Friday, December 22, 2006

The Vinland map

Vinland map
The controversial Vinland Map is a medieval-style map of the Old World that includes a large island in the western Atlantic identified as "Vinilanda Insula", the Vinland of the Icelandic sagas. It came to light in the 1950s, bound together with a slender and then otherwise unknown tract dating to about 1440, entitled the Tartar Relation. If genuine, the map would demonstrate that mainstream Western Europeans were aware of at least a portion of North America some 50 years before Columbus, and that this information was not restricted to Iceland or even Scandinavia. Link…

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