the best tool to put Norwegians "in the front part of American history books" and to thereby erase the backwoods image of Norwegians among "Plymouth-Rock-Americans" (Julius Olson, "The Vinland Voyages," speech delivered at Leif Erikson Day Festival, Chicago, 1923, unpublished ms., Olson Papers, Norwegian American Historical Association, Northfield, Minn. [NAHA])
70. In this, Anderson foreshadowed similar arguments attributing Norse ancestry to various Indian languages and linking English place-names to the Norse discovery. See, for example, Wilfred Harold Munro, Tales of an Old Sea Port (Princeton, N.J., 1917)
71. which claimed that Rhode Island's Mount Hope was originally "Hop," from the Icelandic for "bay" a claim echoed in Matthias Thórdarson, The Vinland Voyages, commissioned for an American audience by the American Geographical Society (Matthias Thórdarson, The Vinland Voyages, trans. Thorstina Jackson Walters [New York, 1930], p. 42)
72. Anderson was not the last to argue for a Norse origin to Native languages. In the 1940s and 1950s, Norwegian-American Reider Thorbjorn Sherwin compiled an eight-volume lexicography outlining the "Old Norse origin of the Algonquin language." See Reider Thorbjorn Sherwin, The Viking and the Red Man: The Old Norse Origin of the Algonquin Language, 8 vols. (New York, 1940-56)
73. That Anderson had tapped into a powerful vein of anti-Catholicism in his support of the Vikings can be seen in the comments made by Marie Brown (later Shipley) before the U.S. Senate during an 1888 hearing to decide whether to recognize officially the discovery of America by Leif Erikson: The vital and all-absorbing question now is, whether this American Republic, founded on surely secular principles, wishes to pay posthumous honors, on a scale of unprecedented magnificence, and at the bidding of the pope, and the countries under his dominion ... to the Roman Catholic missionary and devotee, Christopher Columbus, who was sent out by the Church of Rome to convert the natives of a land whose locality he knew, having ascertained it definitely in Iceland before he started forth on his voyage to the western continent. [To do so] would be to publicly sanction the claims of the Church of Rome to this land, and virtually to invite the pope to come and take possession of it. [Brown, "Leif Erikson," speech delivered 23 Mar. 1888, MHS] See also Shipley, The Norse Colonization in America by the Light of the Vatican Finds (Lucerne, 1898). While this suspicion of Rome persisted until well after the turn of the century in Viking narratives, by the 1930s authors had come to embrace a more inclusive view of discovery and its symbols. The vice president of the Minnesota Leif Erikson Monument Association, for instance, insisted in 1934 that "there is ample room for honoring both of these men" (E. Klaveness, "Leif Erikson and Christopher Columbus," radio address, St. Paul, 1934, MHS)
74. see also Ola Johann Saervold, The Discovery of America (Minneapolis, 1931), who suggests that Columbus learned about America from the Icelanders but that this was a sign of his "earnestness and diligence" (p
75. For a twentieth-century discussion of the Vikings that preceded this change of heart, see Olson, "The Teutonic Spirit: An Address Delivered on the Occasion of the Unveiling of a Statue to Rollo of Normandy, at Fargo, N. Dakota, July 12th, 1912" (Minneapolis, 1912)
76. While Anderson's convenient neglect of the Catholicism of the Vikings seems calculated to provide a means of distinguishing Protestant Norwegians from other groups of immigrants, the fact that they were followers of the Church of Rome was picked up by Catholic writers and used to demonstrate the fitness of Catholics as Americans. The renowned Catholic historian John Gilmary Shea's 1855 History of the Catholic Missions, for instance, began with a chapter on the "Norwegian Missions in New England."
77. In it, Shea explicitly attempted to restore Catholics to their proper place in American history by arguing that the Vikings were Catholics and that the Catholic Church had as a result been the first European institution not only in the New World generally, but in the United States itself. See John Gilmary Shea, History of the Catholic Missions among the Indian Tribes of the United States, 1529-1854 (1855; New York, 1969)
78. Other Catholic appropriations of the Vikings include Vincent A. Yzermans, "Our Lady of the Runestones," Marian Era 5 (1964): 73-73) 106-7
79. Sister Mary Jean Dorcy, "Ave Maria, Save Us from Evil," Our Lady's Digest 38 (Fall 1983): 37-42
80. and Raphael M. Huber, "Pre-Columbian Devotion to Mary in America: The Testimony of the Kensington Stone, " American Ecclesiastical Review 118 (July 1947): 7-21
81. The desire to clean up the violent reputation of the Vikings also penetrated the accounts of later Norwegian-American authors such as Knut Gjerset, whose Norwegian Sailors in American Waters: A Study in the History of Maritime Activity on the Eastern Seaboard (Northfield, Minn., 1933) fulminated against "the fallacious notion ... that they were merely adventurers and lawless buccaneers" (p. 8); a similar tendency can be seen in the official statement of purpose of the Minnesota Leif Erikson Monument Association, which complained that "the general understanding of Leif Erikson seems to be that he was an adventurer, a sea-rover of some kind, an uncouth Viking. This is a complete misunderstanding of the man" (Minnesota Leif Erikson Monument Association pamphlet, 1931, p. 2, MHS; see also Louis H. Roddis, The Norsemen in the New World [Minneapolis, 1923], pp. 22-23)
82. Concern over this issue can be seen in government and pedagogical publications of the time, as well; for example, the Department of the Interior's representative at the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876, John Eaton, published a dire volume entitled Are the Indians Dying Out? (Washington, 1877), and the introduction to a mid-nineteenth-century edition of Robertson's Discovery of America intended for use in the schools included the warning that perceptive readers had found Robertson's descriptions of Cortez and other Spanish conquerors too forgiving; see John Frost, "The Life of Dr. Robertson," in William Robertson, The History of the Discovery and Settlement of America (1777; New York, 1858), p. xxiii
83. William J. Miller's Notes Concerning the Wampanoag Tribe of Indians, with Some Account of a Rock Picture on the Shor of Mount Hope Bay, in Bristol, R.I. (Providence, R.I., 1880), for instance, combined a regretful and nostalgic look back at the noble life and shocking death of King Philip with a somewhat extraneous account of the discovery of America by the "hardy Norse" (p. 5). In an interesting twist, Miller located Leif Erikson's settlement at the same spot as Philip's death, the aforementioned Mount Hope/"Hóp. " Similarly, Charles G. Leland's disquisition on the Norse origin of Algonquin religion and myth mournfully asked, when the last Indian shall be in his grave, scholars will wonder at the indifference of the "learned" men of these times to such treasures as they have allowed to perish. What the world wants is not people to write about what others have gathered as to the Indians, but men to collect directly from them
84. (Charles G. Leland, "The Edda among the Algonquin Indians," Atlantic Monthly 54 [Aug. 1884]: 234). This association of Norse discovery and Indian disappearance can also be found in Shea's History of the Catholic Missions, which explicitly argued that the Catholic colonization of the New World had been far less devastating than its Protestant counterpart, and implied that a successful Viking colonization might have prevented the later decimation of Northern tribes
85. See Ole Edvard Rølvaag, Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie, trans. Rølvaag and Lincoln Colcord (New York, 1927)
86. Not all immigrant writers were as ambivalent about western land taking as Rølvaag. As April Schultz points out, the authors of the 1925 pageant celebrating the centennial of Norwegian settlement in North America represented Norwegian pioneers as peaceful civilizers of the wilderness, who shared peace pipes and plans for cultivation with Indians who had already agreed to leave without a struggle. See April Schultz, Ethnicity on Parade: Inventing the Norwegian American through Celebration (Amherst, Mass., 1994), pp. 5-6, 120-21
87. Hillary Rodham Clinton, "Remarks," National Museum of Natural History Baird Auditorium, NMNH, Washington, D.C., 8 Apr. 1999, http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/vikings/firstlady.html
88. That is not to say that the show did not attract a fair amount of public interest, including cover stories in Time and National Geographic. See Michael D. Lemonich and Andrea Dorfman, "The Truth about the Vikings," Time, 8 May 2000, pp. 68-78
89. and Priit J. Visilind, "In Search of Vikings," National Geographic 197 (May 2000): 2-27
90. On the Enola Gay controversy and the limits of public history in the United States, see David Thelen et al., "History after the 'Enola Gay' Controversy: An Introduction," Journal of American History 82 (Dec. 1995): 1029-115
91. See Hjalmar R. Holand, Norse Discoveries and Explorations in America, 982-1362: Leif Erikson to the Kensington Stone (New York, 1968). This volume was originally published in 1940 under the title Westward from Vinland: An Account of Norse Discoveries and Explorations in America, 982-1362 and as a pamphlet called "The Kensington Stone" in 1932
92. Holand was neither the first nor the last to promote the authenticity of the Kensington Stone. Over the past hundred years it has had many adherents and detractors, and it still inspires heated and sometimes unfriendly debate. Indeed, it seems that nearly every citizen of the Midwest has weighed in on the Kensington Stone at some point, including Frederick Jackson Turner. This is particularly true in Minnesota, where it has become a significant part of the local popular culture and where narrative legitimizations of the stone are abetted by a shrinelike museum and monument erected near the site of its "discovery." As a result, nearly all discussions of the stone have been cast in terms of truth versus falsehood, and with few exceptions little has been said about its cultural significance independent of its status as an authentic relic from pre-Columbian times. What is usually left unsaid in these discussions is the fact that the very persistence of the stone in the face of its highly dubious origin is what makes it interesting. A brief selection of these treatises includes Theodore C. Blegen, The Kensington Rune Stone: New Light on an Old Riddle (St. Paul, Minn., 1968)
93. George T. Flom, The Kensington Rune-Stone: A Modern Inscription from Douglas County, Minnesota (Springfield, 111., 1910)
94. S. N. Hagen, "The Kensington Runic Inscription," Speculum 25 (July 1950): 321-56
95. Carl Christian Jensen, "Rune Stone Controversy" unpublished ms., July 1969, MHS
96. History of Douglas and Grant Counties, Minnesota: Their People, Industries, and Institutions, ed. Constant Larson, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1916), 1:72-122
97. Vincent H. Malmstrom, "In Quest of Vikings: A Personal Inquiry into the Mystery of the Kensington Stone," Middlebury College Newsletter (Spring 1970): 19-26
98. Erik Moltke, "The Kensington Stone," Antiquity 25-26 (June 1951): 87-93
99. Jeffrey R. Redmond, "Viking" Hoaxes in North America (New York, 1979)
100. Erik Wahlgren, The Kensington Stone: A Mystery Solved (Madison, Wis., 1958)
101. and "The Case of the Kensington Rune Stone," American Heritage 10 (Apr. 1959): 34-35, 101-5
102. The Museum Committee of the Minnesota Historical Society, The Kensington Rune Stone: Preliminary Report to the Minnesota Historical Society (St. Paul, 1915); and "The Story of the Kensington Runestone," a pamphlet printed by the Alexandria, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce (n.d.), MHS. Turner's views can be found in his letter to Gisle Bothne, 10 Feb. 1910, Gisle Bothne Papers, MHS
103. Holand, Norse Discoveries and Explorations in America, 982-1362, p. 188
104. Homi Bhabha, "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative, and the Margins of the
105. Lawrence Venuti, "Translation, Community, Utopia," in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Venuti (London, 2000), p. 477
106. The Arctic-route theory was also developed by others who wished to prove Viking landfall in Minnesota, such as Andrew Fossum, author of The Norse Discovery of America (Minneapolis, 1918) and "The Route from Vinland to Minnesota in 1362," unpublished ms., Andrew Fossum papers, NAHA
107. The debate over the location of the Vikings' travels and Vinland in particular is almost as voluminous as Viking discovery literature itself. It is thoroughly discussed in Kaups, "Shifting Vinland - Tradition and Myth." A few examples of efforts to locate Vinland include W. A. Munn, Wineland Voyages: Location of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland (St. John's, Nfld., n.d.)
108. Anderson, Where Was Vinland? A Reply to Prof. Gustav Storm Refuting His Arguments in Favor of Locating Vinland (Minneapolis, 1891)
109. Olson, Review of the Problem of the Northmen and the Site of Norumbega (Chicago, 1890)
110. and A.D. Fraser, "The Norsemen in Canada," Dalhousie Review 17 (1937): 175-86
111. A few examples of the Kensington Stone's penetration into the local popular culture include Margaret Leuthner, Mystery of the Runestone (Alexandria, Minn., 1962), a comic book for children; Bert Merling, "The Runestone Pageant Play" unpublished ms., 1962, MHS, 1962; and "Runestone Festival Commemorating the 600th Anniversary of the Kensington Runestone," festival program, MHS
112. For a few brief examinations of the cultural significance of the stone, see Iver Kjær, "Runes and Immigrants in America: The Kensington Stone, the World's Columbian Exposition, and Nordic Identity," The Nordic Roundtable Papers 17 (July 1994): 7-31
113. and Michael G. Michlovic and Michael W. Hughey "Norse Blood and Indian Character: Content, Context, and Transformation of Popular Mythology" Journal of Ethnic Studies 10 (1982): 79-94
114. See Michlovic and Hughey "'Making' History: The Vikings in the American Heartland," Politics, Culture, and Society 2 (Spring 1989): 338-60
115. see also Rhoda Gilman and James P. Smith, "Vikings in Minnesota: A Controversial Legacy" Roots 21 (Spring 1993). Correspondence demanding official recognition of the Kensington Stone is in possession of Debbie Miller, MHS
116. Indeed, that is exactly the angle pursued in one of the longest press articles to arise from the show: Mark K. Stengel, "The Diffusionists Have Landed," Atlantic Monthly 285 (Jan. 2000): 35-48
117. See Tryggvi J. Oleson, Early Voyages and Northern Approaches, 1000-1632 (Toronto, 1963)
118. On Oleson, see W. J. Lindal, The Icelanders in Canada (Ottawa, 1967), pp. 298-99
119. See "Arts IIIH," 16 May 1963, box 2, collection A95-26, department of history, University of Manitoba, Department of Archives and Special Collections, Elizabeth Dafoe Library, University of Manitoba (EDL-UM)
120. Although Oleson did not claim Anderson as an influence, he was known to the Icelandic community in Manitoba in his own lifetime through its first newspaper, Framfari. See untitled item, Framfari, 28 Mar. 1878. The entire run of the newspaper has been translated into English by George Houser in one volume (Winnipeg, 1986). The item on Anderson appears on p. 168
121. The classic essay on the North in Canadian political consciousness is Carl Berger, "The True North Strong and Free," in Nationalism in Canada, ed. Peter Russell (Toronto, 1966), pp. 3-26
122. Visual imagery was used frequently as a tool in the formation of Canadian national identity as a "Northern" phenomenon. For an interesting analysis that links this process to similar issues in Scandinavia, see Roald Nasgaard, The Mystic North: Symbolist Landscape Painting in Northern Europe and North America, 1890-1940 (Toronto, 1984)
123. More generally, see Thomas H. B. Symons, "The Arctic and Canadian Culture," in A Century of Canada's Arctic Islands, 1880-1980, ed. Morris Zaslow (Ottawa, 1980), pp. 319-37
124. W. L. Morton, The Canadian Identity (Madison, Wis., 1961), pp. x, vii, 92. See also "Annual Report of the Department of History, 1959-1960," "Annual Reports" file, box l, collection A95-26, department of history, University of Manitoba, EDL-UM
125. Oleson, Early Voyages and Northern Approaches, 1000-1632, p. 63
126. Morton, The Canadian Identity, p. 93
127. See Lyle Dick, "'A Growing Necessity for Canada': W. L. Morton's Centenary Series and the Forms of National History, 1955-80," Canadian Historical Review 82 (June 2001): 223-52; hereafter abbreviated "GN."
128. Interestingly, the French also occasionally conceived of themselves as Viking descendants ("Normans," of course), using this claim to shore up the more common claim of the French to Canadian discovery. In his Les Vikings des grandes étapes, vol. 1 of Les Northmans en Amérique (Montreal, 1954), Eugène Achard emphasized the common racial ancestry of French Canadians and the Vikings, writing that "Canadiens-français ou Anglo-Canadiens, nous sommes les rameaux détachés d'une même race: la race normande, et, par le fait même, les frères de ces hardis Northmans qui sillonnèrent les mers du nord et, vers l'an mille, vinrent planter leurs tentes en Amérique" (p. 28)
129. It is important to recognize that Oleson was, in fact, very successful as an academic. Not only did he publish Early Voyages and Northern Approaches, 1000-1632 alongside Canadian historiography's rising elite, but in the eleven years following his receipt of the Ph.D. in 1950 he was the beneficiary of numerous prestigious grants, including "a research grant of $6000.00 by the Social Science Research Council of America," a Guggenheim Fellowship, three grants from the Ministry of Education in Iceland, a Nuffield Travel Grant, and a grant from the Canadian Social Science Research Council. He was also elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1959 (Annual Report of the Department of History, 1960-1961," "Annual Reports" file, box l, collection A95-26, department of history, University of Manitoba, EDL-UM; see also "Curriculum Vitae: Tryggvi Julius Oleson," 8 Dec. 1960, UA 20 004-047, EDL-UM)
130. It is important to note that, outside academia, this was not necessarily the case. Although Oleson pitched his vision of Icelandic-Canadian identity in terms that meshed with prevailing academic discourse, other Icelandic-Canadian authors aligned themselves with different discourses, with very interesting results. Most notably, Winnipeg judge and amateur historian W. J. Lindal, who was a vocal supporter of the chair of Icelandic language and literature at the University of Manitoba (1951) and the author of both The Saskatchewan Icelanders: A Strand of the Canadian Fabric (Winnipeg, 1955) and The Icelanders in Canada offered one of the most important alternative visions of Icelandic-Canadian identity to that proposed by Oleson
131. Drawing on the many local histories of the Icelandic communities in Manitoba, which in the tradition of Framfari, emphasized the Icelanders' compatibility rather than their competition with the "valiant" Sitting Bull and later populations of Ukrainians, Poles, and other immigrants, and drawing also on his firm conviction that Canada's ethnic diversity was the key to resisting totalitarianism, Lindal's work is characterized by a strong multicultural aspect. While Oleson's narrative emphasizes the inevitability (and danger) of racial fusion and the hegemony of certain strictly limited racial categories, Lindal's vision promotes a much more fluid notion of both ethnicity and of identity. Thus Lindal's work, which foreshadows the ascendance of multiculturalism as perhaps the defining element of Canadian identity discourse since the 1970s, shows that "popular" immigrant historiography does not have to either take its cues from academic writing or to consist in a watered-down version of it. Indeed, unlike Holand's tract, which in relationship to Anderson's work marked the marginalization of the Viking narratives from mainstream discourse, Lindal's work (and the local histories it drew upon) may hold an important key to the popular origins of Canadian multiculturalism. See "News of the Indians," Framfari, 28 Mar. 1878, p. 171
132. For Lindal's views on totalitarianism, see his Two Ways of Life: Freedom or Tyranny (Toronto, 1940)
133. Departmental enrollments are from "Department of History: Annual Report, 1958-59"; "Annual Report of the Department of History, 1959-60"; "Annual Report of the Department of History, 1960-1961"; "Department of History, 1961-62"; "Annual Report: Department of History, 1962-1963"; and "Annual Report: Department of History, 1963-1964," in "Annual Reports" file, box 1, collection A95-26, department of history, University of Manitoba, EDL-UM. Manitoba numbers are from the excerpt from "Universities and Colleges," Manitoba Economic Consultative Board 5th Annual Report (1967), table C-1, in "University in Community" file, box 4, collection A95-26, department of history, University of Manitoba, EDL-UM
134. See Richard E. Bennett et al., A Guide to Major Holdings of the Department of Archives and Special Collections (Winnipeg, 1993), p. 102; "Northern Studies Committee," box 1, folder 1, mms. 41, Northern Studies Committee, EDL-UM; and G. W. Leckie, letter to Northern Studies Committee Planning Sub-Committee, 7 May 1971, in "Northern Studies" file, box 3, collection A95-26, department of history, University of Manitoba, EDL-UM
135. See Oleson, letter to Elizabeth Dafoe, 20 Oct. 1959; David W. Foley letter to Morton, 2 Apr. 1962; Morton, letter to Foley, 14 Oct. 1961; and Dafoe, letter to history department, 15 Apr. 1957, in "Library - University of Manitoba" file, box 2, collection A95-26, department of history, University of Manitoba, EDL-UM. See also Morton, letter to dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, 12 Apr. 1957 and n.d., 1956, box 1, collection A95-26, department of history, University of Manitoba, EDL-UM
136. Materials on this initiative, formed in 1967 to study "problems associated with human settlement" focusing on western and northern Canada, can be found in UA 33, EDL-UM
137. "Northern Studies Committee," box 1, folder 1, mss. 41, Northern Studies Committee, EDL-UM. To put this sum in context, Morton's salary as head of the History Department was $8,700 in 1957-58, and Oleson's prestigious SSRC grant for 1961-62 was $6,000. See W. J. Condo, letter to W. L. Morton, 22 Mar. 1957, in "President: History - Administration" file, box 3, collection A95-26, department of history, EDL-UM, and "Annual Report of the Department of History, 1960-1961, "Annual Reports" file, box 1, collection A95-26, department of history, University of Manitoba, EDL-UM
138. See "Application for Grant in Aid of Northern Research by a Northern Research Institute," signed by J. A. Hildes, 6 Jan. 1967, box 3, folder 2, mss. 41, Northern Studies Committee, EDL-UM; "Report of the Committee on Northern Studies - The University of Manitoba, Fiscal Year 1962-63," box 5, folder 1, mss. 41, Northern Studies Committee, EDL-UM; and "Grant Applications 1966," box 3, mss. 41, Northern Studies Committee, EDL-UM
139. Who claimed, as opposed to sociologists, to be "the only professional group with training and residential experience among non-literate cultures" (Grant application signed by John H. Steinbring, 8 Dec. 1966, box 3, mss. 41, Northern Studies Committee, EDL-UM)
140. See "Annual Report of the Department of History, 1960-1961"; "Curriculum Vitae: Tryggvi Julius Oleson"; and Morton, letter to dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, 12 Apr. 1957 and n.d., 1956
141. See "Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research proposed Course Changes for the 1962-63 Calendar," 2 Feb. 1962, "Calendar Material, New Course Proposals, Etc., 1957-1965," box 1, collection A95-26, department of history, EDL-UM
142. W. L. Morton, "Tryggvi Oleson, Scholar," Winnipeg Free Press, 7 Dec. 1963, file UA 20 004-047, Office of the President, President's Original Files, EDL-UM
143. The quote is from Vincent Massey, first Canadian-born governor general and "Honorary President of the Canadian Centenary Council," speaking at Carleton University Convocation, 24 May 1963. See "Awareness of Canada," program for a symposium held in Winnipeg, Oct. 1963, "Academic Year, Committee on Meetings and Reports" file, box 1, collection A95-26, department of history, University of Manitoba, EDL-UM
144. John G. Diefenbaker, One Canada: Memoir of the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, 3 vols. (Toronto, 1976), 1:11-17, 83-85
145. Stefánsson's Viking theories are explained in My Life with the Eskimo (1913; New York, 1971)
146. See also Morton, letter to H. H. Saunderson, 13 Apr. 1959, in "President: History - Administration" file, box 3, collection A95-26, department of history, EDL-UM. Incidentally, Morton also had contacts with the Minnesota Historical Society, attending their centenary celebrations in 1949; see A. H. S. Gillson, letter to Morton, 4 Oct. 1949, box 3, collection A95-26, department of history, EDL-UM
147. On the strategic importance of the North in the twentieth century see Shelagh D. Grant, Sovereignty or Security: Government Policy in the Canadian North, 1936-1950 (Vancouver, 1988)
148. and Matthew D. Evenden, "Harold Innis, the Arctic Survey, and the Politics of Social Science during the Second World War," Canadian Historical Review 79 (Mar. 1998): 36-67
149. See Frank James Tester and Peter Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes): Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939-1963 (Vancouver, 1994), pp. 320-25
150. The prevailing view is that malnutrition, rather than amalgamation or extermination, spelled the end of the Viking colonies in what is now Canada and Greenland. See, for instance, Robert McGhee, "They Got Here First, But Why Didn't They Stay?" Canadian Geographic 108 (Aug.-Sept. 1988): 13-21
151. and David B. Quinn, North America from Earliest Discovery to First Settlements: The Norse Voyages to 1612 (New York, 1977), p. 35
152. See Oleson, Early Voyages and Northern Approaches, 1000-1632, p. 76
153. A useful discussion of Northern development in the postwar period, as well as its impact on Aboriginal peoples, may be found in Peter Clancy "Northwest Territories: Class Politics on the Northern Frontier," in The Provincial State: Politics in the Provinces and Territories, ed. Keith Brownsey and Michael Howlett (Mississauga, Ont., 1992), pp. 297-322
154. Morton, "Tryggvi Oleson, Scholar."
155. See Morton, letter to the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 18 May 1951, box 1, collection A95-26, EDL-UM
156. Not the University of Manitoba
157. See The Norsemen in America/Les Scandinaves en Amérique (1963; Ottawa, 1970)
158. Maria Tymoczko, "Post-colonial Writing and Literary Translation," in Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, ed. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (London, 1999), p. 35