Vinland Map

Vinland Map Seite 1
The Vinland Map --

Some "Finer Points" of the Debate
J. Huston McCulloch
March 2005
with updates Sept. 2008
Figure 1
The Vinland Map
Oct. 2002 photo courtesy Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
Image contrast and saturation digitally enhanced.
2.3MB enlargement
Contents
Introduction
The New Tartar Relation
McNaughton's Disappearing Ink
Canerio's "Mystery Island"
Saenger's Diphthong Objection
Saenger's "Punctilious" Objection
Saenger's Hyphen-Objection
Saenger on Shailor's Catalogue Entry
Saenger's Apocryphal Allusions to other Paleographical Authorities
Other Saenger Objections
Technical Considerations: McCrone's Anatase Particles
Weaver on Anatase in Clay
Olin's Medieval Ink Preparation
The Cahill PIXE Analysis
The Brown and Clark Raman Study
Enterline's Transfer Mechanism
Bayes-Cope and Fluorescence
The Carbon-14 Evidence
Update 2008
Seaver's Maps, Myths and Men
The Partners Bjarni and Leifr
Seaver on Josef Fischer
NOVA's "Viking Deception"
Conclusions and Outstanding Issues
attachment:/1101/vinland.htm 09.01.2009 09:12:12

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Conclusions and Outstanding Issues

References
Introduction
The controversial Vinland Map (VM) 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 (TR). 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.
In 1957, the map was offered for sale by an unspecified private library through an intermediary dealer to the British Museum, where it was
examined by R.A. Skelton, Superintendent of the Map Room, George D. Painter, Assistant Keeper in charge of incunabula (i.e. books published
prior to 1501), and Dr. Schofield, Keeper of Manuscripts (Wallis 1974, p. 184). However, the binding was obviously recent, and wormholes in
the map did not match those in the TR, even though the subject matter of the TR was reflected in the Asian portion of the map. Because of its
lack of provenance and non-original binding, the British Museum turned it down.
Shortly afterwards, Laurence C. Witten II, a Yale alumnus and New Haven book dealer, purchased the volume on behalf of his wife for $3500,
and showed it to Thomas E. Marston, Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Literature in the Yale University Library. Marston was at first as
skeptical as the British Museum staff had been. However, they soon discovered that a second and much thicker volume that Marston had
purchased from the same intermediary, a portion of Vincent of Beauvais' well known Speculum Historiale (SH), must have originally been bound
together with both the VM and the TR, with the VM at the front and the TR at the back, since the wormholes in all three aligned perfectly in this
configuration, with the minor exceptions noted below. The Speculum and TR both employ an unusual mixture of vellum and paper pages, with
two leaves of parchment alternating with every six leaves of paper. The bullshead watermarks on the paper are identical, and the less-than-
perfect quality of the parchment is similar. The VM is on a bifolium of rather thin parchment that is essentially identical to two leaves of the
Speculum (identified as l1 and l16 by Skelton in VMTR, p. 109).
After this discovery, Skelton and Painter reconsidered their prior doubts about the map, and became enthusiastic supporters. An anonymous
donor (later revealed to have been Paul Mellon) paid Mrs. Witten approximately $300,000 for the two volumes and donated them to Yale
University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. In 1965, the Yale University Press published, with much fanfare, a volume entitled
The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (VMTR) with extensive essays supporting the authenticity of the map by Skelton, Marston, and
Painter, and an introduction by Alexander O. Vietor, curator of Maps at Yale's Sterling Library.
These authors concluded that the map was made circa 1440, in conjunction with the Council of Basel. The map has an agenda clearly calculated
to please the Catholic prelates assembled for the Council: Its captions tell of the Carpini mission carrying the Faith to Tartary in the Northeast,
Bishop Eric Gnupsson visiting Vinland in the Northwest, Prester John established in the Southeast, and even Saint Brendan checking out the
Antilles in the Southwest.
In 1966, the Smithsonian Institution sponsored a conference to discuss the map. Most, though by no means all, of the sixteen authors presenting
papers at this conference were inclined toward authenticity. Einar Haugen of the Harvard Department of Germanic Languages and Literature
concluded, for example, that "unless other evidence is presented that invalidates the map on purely external grounds, it can be authenticated as a
reflection of information conveyed to Rome by Eric Gnupsson in the early part of the twelfth century." (PVMC p. 142). Stephan Kuttner of the
Yale Institute of Medieval Law called the Vinland caption "a piece of hagiographic composition, done before or in the fifteenth century, for the
first bishop of Greenland." (PVMC p. 113). Robert S. Lopez of Yale's Department of Medieval Studies, on the other hand, felt that such an
unprovenanced document should always be regarded "as guilty until proved innocent," and that the VM still had not made it over this hurdle.
(PVMC p. 31). The Proceedings of the Vinland Map Conference (PVMC) were published in 1971, as edited by Wilcomb E. Washburn,
Chairman of the Smithsonian's Department of American Studies.
Opinion turned sharply against the map in 1974, however, after chemists Walter C. McCrone (1916-2002) and Lucy B. McCrone of the McCrone
Research Institute announced that their tests revealed high concentrations of anatase titanium dioxide in isolated particles in the map's ink, though
not on the parchment (McCrone and McCrone 1974; W. McCrone 1988, 1998). Titanium is a common naturally occuring element, but according
to the McCrones, the anatase crystalline form of TiO2 never occurs in nature in the particular size and shape of particle that they found on the
map. According to them, such particles occur only in modern pigments, and could not have been manufactured until after 1917. After the
McCrone announcement, even the Yale Library conceded that the map was "probably a modern forgery."
Despite the McCrone claim that anatase could not have been manufactured in medieval times, Jacqueline Olin of the Smithsonian's Conservation
Analytical Laboratory announced in 1976 that anatase titanium dioxide crystals would in fact be precipitated as a byproduct of the medieval
process for making iron oak-gall ink, provided the green vitriol used to produce the ink happened to have been manufactured from the titanium-
rich ore ilmenite (Olin, 2000, 2003).
And despite the McCrone claim that such particles never occur in nature, Georgia Tech mineralogist Charles Weaver reported in 1976 that the
titanium dioxide that commonly occurs in kaolin clays not only takes on the anatase form, but naturally does have essentially the same particle
size and shape as found by the McCrones in the VM ink. Weaver's finding shows that the VM anatase particles could in fact have come from
nothing more exotic than clay-rich airborne dust.
Finally, in 1987, a group led by Thomas Cahill of the University of California, Davis, used advanced Particle Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE)
techniques to determine that although titanium is indeed often present in the ink, it is to be found only in minute quantities, far less than is
consistent with the impression given by the McCrone report. The interdisciplinary Davis group, which had previously tested hundreds of other
early manuscripts, had detected comparable titanium in several other undisputedly medieval parchments. Titanium was actually present in
detectable trace amounts at five points on the VM parchment itself, consistent with "background" contamination from sources such as flaking
modern wall paint or, per Weaver's findings, accidental medieval clay dust. The inked lines themselves typically had about twice this amount of

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modern wall paint or, per Weaver's findings, accidental medieval clay dust. The inked lines themselves typically had about twice this amount of
titanium, but this would not be enough for the titanium to be a visible component of the ink. Four of the 33 visible inked lines on the VM that
were tested showed no detectable titanium whatsoever, demonstrating that titanium in any form could not have been the base of the ink. Cahill et
al. cautiously concluded that "while our work argues strongly against the specific McCrone Associates proof that the Map is fraudulent, we do
not claim therefore that the Map is authentic. Such a judgment must be based on all available evidence, cartographic and historical as well as
compositional" (1987, p. 832).
Encouraged by these three findings, the Yale University Press declared that the map appeared to be genuine after all, and republished VMTR in
1995, with new favorable articles by Painter, Witten, Cahill with Bruce Kusko, and Washburn (VMTR95). The insured value of the value of the
map was reportedly revised to $25 million.
In August of 2002, two new technical articles excited considerable press coverage. One of these articles, by Olin with D.J. Donahue of the
University of Arizona and Garman Harbottle of Brookhaven National Laboratories, determined the radiocarbon age of the parchment to be AD
1434 ± 11 years. Although this confirms that the parchment is indeed as old as the SH and TR, it still leaves open the remote possibility that a
modern forger found two connected pages of blank parchment in the SH+TR or a similarly dated volume, and drew the map on these.
In the second of these 2002 articles, Katherine L. Brown and Robin J.H. Clark of University College London used Raman microprobe
spectroscopy to confirm McCrone's finding of significant anatase titanium dioxide at selected points in the ink.
However, even if there really is significant anatase on the map, contra Cahill, it could conceivably have had a medieval origin, either from
natural clay particles per Weaver or from medieval manufacture per Olin. The issue of authenticity therefore continues to turn, as it did before
1974, on the humanistic rather than the technical aspects of the map.
Without attempting to resolve the issue of the map's authenticity, the present note mentions an exciting new discovery by Beauvais scholar
Gregory Guzman, and then investigates a few of the points raised in two recent papers by Douglas McNaughton and Paul Saenger. Subsequent
sections look in greater detail at some of the technical aspects touched on above. Kirsten Seaver's new book is discussed at length, followed by a
brief discussion of the February, 2005 NOVA program on the map.
The New Tartar Relation
The Tartar Relation that had recently been rebound with the VM when it first came to light in 1957 is an account of Friar John de Plano
Carpini's 1245-7 mission to the empire of the Mongols. Although this mission is well-known from Carpini's own Ystoria Mongolorum, the Yale
TR is a somewhat different version, purportedly by a "Friar C. de Bredia," and completely unknown at the time Yale acquired the VM+TR.
George Painter provided a complete transcription, translation, and annotation of the Yale TR in VMTR.
At the 1974 British Library Symposium at which the McCrone results were first made public, Francis Maddison, Curator of the Museum of the
History of Science, Oxford, presented what he called "A Sceptical View of the Tartar Relation." Although he confessed to playing to some
degree the role of "Devil's Advocate," he stated that "doubts about the Tartar Relation are not solely engendered by the company it
keeps." (1974, p. 187) He suggested, for linguistic reasons, that the TR may have been the product, not of a thirteenth century friar, but rather "of
a more recent forger who had read widely in Slavonic translation." (p. 191) If the TR is fraudulent, then surely so is the VM.
However, any independent doubts that there may have been about the language of the TR, along with any taint that it may have received from its
association with the controversial VM, have now been completely removed by the discovery of a second copy of de Bredia's TR in a library in
Luzern, Switzerland, by Beauvais scholar Prof. Gregory Guzman of Bradley University (Guzman 2004). It is bound together with a volume of
Beauvais's Speculum Historale, just as the Yale TR must originally have been. The final chapters of the SH draw on Carpini's version of his
mission, so that it would have been natural to have bound an alternative account of the mission together with it.
The Luzern TR+SH was copied out in 1338-40, approximately 100 years before the Yale TR+SH, and therefore is the more definitive version of
the TR. Although the Luzern TR+SH spent most of its career in a now-defunct Cistercian monastery in Luzern, a legal document reported by
Guzman places it in the diocese of Basel in 1420, just two decades before the Yale TR+SH(+VM?) was copied there. It is therefore not
improbable that the Yale TR was actually copied from the Luzern TR.
Although the new TR by no means validates the VM, it does eliminate the possibility that its TR-derived captions prove it to be a modern hoax.
However, if the VM is indeed a modern forgery, it is surprising that the forger would have chosen to bind it with what at the time was the
unique, and therefore extraordinarily rare and valuable, known copy of a medieval manuscript. It would have been adequate for the forger's
purposes to have bound the VM with a commonplace and indisputably genuine manuscript, such as a volume of the SH itself; Marston was able
to pick up the Yale SH volume by itself, for example, for only £75. Although the Asian portion of the VM includes details unique to de Bredia's
account, these could even more effectively have been taken from Carpini's own record of the mission. Instead he or she chose to reduce the
independent value the TR would have had by removing it from its important original context and having it "keep company," as Maddison put it,
with the hotly disputed VM.
Guzman is currently working on a detailed comparison of the two TR texts. Unfortunately, he found no map of any kind in the Luzern volume.
McNaughton's Disappearing Ink
One of the "latest words" on the humanistic aspects of the debate is Douglas McNaughton's essay "A World in Transition: Early Cartography of
the North Atlantic," in the splendidly produced volume Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, which was published by the Smithsonian in 2000, in
conjunction with its Vikings exhibition program. This prestigious venue makes McNaughton's article appear to be the quasi-official Smithsonian
position on the map, despite the actual Smithsonian affiliation of both Washburn and Olin, and Washburn's favorable (though unofficial) essay in
VMTR95. The New York Times covered McNaughton's article under the headline "Study Casts Disputed Map as False Link to
Vikings" (Wilford 2000).
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VMTR95. The New York Times covered McNaughton's article under the headline "Study Casts Disputed Map as False Link to
Vikings" (Wilford 2000).
McNaughton, who is described as a physicist and independent scholar of early maps, raises a number of interesting points concerning the VM.
Surely the most remarkable, however, is his revelation that the ink originally on the map when it came to light in 1957 has now almost entirely
fallen off:
Even an inexperienced observer easily notes that something is very wrong with this document [the VM]. The reproduction shown from
The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation [first published in 1965] is heavily enhanced to show a map that existed only briefly in the
mid-1960s. The actual map today has no black ink lines left, as the black pigment has been falling off at a highly abnormal rate since its
purchase in 1957 (Moller 1985). This is at variance with all the other maps we have examined in this chapter that are far older and far
more detailed. Ink lines may be lost over centuries, but on the Vinland Map all the ink pigment has fallen away in the few decades since
it was revealed. (McNaughton 2000, p. 267)
Figure 2
The Vinland Map in 2003
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Similar photo to Figure 1, but image contrast and saturation not digitally enhanced.
2X enlargement
Megazoomable SID file. Requires free download of ExpressView (MrSID) software from LizardTech.
Indeed, the actual appearance of the VM today, shown in Figure 2 above without the digital enhancement used in Figure 1, is extraordinarily
faint. Its inscription is much harder to make out than the black and white photo of the map that first appeared in the 1965 edition of VMTR,
shown in Figure 3 below. If indeed the map looked like new in 1965, but in the ensuing decades has faded to near-invisibility, despite careful
conservation by the Beinecke Library, that would truly be a highly convincing case against a medieval origin.

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Figure 3
The Vinland Map in VMTR (1965)
Scan from VMTR courtesy Jim Siebold, Cartographic Images, at
www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ren/Ren1/carto.html
McNaughton goes on to elaborate a detailed scenario about how, in order for the ink to have fallen off so quickly, the presumed forger must have
employed a specialty printing ink that normally must be heated to about 200 degrees F. in order to adhere to varnish on paper:
The forger of the Vinland Map was probably not aware of this requirement for the ink application. Nor was he apparently aware that the
drying oil in the varnish (linseed) would immediately be absorbed by the old vellum, leaving only the resin, chromite, solid drying
agents, and TiO2 on the surface. It probably looked very good -- and old -- when completed, but the insoluble elements left on the
surface react variously to ultraviolet light and temperature. . . . Within decades of even the most careful conservation practices, the
normal oxidation and crystallization of the abietic acid in the resin caused the entire ink structure to crumble and fall away. What is left
today is only the smallest particles of the ink that followed the linseed oil into the map's vellum. (Ibid., p. 269)
However, despite McNaughton's claim that the ink has only recently lost its original darkness, numerous observers, critics and proponents alike,
had commented on the map's pale appearance from the very start. Thus already in 1965, Skelton had stated that "The outlines, names, and
legends of the map are executed in a somewhat diluted brownish ink flecked with black" (VMTR p. 109, emphasis added). At the 1966
conference, Vietor commented that "The map has a 'funny' look in that it is very weak -- as though written with a dilute batch. It almost looks as
if it had been washed." (PVMC, p. 35, emphasis added.)
The British Museum's A.D. Baynes-Cope reported, on the basis of his 1967 examination of the map, that "The drawing is very faded, and the
parchment has a 'washed-out' appearance, suggesting that it may have been chemically treated in some way" (1974, p. 209, emphasis added).
Birgit Reißland (c. 2002) details a number of such chemical treatments that were used historically in an effort to conserve medieval documents.
G.D. Painter, who was one of the first to see the map when it was offered to the British Museum in 1957, likewise reports that the map appeared
to have been literally washed, presumably at the time of its modern rebinding:
The VM ink visibly consists in its present condition of two layers, a yellow-brownish line from ingredients which were absorbable into
the parchment, and the remains of a surface layer spontaneously formed by non-absorbable particles of black. A similar characteristic is
common and well known in medieval manuscripts and requires no special explanation. In the map this overlying black has been more
than 90% removed by five centuries of natural wear and degradation, aided by washing and cleaning at the time of late nineteenth-
century repair and rebinding. . . . These procedures would be frowned on today, but at that time were routine titivations. (in VMTR 1995,
pp. x, xvi, emphasis added.)
Even map arch-critics Walter and Lucy McCrone noted the lack of black in the ink and its "faded appearance" at the time of their 1972
examination of the map. They attributed this to deliberate "flaking away" of the black upper layer by a supposed forger (1974, p. 212).
It is true that the lines on the map are nowhere near as black today as they appeared to be in the 1965 photograph reproduced in Figure 3 above.
However, Yale Beinecke curator Vietor admitted already at the 1966 Vinland Map conference that that photo "was not very close to the tone of
the original. This was done consciously -- a very high contrast film was used in order to bring out the legends and map outlines as best we could
for the publication." He apologized for any confusion that may have resulted from this not having been made clear. (PVMC pp. 38-9) Note that
Figures 1 and 2 above are made from similar recent photographs, except that Figure 1 has likewise had its contrast and saturation enhanced,
albeit digitally.

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Figures 1 and 2 above are made from similar recent photographs, except that Figure 1 has likewise had its contrast and saturation enhanced,
albeit digitally.
Whatever the method or motive for the removal of the greater part of the black layer that must originally have been present, it is clear that it was
already gone in 1965 and that it has not been falling off at an accelerated rate in the past few decades per McNaughton. Evidently McNaughton
was unaware that the 1965 photograph was known (since the 1966 conference, at least) to have been enhanced, and jumped to the conclusion
that it represented the map's actual 1965 appearance. In short, McNaughton's disappearing ink theory is a blunder that should serve as a profound
embarrassment to the Smithsonian, and in particular to the Vikings volume's editors, William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward.
To top it off, McNaughton's confident assertion that the VM ink is based on chromite has now been refuted by Brown and Clark, who found no
chromite in any of the lines on the map (2002, p. 3659). The McCrones had found some elemental chromium in the ink, but not necessarily the
mineral chromite per se.
Although McNaughton (2000, p. 269) has a full page box on "Scientific Studies of the Vinland Map," that cites McCrone's findings at length, he
inexplicably makes no mention at all of the contrary Cahill study that led to the renewed endorsement of the Map by the Yale University Press
and was featured in VMTR95.
McNaughton's Disappearing Islands
Another, equally ill-advised disclosure by McNaughton is that the patches on the map do not cover worm holes but are really part of a cover-up
of its post-fifteenth century origins:
A number of small square patches are found on the map; previously it was thought that these covered wormholes; but the patches in two
places are located in areas that match the cartographic location of mythical islands shown on sixteenth-century maps (such as the
Canerio) and even seventeenth-century maps. (2000, p. 267)
It is not entirely clear whether McNaughton is claiming that the patches are concealing ink drawings of islands that did not appear on maps until
the sixteenth or even seventeenth centuries, or if he thinks that the the patches are covering holes that were made when the tell-tale islands were
aggressively erased to prevent their discovery. Either way, however, he is quite wrong, as I was able to determine on June 27-29, 2001, when the
Beinecke Library kindly allowed me to examine the map in person. The first interpretation falls apart because on cursory examination, the
patches are in fact on the back of the map, not on the front as would be required to conceal ink drawings, however clumsily. Furthermore, they
are indeed covering holes, not drawings. They do appear to be on the front in a photograph of the map that accompanied McNaughton's article,
depicted below as Figure 12. However, this is only because they are glowing yellow right through the parchment due to some sort of special
lighting, probably UV but perhaps IR. Perhaps McNaughton did not realize that his photograph was taken under special lighting that had this
effect.
The second interpretation isn't any better, since all the patches but one come in pairs on the left and right sides, covering matching holes in the
parchment. Three of these four holes continue into the front of the Speculum as well as might be expected for wormholes, given that its initial
four quires (64 leaves) are missing (Marston in VMTR pp. 4-6). Thus, the hole off Ireland (like its mate in Asia) is oval, but becomes round when
it reaches the fifth quire of the Speculum, while the small hole off Greenland (with its mate in the "Great Tartar Sea") does not reach the
Speculum at all. The Norway and Azores holes, with their Asian twins, continue into the Speculum with no noticeable change in diameter or
shape. (The Azores hole may be seen in Figure 5 below.)
During the presumably late 19th century rebinding of the TR, the original covers of the Speculum + TR volume, which had become detached,
were put back on the Speculum by itself, but reversed, with the front cover on the back and the back cover on the front. In 1966, Yale decided to
restore the three items to their original arrangement. In the process, modern pastedowns were removed from the covers, revealing, inter alia, that
the holes in the map and the back of the Speculum would in fact continue into the covers if they were restored to their original positions (Painter
in VMTR 1995, p. xvi). When I inspected the materials, I found that indeed all four of the VM wormhole pairs continue into the original front
cover. (Evidently the planned restoration was then aborted, since this front cover is still at the back of the volume.) The oval Ireland hole is
present, although it is on a crack in the board that has been glued, and hence is now full of glue. The tiny Greenland hole does not fully penetrate
the oak board, but is nevertheless present as an indentation. This juvenile bookworm was clearly a finicky eater! Likewise, the major hole at the
back of the Speculum lines up with the major hole through the TR and continues through the original back cover.
Painter writes of the holes over the VM patches, "I have seen plenty of fake wormholes in the course of my professional career. You can see
how they have been made with a punch, or charred with a redhot hatpin. These are the real thing, they show the dear little worm's serrated
toothmarks and they were gnawed by him after the Map was made, for they visibly go through the writing" (1974, pp. 193-4). So much for
McNaughton's island cover-up.
The only patch on the VM that does not underlie a paired wormhole that continues into the cover and/or Speculum is the one at the northern
shore of the Caspian. This patches a much larger hole than the others, one that appears to be an original flaw in the parchment. A similar, but
unpatched hole appears in the TR, on the parchment leaf marked in modern pencil as pp. 10-11. The same leaf has a tear that was mended by
sewing. Whatever its origin, a vast crater in central Asia could hardly be a cover-up of an Atlantic island mistakenly copied from a sixteenth or
seventeenth source per McNaughton.
McNaughton would have been well-advised to have actually examined the map in person before making his completely erroneous
pronouncement about the function of the patches and the non-existence of the wormholes.
Having thus disposed of the wormholes and their alignment, McNaughton is free to claim that there is no solid reason to associate the map with
either the Speculum or the Tartar Relation:
A relationship was suggested by the book dealer who owned The Tartar Relation, and the Yale purchaser, Marston, between the map and
the Speculum, but the inks of the map and the Speculum did not match, nor did the subject nor anything except ... the unexceptional
Vinland Map Seite 7
A relationship was suggested by the book dealer who owned The Tartar Relation, and the Yale purchaser, Marston, between the map and
the Speculum, but the inks of the map and the Speculum did not match, nor did the subject nor anything except ... the unexceptional
coincidence that the pages of both the world map and the Speculum were made of parchment and not paper. (2000, p. 257)
Tartar Relation does not refer to the map at all, yet the supposed proof that the map is fifteenth century is largely based on its being
found inside a book of that era. (2000, p. 268)
Speaking of the wormholes, it should be noted that Judge Michael A. Musmanno (d. 1968) is reported to have found that the map holes do not
line up exactly with those in the front of the Speculum (Fuoco 2000). However, that would be entirely expected, given the missing four quires. A
better comparison would have been to the holes in the original front cover, since the map would have been immediately adjacent to it. I did not
have the means to check this correspondence exactly when I examined the materials, but they did align as well as I could determine.
Canerio's "Mystery Island"
McNaughton is on much more solid ground when he points out a remarkable similarity between the layout of the features in the North Atlantic
on the VM, and on the splendid world map of the Genovese cartographer Nicolo Canerio, drawn around 1503 to 1505. The relevant portion of
the Canerio map is shown in Figure 4 below, while the full map is online at Jim Siebold's Cartographic Images website.
Figure 4
Detail of Canerio's 1503-1505 World Map
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris
From McNaughton (2000, p. 264).
The Canerio map depicts the northern coast of South America, along with the Caribbean islands, and a fragment of the U.S. Atlantic seaboard. In
mid-Atlantic, there is a strange island roughly the size and shape of "Vinland" on the VM, that has been colored solid green, unlike any other
portion of the map, and festooned with several varieties of trees.
According to Siebold, the Canerio map was based, in part, on the rather similar Cantino map of 1502, which reflected the latest, top-secret
Portuguese data and had been smuggled out of Portugal by Alberto Cantino for the Duke of Ferrara. The green Atlantic island, which appears on
both maps, is known to represent Newfoundland and Labrador. This coast, along with Greenland, had been explored for Portugal by Corte-Real
in 1500-1501.
McNaughton argues that this island was, for political reasons, deliberately moved far enough east to lie on the Portuguese side of the
Demarcation Line of the Treaty of Tordesillas. On the Cantino map the Demarcation Line is actually drawn in, just west of the island. According
to McNaughton,
Whoever drew the Vinland Map took advantage of this Mystery Island theme and on it labeled the mystery island "Vinilanda [or
Winilanda] Insula" in keeping with a very popular twentieth-century idea that the Vikings had discovered America.
That Greenland is in the same location on both the Canerio and the Vinland Map indicates that the charting of the latter is based on
Renaissance Portuguese cartography. Consequently, the Vinland Map cannot be medieval in origin. The shapes of Greenland and
Portuguese Newfoundland have not been slavishly copied onto the Vinland Map anymore than the Bianco Map was slavishly copied onto
the Vinland Map, but the locations for Greenland and the island labeled "Vinilanda Insula" were copied. Vinilanda on the Vinland Map
is exactly the same distance from Greenland, Africa, Spain, and England as the Mystery Island is from those points on the Canerio Map.
Greenland, Great Britain, and the Mystery Island form a distinct triangle on the Canerio Map because of the Treaty of Tordesillas, and
this triangle is duplicated on the Vinland Map. (2000, pp. 264-265, McNaughton's brackets)
McNaughton has a good point here, but there is an even better explanation of the similarity in this respect between the Vinland and Canerio
Maps.
The Canerio and Cantino maps were among the very first to employ an equirectangular projection, a type of cylindrical projection, in which

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The Canerio and Cantino maps were among the very first to employ an equirectangular projection, a type of cylindrical projection, in which
lines of latitude correspond to horizontal straight lines, and lines of longitude correspond to vertical straight lines. The equirectangular projection
is in this respect similar to the Mercator, except that the lines of latitude are spaced equally so that there is a constant vertical scale,
corresponding to the horizontal scale along one of the lines of latitude. Figure 1.4 in John P. Snyder's cartographic history Flattening the Earth
(1993, p. 7) depicts the globe as it should appear in such a projection.
In the sixteenth century, latitude was easily determined by the height of stars and the midday sun above the horizon, but longitude was much
more difficult to measure. With patience, the longitudinal offset of different points on land could be roughly determined a process called
lunation. This required measuring the right ascension of the moon relative to reference stars by means of an armillary sphere. Since the moon
moves only about 12 degrees relative to the stars in 24 hours, a difference in relative position of 1 degree would correspond to a difference in
longitude of about 30 degrees. If angles, and therefore latitude, could be measured to the nearest degree, this method would therefore only
determine longitude to within 30 degrees. Over a long period of time, several such measurements could be averaged together for greater
precision. More accurate results could occasionally be directly obtained by measuring the local sidereal time of lunar eclipses and planetary
occultations, and then comparing these at the different locations. Over the decades and even centuries, several such comparisons could be
averaged to improve the measurement even further. However, explorers who did not have years or decades to wait for appropriate celestial
events had to rely primarily on dead reckoning to get a coarse fix on longitude. It was not until the 18th century that reliable chronometers were
developed that allowed longitude to be measured accurately at sea or while exploring new lands.
I cannot read the longitude scale on McNaughton's photograph of the Canerio map, but I would assume that the longitude of Gibraltar at the
western end of the Mediterranean had, after thousands of years of observation by everyone from the Phoenicians on down, been reasonably well
determined relative to that of the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Indeed, the Canerio map takes Jerusalem, which is essentially due south of
the Lebanese coast, as its prime meridian. Gibraltar is in fact 40 degrees, 14 minutes west of Jerusalem.
Taking this as the map's scale of longitude, the eastern tip of South America is about 7 degrees too far east, not bad for a recent discovery over a
long stretch of water. However, the northern coast of South America is about 15 degrees too long, so that Aruba at its northern tip is about 8
degrees too far west. As a consequence, the U.S. eastern seaboard is comparably displaced to the west. Thus, the North American promontory at
the approximate latitude of Gibraltar and which I therefore take to be Cape Hatteras is about 10-11 degrees too far to the west.
In Africa, Cape Verde is off by only a degree. However, the Cape of Good Hope (not shown) is 10 degrees too far east, and the Horn of Africa is
a full 20 degrees too far east, making the Red Sea almost unrecognizably deformed. The southern tip of India is likewise about 18 degrees too far
east.
If we take the southeastern corner of the North Atlantic "Mystery Island" to be St. Johns, Newfoundland, this part of the island should be about
12 degrees further west than it is depicted on the Canerio map. Instead, it has, as McNaughton rightly points out, roughly the same visual
location, relative to western Europe, that it does on the Vinland Map. (Note, however, that almost half of the spurious gap between
Newfoundland and the Carolinas on the Canerio map is due to the longitudinal displacement of the latter, rather than the former.)
Furthermore, the Canerio map's "Mystery Island" lacks the distinctly northwest-to-southeast orientation of the true Labrador-Newfoundland
coast. The northern tip of Labrador in fact lies an additional 12 degrees west of St. Johns. Instead the Canerio island erroneously shows the
upright orientation of "Vinland" on the VM.
The worst longitudinal errors in the Atlantic portion of the Canerio map involve Greenland itself. Thus, the map depicts Cape Farewell at its
southern tip at 62 degrees west of Jerusalem, or 27 degrees west of Greenwich, when in fact it lies a full 44 degrees west of Greenwich. If it were
moved 17 degrees west on the Canerio map to its correct location, it would almost touch the northern end of the "Mystery Island," which in turn
should lie another 24 degrees further west than it is depicted. On the precise equirectangular projection of the Canerio map, east-west distances
at northern latitudes should be expanded in proportion to the secant of the latitude. Instead, Cape Farewell inappropriately lies roughly as it is
depicted, relative to Spain, Africa, and England, on the merely ad hoc layout of the Vinland Map.
Furthermore, Greenland should be much wider than it appears on the Canerio map, because of the same required distortion of east-west
distances on its projection. Thus, at the Arctic Circle (the latitude of northernmost Iceland), Greenland spans 23 degrees and hence should
appear to be two and a half times as wide as the Iberian Peninsula (9 degrees). Instead, Greenland inappropriately has roughly the same width,
relative to features in Europe far to the south, that it does on the Vinland map.
McNaughton is quite correct to argue that the remarkable similarity between the layouts of Europe, Greenland, and Newfoundland-Labrador on
the Vinland Map and the Canerio Map must betray a common origin. However, the layout is all wrong in terms of the precise equirectangular
system of the Canerio Map, yet not unreasonable in terms of the ad hoc system of the Vinland Map. There is no reason to believe that a modern
forger, who was clever enough to have found a parchment that could be positively dated to c. 1440, and to have included on his or her map
choice details from an otherwise unknown tract that must have originally been bound with the same parchment, would have been dumb enough
to have copied Vinland and Greenland from their grossly erroneous depiction (relative to the intended projection) on the Canerio map, instead of
from a modern globe. It would therefore be far easier to conclude that the layout on the Canerio Map derives from that of the Vinland Map, than
vice-versa per McNaughton!
In all likelihood, the Portuguese and/or Canerio had access to a map containing the same information about the North Atlantic that 60 years
earlier had been spliced onto a Bianco-style world map by the Vinland Map's compiler. Conceivably, this was the VM itself, but more likely it
was one of several similar maps, now lost. When Corte-Real rediscovered Greenland and Newfoundland in 1500-01, with a good idea of their
latitudes but only a very imprecise notion of their longitudes, the cartographers, who probably had no idea what projection system was used on
their source map, must have inappropriately copied these features as they appeared onto the Cantino map, whence they migrated to the Canerio
map. If McNaughton is right that Newfoundland on the Canerio map lies precisely where it does on the VM, relative to western Europe, it would
not even have been necessary to have fudged it across the Papal Demarcation Line to justify a Portuguese claim.
On the Vinland Map, "Vinilanda" is represented as a three-lobed island cut almost through by by deep inlets. It is generally assumed that these

Vinland Map Seite 9
On the Vinland Map, "Vinilanda" is represented as a three-lobed island cut almost through by by deep inlets. It is generally assumed that these
lobes represent "Helluland", a barren land of flat stones believed to have been Baffin Island, "Markland," a forested land identified with
Labrador, and "Vinland," a land with grapes believed to have been Newfoundland. (Perkins 1974). The VM is therefore loosely using
"Vinilanda" to include all three of the western lands. The lake or bay at the end of the northern inlet would then be Ungava Bay. The upright
orientation of the island may just mean that the VM compiler was working from a written source that described them as running from north to
south. However, another possibility is that the source map actually turned the island clockwise somewhat in order to keep Helluland from getting
inordinately far from Greenland, or Vinland too close to Brittany. Some such distortions of direction are required in all but cylindrical
projections of the globe. Note that India (and, I would argue, the east coast of Africa) has similarly been turned a full 90 degrees
counterclockwise in the Bianco Map, and almost as far in the VM, in order to improve the fit in Asia. The coast of Norway has similarly been
turned clockwise in both maps.
On the Cantino and Canerio maps, the "Mystery Island" terminates at the latitude of Cape Farewell, and therefore also of the northern tip of
Labrador. Evidently Corte-Real therefore did actually reach Hudson Strait, but not Baffin Island, before turning back, despite the erroneous lack
of northwest-southeast drift to the "island" on the maps. Note that Corte-Real, like the Vikings, was greatly impressed with "Markland's"
forestation. He evidently took Belle Isle Strait for one of the numerous deep fjords portrayed on the maps.
One innovation of the Canerio map over the VM is that whereas VM follows the medieval tradition (whether based on conjecture or actual
circumnavigation does not concern us here) that Greenland is an island, Canerio incorrectly follows Clavus by trying to link it to Spitsbergen,
and possibly even to Norway, at the very top of the map. These latitudes, which probably were indeed impassible in the 15th and 16th centuries,
are not charted on the Cantino map.
In short, the Canerio map, far from demonstrating that the VM is a post-fifteenth century forgery per McNaughton, actually provides convincing
evidence that the unusual information on the VM was employed by Renaissance cartographers, 450 years before VM's modern rediscovery.
For further discussion of McNaughton's paper, the reader is referred to Guthrie (2000).
Saenger's Diphthong Objection
Another recent discussion of the map, one that Tim Spalding finds particularly persuasive in his excellent website "Vinlanda: The Vinland Map
on the Web", is a review article by Paul Saenger that appeared in 1998 in the journal Imago Mundi.
Saenger, the curator of rare books at the Newberry Library in Chicago, raises numerous objections to the 1995 edition of VMTR and its
conclusion that the map is authentic. However, he states that "the greatest deficiency of the new Yale volume is its failure to address the
palæographical and codicological problems posed since the Vinland map's initial discovery in 1958" (1988, p. 199). Since Saenger's own field is
paleography, his views in this area carry particular authority.
Saenger raises three specifically paleographic objections of his own. The first of these is that "the writing out of the æ diphthong for the first
declension plural in legend number 63 (p. 138) in the map is both inconsistent with the scribe of the Tartar Relation (who uses only the usual
medieval form e), and totally anachronistic in a German gothic 'hybrida' in the mid-fifteenth century. At this date, only an Italian humanistic
script would have the æ diphthong written out, and neither the Vinland Map nor the related texts in their script evince any other sign of either
humanistic or Italian influence" (p. 200).
As a matter of fact, the æ diphthong had been in use in Gothic scripts since at least 1300 AD, as for example in Kong Valdemars Jordebog
(Neilsen 1937, Fig. 21 on p. 97), albeit to write Danish rather than Latin language. This issue is therefore one of Latin orthography, rather than
of paleography per se as specified by Saenger.
Figure 5
VM caption employing the æ diphthong --

and one that does not.
Figures 5-11 from VMTR 1995
The caption Saenger refers to is "Magnæ Insulæ Beati Brandani Branziliæ Dictæ" ("The Great Islands of Saint Brendan, called the Branzilians")
on the two large rectangular islands south of Greenland and west of France and Spain, shown in Figure 5 above. Indeed this caption does use the
æ diphthong, and indeed the Latin text of the TR never does write æ out that I can find, not even on the rare occasions when it is called for by
Painter's normalized transcription. As it happens, Alf Önnefors had made the same observation back in 1966 (as quoted by Maddison 1974, p.
188). Saenger has apparently independently rediscovered this issue, as he does not cite Önnefors.
Although Saenger does not mention it, the VM in fact does not use the æ diphthong consistently, but only for this one caption. Thus, the adjacent

Vinland Map Seite 10
Although Saenger does not mention it, the VM in fact does not use the æ diphthong consistently, but only for this one caption. Thus, the adjacent
but well-established Azores and Canary Islands are identified on it as the "Desiderate insule" (see Figure 5 above) and the "Beate insule
fortune," respectively, and caption 53 at the upper right refers to "Terre non satis perscrutate". The VM compiler therefore ordinarily did follow
the customary medieval Latin -e convention, contra Saenger, and apparently used the exotic -æ convention only where it was called for by his
specific sources.
Contrary to the impression given by Saenger, the VM does in fact exhibit numerous Italian influences in both its language and its cartography, if
not in its script per se, and therefore might also in its cartographic orthography. As we shall see in greater detail below, Eric Wahlgren had
already in 1966 specifically proposed, on linguistic grounds, "that the unknown [VM] mapmaker was Italian" (PVMC, p. 135).
And on cartographic grounds, map proponent R.A. Skelton and critic Douglas McNaughton insist alike that the VM was heavily influenced by
the 1436 planispheric world map of the Venetian (and therefore Italian) cartographer Andrea Bianco, or at least by one very similar to it. In fact,
the similarity between the two maps is, according to Skelton (VMTR p. 122), most striking in respect to the shape of precisely these two "islands
of St. Brendan." A color photograph of Bianco's Planispheric World Map is available on Marco Capurro's very useful "Altre Mappe Antiche"
website
Although Bianco himself refers to these islands (on a separate map in his 1436 atlas) as Santanaxio and Antillia, the adjacent Canaries are called
the "Isolæ dictæ fortunatæ sive isole ponentur (?) sancti Brandany," using both the æ diphthong and the medieval -e ending, on the 1367 map of
the equally Venetian (and therefore equally Italian) Marco and Francesco Pizzigano, according to Skelton (in VMTR, p. 137; Skelton's question
mark). Thus, the VM compiler in all likelihood got the name for his Brendan's Islands, complete with its trendy but not anachronistic æ
diphthongs, not to mention their outline itself, directly or indirectly from such an Italian humanist source. It should be remembered that Basel
was the center of a major Church Council at the time the TR and presumably the VM were produced. Such a Council would have attracted
scholars from all parts of Europe, and in particular from Italy, to Basel, even if the VM compiler himself never made the short journey to Italy.
Thomas Goldstein (PVMC, p. 52) in fact specifically proposes a connection between the VM and "the environment of geographic thought of
Paolo Toscanelli."
Thus, while the use of the -æ ending in one isolated caption on the Vinland Map, but not in several others, is indeed a curious and noteworthy
aspect of the map, it by no means invalidates it as a cartographic product of 15th century Basel.
Saenger's "Punctilious" Objection
Saenger's second specifically paleographic objection to the map is that "The punctuation of the legends in the map, notably the total or almost
total absence of the 'virgula', a slanting stroke, to mark inter-sentence pauses (the facsimile is not sufficiently clear to say), is inconsistent with
the script of the [TR] text and also anormal for late gothic script" (p. 200).
Figure 6 below illustrates a typical occurrence of such a virgula in the TR, between the words [N]est[o]rianorum and [Q]uibus in Paragraph 5
(MS p. 2, col. 1, 8th line from end). Painter's normalized transcription of the TR (VMTR, p. 59) indeed identifies this point as a sentence break,
despite the lack of a capital Q on quibus. The virgula itself is the tall hairline stroke. The faint vertical bar next to it is just bleed-through from a
heavy stroke on the opposite side of the parchment.
Figure 6
A virgula sentence divider from the Tartar Relation
Stephen R. Reimer of the University of Alberta points out, in his on-line course notes on punctuation in Medieval manuscripts, that a punctus or
dot, the ancestor of our modern period, was also often used as a sentence separator. Although Saenger does not mention it, the TR in fact
sometimes uses a punctus in place of a virgula, as illustrated in Figure 7 below, where it appears between voluntatem and V[est]re (TR p. 1, col.
1, line 13 in para. 1).
Figure 7
A punctus sentence divider from the Tartar Relation
Although the TR does ordinarily use the virgula or punctus to separate sentences, its editor Painter points out that "The manuscript of TR is . . .
heavily contracted, unparagraphed, and capricious in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization" (VMTR p. 51, emphasis added). Figure 8 below
thus shows an example from the TR in which neither form of sentence divider is present between fidei and Unde, despite the fact that Painter
identifies this spot as a sentence break (TR p. 1, col. 2, line 3, in para. 2). This example is from the very first page of the TR, which one would
expect to have been drafted with greater care than the body, as evidenced by the choice of a parchment leaf for this page, and by the use on it of
red ink for both the title and a rare double-virgula paragraph divider.

expect to have been drafted with greater care than the body, as evidenced by the choice of a parchment leaf for this page, and by the use on it of
red ink for both the title and a rare double-virgula paragraph divider.
Figure 8
A sentence break from the Tartar Relation with no divider symbol
In Figure 8, there is a faint bar visible between the two words, and it is not entirely clear from the photograph in VMTR whether this is a
deliberate mark on the surface, or just bleedthrough of something on the opposite side of the page. I visited the Beinecke Library on June 27-28,
2001, with the specific purpose of checking this out. Holding the first page of the TR to the light and examining it under 2X and 4X
magnification, I was able to confirm that this mark is indeed just the bleedthrough of the first downstroke of the second u in the word
Consueuerat (read Consueverat) on the next page, and not a faint punctus or short virgula. The scribe has in any event not left enough space
between words for a virgula the height of that in Figure 6.
Figure 9 below shows another example of an expected sentence break in the TR, where the virgula, if present, is so faint as to be absent for all
practical purposes. Here the expected break is between [bru-]mali and Inchoatur (TR, p. 1, col. 1, line 2 from end, in para. 2). This example is
also from the first, presumably well-drafted page.
Figure 9
A sentence break from the Tartar Relation with divider symbol absent or virtually absent
Turning now to the Vinland Map itself, its legends are for the most part simple labels that do not require punctuation, rather than complete
sentences. Even isolated sentences did not require punctuation, since the virgula and punctus were used to separate sentences, rather than to end
them. Thus, neither mark appears at the very end of the TR. In fact, there is only a single point on the entire VM that map editor R.A. Skelton
identifies as an inter-sentence pause requiring a period in his normalized transcriptions of the legends (VMTR p. 140). This is between the words
appellauerunt and Henricus in the long legend describing Vinland that appears over the island of Greenland, and is shown in the second line of
Figure 10 below using the same resolution as Figures 6-9 above.
Figure 10
The unique point on the Vinland Map at which a sentence divider is expected,
between the two words on the second of the three lines shown.
Same resolution as Figures 6-9.
The lines of the Tartar Relation illustrated in Figures 6-9 above are approximately 5.5 mm apart on average, measured bottom to bottom. The
lines of the VM legend illustrated in Figure 10 above are much more closely spaced, averaging only about 2.3 mm apart, bottom to bottom. The
predominantly minuscule letters occupy less than half this space, making them only about 1.0 mm high, if that. Even with my bifocals on, I can
only begin to read them with a magnifying lens. It is nothing short of a miracle of scribulatory technology that these minute, quill-written letters
are legible at all. Note that the thinnest experimental line that Cahill et al. (1987) were able to draw with modern titanium paint or correction
fluid was approximately 0.7 mm wide.
As claimed by Saenger, there is indeed no sign of a sentence divider at the spot illustrated in Figure 10, either in the enlarged photograph in
Figure IV of VMTR or when I examined the original VM under 2X and 4X magnification. However, if a divider were present, it would be
approximately the size of a gnat's eyebrow on the scale of this caption. To complain of its absence is sheer nit picking. Furthermore, as has been
demonstrated above, the TR, whose authenticity is incontestable per Guzman's new finding, is itself inconsistent in its use of sentence dividers,
despite the much more generous size of its script. The absence of the divider here therefore does not prove that the VM is post-medieval, nor
even that it was necessarily copied by a different scribe than the TR.
Punctilious is defined as characterized by exact conformity to all rules and conventions -- literally that every period (punctus) be in its proper
place. I can think of no better word to sum up Saenger's objection to the punctuation on the VM, unless it be, in plain English, picayune.
Saenger's Hyphen-Objection
The third specifically paleographic objection Saenger raises against the VM is, "Also, the 'trait d'union', or hyphen, on the map differs in form
from that in the [TR] text" (p. 200). According to Reimer (1998), the only use of the hyphen in the middle ages was to mark words broken at the

The third specifically paleographic objection Saenger raises against the VM is, "Also, the 'trait d'union', or hyphen, on the map differs in form
from that in the [TR] text" (p. 200). According to Reimer (1998), the only use of the hyphen in the middle ages was to mark words broken at the
ends of lines, from the 11th century on. Presumably it had the same general form as the modern hyphen.
Unfortunately, Saenger does not specify where in the VM and the TR the inconsistent hyphens he has in mind are to be found. Naturally, the
VM's freely placed legends ordinarily do not require word breaks. In fact, the only place on the VM where Skelton's transcription calls for a
hyphen is in the word vo[-]lutati, which is broken between the last two lines of the same minute long inscription whose sentence divider is
missing in Figure 10. In the enlarged photograph of this legend in Figure IV of VMTR, no hyphen of any sort is evident.
At the same time, a great many words are broken in the TR, with no hyphen to indicate the break. For example, on page 1, column 1, the word
bru[-]mali is split between the third and second lines from the end, with no trace of a hyphen. Perhaps I am missing one, but I can't find a single
hyphen in the TR anywhere.
It therefore appears that the allegedly inconsistent use of the hyphen between the VM and the TR, like the missing sentence divider in Figure 10,
is yet another non-starter by Saenger.
Saenger on Shailor's Catalogue Entry
Saenger particularly praises Barbara Shailor's "excellent 1985 catalogue of the Beinecke's medieval manuscripts" for its discussion of the
Vinland Map and its associated manuscripts. According to Saenger, "A close reading of Shailor's full description of Beinecke MS 350A [the VM
and TR] clearly suggests that she, as the Beinecke's cataloguer of medieval codices, had palaeographical doubts as to whether the map was in
fact genuine" (p. 200).
I've read Shailor's brief entries for MS 350A and the companion MS 350 (the Speculum) on pp. 183-6 of Vol. 2 of her Catalogue (in fact
published in 1987, contra Saenger) over closely several times, and in fact see no indication that she was expressing any paleographical doubts of
her own as to whether the map was genuine. She does dutifully note that McCrone Associates had found modern anatase titanium and had
concluded that the map was probably a post-1920 forgery. But then she also notes that the Davis group subsequently found only trace amounts of
titanium, "a fact that suggests the previous quantitative analysis was not methodologically sound." If anything, the fact that she did not repeat
Yale Library's 1974 position that the map was probably a forgery indicates that she was leaving the issue up in the air, at least for the record. She
may have expressed doubts about the map elsewhere, but she kept these hypothetical doubts to herself in her Catalogue entries, contrary to
Saenger's claim.
Saenger portentously announces that
[Shailor] correctly transcribes the inscription on the verso of the map, which both Marston and Painter mistranscribed and mispunctuated
in the original Yale volume. . . .
The mistranslated phrase 'Drawing (delineatio) of the first part, second part, third part of the Speculum' was used in 1965 and again by
Witten in 1989 to sustain a purported relationship between the map and the text of the Speculum with which it supposedly had been
originally bound. In fact the phrase, as Shailor correctly transcribes and punctuates it, is ungrammatical and therefore incoherent Latin.
In my judgment, the internal inconsistency in the mode of abbreviating the root par in pars and either partes or partis (whichever the
writer intended) suggests a modern confabulation, likely constructed from tracings of discrete entries for the words pars and partis in
Adriano Cappelli's Dizionario di Abbreviature Latine ed Italine. A reasonable explanation of the inscription on the verso of the Vinland
Map might be that it was added in modern times, perhaps by a book dealer, to relate the map more closely to the genuine medieval text of
the volume that is now MS 350; the hand of this inscription need not necessarily be that of whoever confected the map itself, whose
latinity was consistently grammatically correct. . . .
Additionally while delineatio is a known neo-Latin term for maps in the sixteenth century, I have not been able to find it used in this
sense in the fifteenth century, the normal medieval expressions being tabula or mappa. (Saenger 1988, p. 200)
Figure 11
The caption on the back of the left page of the VM
Contrast digitally enhanced
Figure 11 above depicts the caption in question, whose bleedthrough also appears in faint reverse at the upper left corner of Figure 1. It is of
course important to consider every detail pertaining to the map, including this caption, and Saenger rightly invites us to think about it more
carefully, and in particular in light of Shailor's precise reading of it.
However, Saenger misleadingly suggests that this inscription is the sole key to the purported association between the VM and the admittedly
15th century Speculum volume. Although it was the clue that initially suggested such an association, the proof is the continuity of the wormholes
between the VM and the front of the Speculum and its original front cover, the continuity of the wormholes between the TR and the back of the
Speculum and its original back cover, the identity of the watermarks on the paper in the TR and the Speculum, and the similarity of the
parchment used in all three. The highly abbreviated caption itself is just a touch of confirmatory icing on the cake. (Although the VM parchment
is thinner that most of that in the TR and Speculum, it is, as noted above, essentially identical to two leaves of the latter.)
Saenger rightly points out that the caption could easily have been added by someone other than the scribe who drew the map, perhaps even in
modern times by a book dealer who was hoping a buyer would discover the association between the two volumes. In fact, it appears to be a

Saenger rightly points out that the caption could easily have been added by someone other than the scribe who drew the map, perhaps even in
modern times by a book dealer who was hoping a buyer would discover the association between the two volumes. In fact, it appears to be a
memorandum from the original binder to himself or his apprentice, comparable to the sequence numbers on the quires of the Speculum. The
binder would have had to have known a smattering of Latin, but would not have had to have been as expert as the compiler of the VM or even its
copyist. If the memo's grammar is less perfect than that of the map, this in no way detracts from the potential authenticity of the map or even
demonstrates that the memorandum is modern.
In any event, it is known that the original volume was taken apart and rebound in modern times, apparently circa 1900 to judge from the calf
binding found on the TR and VM. The caption in question could therefore even have been added at that time, in the rebinder's best attempt at
Latin, so as to harmonize as much as possible with the material in question. Hence even if the caption is modern, there is no reason to conclude
that it is part of a deception.
But just how ungrammatical is the caption? My reading of the caption (using the medieval abbreviation sign ~ that appears after numerals, above
words, or as a crossbar on the tail of the p's) is Delineatio 1~ p~s. 2~ p~s. 3~ p~r~ spec~li. In Cappelli's dictionary of medieval Latin and Italian
abbreviations, the p~s symbol is indeed a standard 15th century abbreviation for pars (1990 6th edition, p. 291). The p~r~ symbol is, as Saenger
notes, almost though not quite identical to a second abbreviation that in fact is p~t~, and was used for partis or partes in the same 15th century
(ibid., p. 294). It would seem to me that either partis or partes could equally be abbreviated as p~t~ or p~r~. The latter is not recorded in
Cappelli's dictionary, but this obviously was never a complete compilation of every single medieval scribe's creative abbreviations, else how
could it now be into its sixth, expanded edition?
Shailor's precise transcription of the caption, not given in its entirety by Saenger, is "Delineacio prima pars secunda pars tertia partis [?]
speculi". The question mark in brackets after partis is Shailor's, not mine. Since pars is nominative singular, and partis is genitive singular, this
would literally read "Drawing first part, second part, of the third part of the Speculum", if my 9th grade year of Latin still serves me correctly.
This indeed is a rather ungrammatical shift in case. Using genitive for all three parts (in the sense of "belonging to") as in the VMTR
mistranslation Saenger cites above would be ideal, but nominative singular throughout ("Drawing first part, second part, third part of the
Speculum") would be acceptable as a fragmentary bookbinder's memorandum.
However, as Saenger himself points out, p~r~ (or at least p~t~) could equally represent partes, the nominative plural of pars, instead of the
genitive singular partis. Shailor herself admitted with her bracketed question mark that she was not certain of partis. With this reading, the
caption becomes "Drawing first part, second part, third parts of the Speculum", and the awkward case shift is avoided. It is still true that if the
plural is used after "third", the singulars after "first" and "second" become redundant, so that "Drawing first, second, third parts of the
Speculum" would have been an improvement, but the caption as written can hardly be called "incoherent" per Saenger.
Saenger darkly suggests that his purported modern book dealer lifted these symbols (albeit imperfectly) from an early edition of Cappelli's
dictionary in order to establish a connection between the two volumes. However, a far more reliable way to call a potential buyer's attention to
the connection between two volumes being offered for sale at the same time and apparently from the same unspecified library would have been
simply to announce in the catalog that both volumes use the same paper, similarly interspersed with parchment, and may therefore have been
produced by the same scriptorium, even if the dealer chose, for dramatic effect, to leave it to the buyer to "discover" for himself that the
wormholes align. A much easier explanation for the odd abbreviations is that a fifteenth century bookbinder merely lifted them from his
repertoire of valid fifteenth century abbreviations (with an improvised but completely natural substitution of "r" for "t" in the fancy plural form),
and was merely trying too hard to show off his Latin skills to his apprentices by unnecessarily using both singular and plural symbols.
Ever-punctilious, Saenger claims that Shailor, unlike the VMTR's "amateurish" Marston, correctly punctuated the caption in question, thereby
helping to demonstrate its "incoherence" as Latin. It is true that Marston (in VMTR, p. 3) incorrectly puts a punctus after "third part," even
though there is no mark there, and a colon after "first part," even though the second dot there appears to be just a stray mark. In fact, however,
Shailor gives it no punctuation at all, as may be seen above, despite the perfectly clear appearance of a punctus (which could serve as a modern
comma) after "first part" and again after "second part". Furthermore, Witten, in his contribution to the 1995 edition that Saenger is supposedly
reviewing, does correctly report the punctuation, for what it's worth, even though he incorrectly reads all three abbreviations as partis:
"delineatio primae partis. secundae partis. tertiae partis" (Witten in VMTR 1995, p. xlix). Once again, Saenger doth protest too much.
Saenger, as quoted above, questions the use of delineatio itself in the caption as evidence that it could not have been added before the 16th
century. However, if I read the 1879 Lewis and Short Latin dictionary correctly, this word appears already in the 3rd c. A.D. writings of the
Christian writer Tertullianus, to mean sketch or delineation, and therefore was fair game in this sense in the 15th century. While I have no
argument with Saenger's claim that it was not specifically used to mean map before the 16th century, there is no reason to think that this would
be its specific meaning on the reverse of the VM. To the binder, the map was simply some sort of sketch or drawing that he had been instructed
to incorporate with the separately written material of the Speculum. To object to the map's identification in this context as a delineatio is yet
another red herring on Saenger's part.
Despite Saenger's professed respect for the precision of Shailor's reading of the "delineatio" caption, Shailor in fact gives delineacio, even
though Saenger reports the same word as delineatio. From Figure 11 above, it may be seen that it is perhaps a close call whether a t or a c was
intended. Certainly -tio would be the classical Latin form. Whichever was meant, however, it is disingenuous of Saenger to claim that Shailor,
unlike the VMTR authors, transcribes the inscription correctly and that this demonstrates the latters' paleographic incompetence, when in fact
Saenger himself dismisses part of her reading.
One important point concerning the map itself that Shailor does raise in disagreement with the VMTR authors, and that Saenger calls appropriate
attention to, is her insistence that although the TR and Speculum were written by the same scribe, the VM text is the work of someone else. A
circa 1440 date for the TR and Speculum is not seriously in doubt. Therefore if, as stated by Marston (VMTR p. 8) and accepted by Skelton
(VMTR p. 109), the VM and TR were lettered in the same handwriting, then the map is automatically genuine, wormholes or no. But if, as
Shailor insists, the handwriting is different, any authenticity the map might have must rest on its other features. A different handwriting would
not make it automatically inauthentic, since it would be natural for a map specialist to have copied the map while an ordinary scribe was copying
the text, and indeed Shailor makes no such claim. Nevertheless it would place the ball of authenticity back in the proponents' court. (Francis

the text, and indeed Shailor makes no such claim. Nevertheless it would place the ball of authenticity back in the proponents' court. (Francis
Maddison did raise some issues with the TR's authenticity in his 1974 article, but Guzman's subsequent discovery of an even earlier copy of it,
noted above, completely smashes this line of argument.)
Neither Shailor nor Marston gave any specifics to back up their contrary claims, so I regard this important issue as unresolved and as one that
should be carefully studied by competent handwriting experts. However, it should be noted that just a few different letter forms would not be
conclusive of different penmanship, since there are in fact several inconsistencies within the map itself. Just to take the Magnae Insulae Beati
Brandani Branziliae Dictae legend in Figure 5 above, the l in Insulae is different from that in Branziliae, the r in Brandani is different from that
in Branziliae, the n in Magnae differs from those in Brandani, and three different forms of the æ diphthong itself are used, even though it would
be absurd to think that two or even three scribes penned this one legend. Furthermore, the minuscule d in Brandani differs from the minuscule d
in the adjacent Desiderate Insule legend, even though the majuscule Ds in Dictae and Desiderate are identical, despite their inconsistent
endings.
If the VM was indeed written by a different scribe than the TR, as Saenger believes, the inconsistency between the occasional -æ endings on the
map and the uniform -e endings in the TR is no longer so remarkable as he makes it out to be.
Saenger's Apocryphal Allusions to other Paleographical Authorities
Saenger reports that "An oral tradition, perhaps apocryphal, tells us that the late Bernhard Bishoff on a visit to Yale once saw the map and
laughed" (p. 200). Surely it must be Saenger himself who is joking if he believes that gossip about a guffaw is any substitute for a published
analysis or even a verified casual opinion of the map. Likewise, "Stephan Kuttner is reported to have been sceptical, but he never published his
views" (p. 200). As a matter of fact, Kuttner's views were published, in the proceedings of the 1966 Vinland Map conference. Despite the map's
numerous peculiarities, Kuttner concluded, "This points once more in the direction not of forgery but of compiled or conflated readings as the
source of our caption writer. A sophisticated modern forger -- if we contemplate for a moment this possibility -- would not be so poor a Latinist
as to make Pascali the genitive of Pascalis once he took the trouble of finding the name of the pope who reigned in the years of Bishop Eirik's
mission. He would not have produced the impossible scrambling of two ecclesiastical functions.... A modern forger, finally, would not be so
clumsy as to designate both Innocent IV (1243-45) and Paschal II (1099-1118) sanctissimus pater noster, that is, as now reigning (or reigning
within living memory)." (VMTR p. 112) It of course would not be surprising if Kuttner reversed this position after the McCrone report was
released in 1974, as did almost everyone involved in the original debate but George Painter (Painter in VMTR95, p. ix). I'm willing to enter
hearsay evidence on his later opinion into the record, but not without knowing who heard it said, what Kuttner's specifics were, and when he
took this view relative to the McCrone announcement.
In a veritable tour de force of name-dropping, Saenger objects that "the pre-eminent medieval palæographers (such as Bernhard Bischoff, T.
Julian Brown, Jean Vezin, Malcolm Parkes, Paul Oskar Kristeller, Giuseppe Billanovich, Albert Derolez, Richard Rouse and Pieter Obbema)
have never formally been invited to voice their opinions on the map as a medieval manuscript, either collectively or individually, although many
of these erudites must certainly have passed through or near New Haven" (p. 200). If these individuals indeed had something to offer, they were
certainly welcome to invite themselves to see the map, as I myself easily did even without their credentials. The fact that they never bothered to
is irrelevant to both the paleography and the authenticity of the map. One could just as unjustifiably conclude that it proves that they were
completely satisfied with it. The fact that Yale Library and Yale University Press never invited their opinions reflects perhaps on the
thoroughness of the Yale investigation of the matter, but not on the map itself.
Saenger notes as further alleged evidence of VM's paleographical deficiencies that "It should also be remembered that the map was shown to and
rejected by the curators of the Department of Manuscripts of the British Library (T. Julian Brown was then Assistant Keeper), before it was
offered to Yale" (p. 200). However, Saenger does not mention that Painter and Skelton were also among the experts at the British Library (then a
part of the British Museum) who examined the map. They were equally skeptical at that time, and became enthusiastic proponents only after the
wormholes in the VM, TR, and Speculum were later shown to align. Saenger gives us no indication of Brown's view after the wormholes came to
light. Saenger furthermore does not tell us that one of Painter's own specialties is paleography (Painter 1974, p. 193). The 1957 rejection of the
map by the British Museum therefore reflects more on its lack of physical context at the time, than on its paleography as per Saenger.
While we are on the subject of the British Museum's 1957 rejection of the VM + TR volume, Saenger approvingly mentions "John Parker's
suggestion that Irving Davis (the English dealer who in 1957 had tried, without success to sell the Vinland Map to the British Library prior to
Witten's involvement) might conceivably have planted the manuscript of Vincent of Beauvais in the hands of Witten's New Haven friend Thomas
Marston so that Witten could 'discover it' as the codex from which the Vinland Map had been removed." This is an interesting thought, but if
true, why didn't Davis make sure that the British Museum staff themselves "discovered" the Speculum connection back in 1957, rather than
allowing the map to be rejected there, and thereby devalued to the paltry $3500 his seller received from Witten?
Other Saenger Objections
A further objection Saenger raises to the VM is that "eccentric Latinization of both place and personal names suggests a fake. Particularly
egregious is Erissonius for Eiriksson where the normal medieval Latin would be Erici filius or Henrici filius" (p. 199).
In fact, this objection had already been disposed of back in 1966 by linguists Einar Haugen and Eric Wahlgren. Haugen (PVMC, p. 141) points
out that the map's use of Irlandia for Ireland, Gronelanda instead of Gronlandia for Greenland, for Vinland and Erissonius in place of the
expected Erici for Eiriksson simply indicates that the compiler was a "non-Scandinavian."
Wahlgren (PVMC, pp. 134-5) goes on to propose that the extra internal ("svarabhakti") vowel in Gronelanda, Vinilanda, and Isolanda, plus the
conversion of kss to ss in Erissonius itself, not to mention the compiler's lack of comprehension of the patronymic nature of this name,
specifically indicates, "that the unknown map-maker was Italian." Saenger's objection to the "eccentric Latinization" of these names thus goes
hand in hand with his failure to see the Italian influences in the cartography and orthography themselves, noted above.
Saenger also objects that "the Vinland Map's northern orientation, if indeed it truly reflects a thirteenth century lost original, would be without

Saenger also objects that "the Vinland Map's northern orientation, if indeed it truly reflects a thirteenth century lost original, would be without
precedent in the Latin West among non-climatic, pre-fifteenth-century world maps" (p. 199). Although the Vinland and Greenland data on the
map would, if brought back by Bishop Eirik, have dated to the 12th century (not the 13th century per Saenger), the Vinland Map itself is (if
authentic) as much a production of the 15th century itself as is the 1436 Bianco Planispheric World Map on which it is based. Pre-fifteenth
century world maps are therefore already an irrelevant comparison. By 1440, northerly oriented Ptolemaic maps had already been circulating and
recopied in Europe for three decades. Indeed, we need look no further for such a map than the very same atlas in which Bianco published his
Planisphere. On an adjacent page, Bianco included a north-oriented conic projection of the world based on the Ptolemaic data for comparison to
his "modern" map. A copy of Bianco's 1436 Conic World Map may be viewed at http://www.capurromrc.it/mappe/!0119bianco.html. The
concept of orienting a map with north at the top would therefore have been well known to any student of Bianco's planisphere. The admittedly
novel decision to turn the VM in the Ptolemaic direction was undoubtedly influenced in part by the fact that by the time Vinland and Greenland
were tacked onto Bianco's planisphere, it fit the page much better in this orientation.
Saenger does raise several troubling issues concerning the provenance of the map. However, if the map was indeed stolen from some library
before it was purchased by Witten, that would simply mean that Yale is not its rightful owner. It would not reflect on its authenticity per se.
McNaughton and Saenger both approvingly cite Kirsten Seaver's work on the Vinland Map, and in particular her 1995 article in The Map
Collector. Seaver has expanded on this ideas in her 2004 book Maps, Myths, and Men, which is discussed at length below.
Technical Considerations: McCrone's Anatase Particles
In 1972, McCrone Associates were asked by the Yale Beinecke Library to perform a physical study of the map and its ink (Walter McCrone and
Lucy McCrone 1974; W. McCrone 1988, 1998). Their technician, Anna Teetsov, removed 29 small samples from the VM, along with 7 from the
TR and 18 from the SH for comparison. One of these samples is shown in Figures 2 and 3 of McCrone (1988), and is approximately 100 X 200
micron (0.1 X 0.2 mm.) in size.
On examination of these samples with polarized light microscopy (PLM), they found that several of them contained isolated "small areas, a few
square micrometers" (1988, p. 1011; 1 micrometer = 1 micron = 0.001 mm.) that appeared to be rich in the anatase crystalline form of titanium
dioxide. In Figure 3 of McCrone (1988), these appear as black specks, perhaps 5 or 10 micron in dimension.
On training a special micro X-ray diffraction camera with a resolution of about 7 microns on these areas, they were able to confirm the presence
of anatase, mixed with calcite and some quartz. Other analyses confirming the presence of titanium and/or anatase were also able to be focused
on these tiny particles. Their electron microprobe analyzer was thus able to produce results from an approximately 100 cubic micron (4.5
microns cubed) sample. Their ion microprobe analyzer studied samples ranging from 4 to 10 micron in average diameter.
They were then somehow able to physically isolate some of these tiny particles, typical ones of which are shown in Figures 4 and 5 of McCrone
(1988). These are both about 5 X 10 micron in dimension, and under a transmission electron microscope (TEM), are shown to be aggregates
composed of small rounded pellets. One of these particles, described as "the smallest possible subnanogram portion" (1 nanogram of anatase
would fill a cube about 6 microns on a side) was crushed between glass slides and examined by TEM, as shown in Figure 8 of McCrone (1988).
It was found to be composed of rounded and somewhat elongated single crystals ranging in size from 0.03 to 0.5 micron in diameter (McCrone
and McCrone 1974, p. 212), and averaging about 0.15 micron in size (McCrone 1988, p. 1011).
According to the McCrones, anatase crystals of such a size and shape are not found in nature, and could not have been manufactured in the
Middle Ages, yet they are found in modern titanium-based paints, which were not manufactured before 1917. Larger anatase crystals do occur in
nature, but if they were crushed to a powder, they would have neither the uniform size distribution nor the rounded shape found on the VM.
They concluded that a forger must have used a modern, anatase-based paint or pigment as a component of his or her ink.
Specifically, the VM ink lines tend to have a fine yellowish border that extends slightly beyond the black line. This is a normal consequence of
age in medieval documents, and in fact was originally thought of as an indication of the VM's authenticity. McCrone argues that in order to give
the map this appearance of age, the forger actually inked it twice -- first with a titanium-bearing yellowish ink to make the yellow line, and then
again with a slightly narrower black line. According to the McCrones, "well over 90 per cent" of the black line was then manually flaked off in
order to hide the forger's tracks and to give the map a further appearance of antiquity. They found the anatase particles in the yellow line, but not
in the remaining portions of the black line.
Weaver on Anatase in Clay
Despite the McCrone claim that anatase crystals such as those found in the VM ink do not appear in nature, Weaver (1976) reports that the TiO2
that is commonly present in kaolinite clays consists mostly of rounded anatase pellets, ranging from 0.05 to 0.20 microns in size, with 0.10
micron "being a good average value" (p. 216). This is a remarkably close match to the range of 0.03 to 0.5 micron and average value of 0.15
micron found by McCrone on the VM (1988, p. 1011).
Furthermore, Weaver found that while these anatase pellets tend to cluster together in clumps of 2-10 or more, they are often found in larger
aggregates composed of tightly packed pellets, ranging from 5 to 10 microns, and occasionally up to 80 microns in diameter (p. 216). Weaver's
naturally occuring kaolin anatase aggregates thus correspond well in size with the anatase-rich particles isolated and analyzed by the McCrones.
McCrone and McCrone (1974, Table I) provide detailed elemental analyses of 16 titanium-bearing particles that they found. (These analyses are
reproduced, along with 3 additional particles, in Table V of McCrone 1988.) If all the titanium they found were in the form of TiO2, which is
60% titanium, only 2 of the 16 particles could have as much as 50% TiO2, while the average value would be only 20-30%, according to their
calculation (p. 214). Thirteen of the 16 particles also contain perceptible aluminum, with a median value of 1-2%, and every particle contains at
least as much silicon as aluminum. Silicon by itself could be silica, but aluminum with silicon is consistent with kaolinite. If all the aluminum
were in the form of kaolinite, which is 20.9% aluminum, the median kaolinite content of the 16 particles would be 5 to 10%. (Computation corrected
4/1/05.) The McCrones' own elemental analysis of their particles is therefore consistent with the presence of some kaolinite that we would expect

4/1/05.) TheMcCrones' own elemental analysis of their particles is therefore consistent with the presence of some kaolinite that we would expect
to accompany Weaver's anatase aggregates. (In a personal communication, however, Kenneth Towe has pointed out that this Al + Si could
equally represent feldspar.)
The preliminary McCrone PLM examination of their ink samples found "low refractive index particles, probably ... minerals like quartz, clays,
feldspars, etc." (McCrone 1988, p. 1011, emphasis added.) These particles could as easily have been medieval as modern, and so were not
subjected to the detailed analysis received by the anatase particles. However, they show that the McCrones' own analysis was at least consistent
with the presence of particles of some form of clay elsewhere in the ink.
Although most common clays do not contain kaolinite as their principal ingredient, Weaver (personal communication 2004) states that he "would
not be surprised" if anatase pellets similar to those he found in kaolin existed in other clays formed by weathering.
Although anatase-bearing clay dust could easily have blown in an open window and accidentally settled on the parchment, it may actually have
been introduced into the writing process deliberately. According to Pete Goebel of Goosebay Workshops, a calligraphic supply e-store, "flour of
clay, preferably light in color" (as is kaolin), was one of some 20 substances known to have been used as "pounce" to blot wet ink and/or to
prepare the surface of parchment before writing (personal communication). Kaolin clay is particularly prized as an absorbent. Garman Harbottle
has cogently suggested that any clay particles that came into contact with the water-based ink would have become suspended in it, and then have
become fixed to the parchment as the ink dried. However, any such clay particles on the dry parchment would have been free to fall off as the
parchment was handled, whence the absence or relative absence of detected anatase on the parchment itself (personal communication).
Furthermore, Weaver (personal communication 2004) notes that today kaolin is often added directly to ink, as a pigment in its own right and in
order to give the ink body. Although none of the medieval iron ink recipes I have seen actually calls for the addition of clay, this simple
amendment could easily have been employed.
In 1974, the McCrones could not have known of Weaver's 1976 finding of VM-like anatase particles in kaolin clays. However, neither McCrone
(1988, 1998) nor Towe (1990) so much as mentions Weaver's article, despite its great potential relevance to the presence of anatase in the VM. In
1988 or 1990, the relevance of Weaver's finding could perhaps have been overlooked by McCrone, and perhaps even by Towe despite the fact
that he is a specialist on clays. However, private researcher Ardell Abrahamson called Wilcomb Washburn's attention to the Weaver study, who
in turn cited it in his contribution to the 1995 edition of VMTR (p. xxvi). There is therefore no excuse for McCrone's continued insistence in his
1998 paper that the VM anatase particles could not have had a natural origin.
In private communications, Kenneth Towe has objected that clays contain at most 3% TiO2. Weaver used a calgon dispersing agent, intense
sonic treatments, and a centrifuge to separate anatase TiO2 from the bulk of the clay. These methods were not available in the middle ages, yet
McCrone found anatase clusters on the VM that were not at least 97% kaolinite. Unfortunately, Towe did not take the opportunity to make these
points, as even a brief aside, in either his 1990 article, or in his 2004 reply to Olin's 2003 presentation of her ink argument.
However, if clay were broken up as air-borne dust or pulverized into "flour" with a mortar and pestle, or if it were suspended in aqueous ink,
Weaver's anatase aggregates could easily have become separated from the bulk of the kaolinite overburden. In any event, the clusters analyzed
by McCrone Associates were isolated and even mechanically separated from whatever background material was present by heroic 20th century
laboratory methods, and even then were only 20-30% anatase. This isolation and mechanical separation would not be a commercially viable way
to produce even highly impure anatase pigment, but it was performed in a modern laboratory, not in medieval times. As noted above, McCrone
Associates did find some aluminum and silicon in most of these clusters, which would be consistent with an origin from clay. They even noted
the presence of separate particles consistent with clay, but did not deem these worthy of further study at the time.
It should be noted that Weaver himself has indicated that he would expect anatase from clay to be associated with more iron than typically was
reported in the McCrone analyses, since a strong magnet is ordinarily able to remove most of the anatase from the surrounding clay (personal
communication, 2004). Nevertheless, in his 1976 article (p. 216 and Fig. 12) Weaver indicates that some of the TiO2 aggregates are not removed
by the magnet. These aggregates, at least, would contain relatively little iron.
In further communications, Towe has provided me with a 1974 letter from him to Alexander O. Vietor (Towe 1974, linked below) in which he
mentions that Karl Turekian had already raised the possibility that the VM anatase might have come from weathered soils. In this letter, Towe
did raise the objection to this possiblity that clay minerals would have shown up in the X-Ray diffractions, yet did not. Although he never
mentioned this aspect of the problem in his journal articles on the map, he did refer to "the presence of a well-crystallized anatase free of clay
mineral contaminants" in a 1996 letter to the Washington Post (Towe 1996a), and made similar remarks in a letter to the Washington Times
(Towe 1996b), both linked below. [Paragraph added 8/11/06.]
Olin's Medieval Ink Preparation
Despite the McCrone claim that anatase particles such as those found in the VM ink could not have been manufactured in the middle ages, Olin
(2000, 2003) finds that if the standard medieval process for making the ink ingredient green vitriol (aka copperas, aka ferrous sulphate) is applied
to the mineral ilmenite (FeTiO3), anatase titanium dioxide precipitate is one of the end products. This anatase would then turn up in the ink. Her
findings were first reported at a 1976 conference, and have been discussed extensively since, even though they were only first published in 2000.
W. McCrone (1988, p. 1017) acknowledges that Olin's reaction produces very finely divided anatase, but dismisses its relevance on the grounds
that "to convert this product to a VM-type anatase requires a calcining step at very high temperatures (800-1000 deg. C). This is inconceivable as
a 15th century process." Cp. also Towe (1990, pp. 84-85); Brown and Clark (2002, p. 3660).
George Painter, however, has pointed out that "in the real world such metallurgical temperatures were not only familiar to medieval chemists and
alchemists but have also been evident ever since the prehistoric bronze-smiths of 3000 B.C., even in the Norse-American context of the L'Anse-
aux-Meadows charcoal-fueled smithy, already cited for its titanium-trace slags, where a furnace temperature of 1200 deg. C. has been
estimated" (in VMTR 1995, p. xii). Recall that calcination per se is simply the age-old process of roasting limestone to make lime, requiring

estimated" (in VMTR 1995, p. xii). Recall that calcination per se is simply the age-old process of roasting limestone to make lime, requiring
temperatures of 1000 deg. C. according to Heinemeier and Jungner (1994, p. 35). "Calcinacioun" is in fact specifically mentioned c. 1387 in
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales ("The Canon Yeoman's Tale," line 251). Wallace (2000, p. 212) confirms a 1250 deg. C. temperature from L'Anse
aux Meadows.
As it happens, medieval ink recipes commonly call for reducing the green vitriol to a powder before mixing it with the other ingredients, in order
to facilitate dissolution, and at least one such recipe actually calls for the green vitriol to be "calcined to whiteness" and then
"triturated" (ground) for this purpose (Carvalho 1904, Ch. 21). Nevertheless, Kenneth M. Towe of the Smithsonian's Department of Paleobiology
(personal communication, Jan. 2004) has pointed out that while temperatures below 300 deg. C. would be adequate to reduce green vitriol to a
powder per Carvalho's recipe, at only moderately higher temperatures and far short of those required to convert the anatase particle size, the
vitriol would break down into dark red polishing rouge, known in the medieval ages as colcothar, and would become useless for making ink.
Therefore, although medieval technologies could have accidentally produced anatase particles of the size found on the map, despite McCrone's
assertion to the contrary, there is no compelling reason to think that these would have ended up in the ink.
Ardell Abrahamson has recently called to my attention an article in which J.C. Deelman (1979) reports that well-crystallized anatase can be
produced from amorphous TiO2 at room temperature (25 deg. C), through a repeated cycle of wet and dry conditions, so that the calcining
temperatures demanded by McCrone would not in fact be necessary to enlarge the particle size in Olin's precipitate to that found on the map.
However, since some 1500 hourly wet-dry cycles were necessary to achieve these results, it seems unlikely that green vitriol made from ilmenite
would have been subjected to this process prior to preparing ink. It is possible, however, that something like Deelman's mechanism accounts for
the natural presence of well-crystallized anatase particles in kaolinite clays.
Olin (2003) goes on to stress that the elements copper, aluminum, zinc and gold that are present in the VM ink strongly suggest impurities that
would have arisen during genuine medieval ink production methods, but not in a modern replica of medieval ink. She calls for further technical
studies of medieval documents to determine the precise composition of their inks.
The Cahill PIXE Analysis
Cahill et al (1987) found at most 10 nanogram/cm2 of Ti in 33 visible ink samples on the map, with a median value of 1.0 ng/cm2. Four of the 33
lines showed no detectable titanium whatsoever (< 0.2 or 0.3 ng/cm2), demonstrating that titanium in any form could not have been the base of
the ink. Titanium was actually present in detectable trace amounts at five points on the VM parchment itself (median value 0.5 ng/cm2),
consistent with "background" contamination from sources such as flaking wall paint or windborne clay dust particles. The inked lines themselves
typically had about twice this amount of titanium (median value 1.0 ng/cm2 for the ink plus parchment combined), but this would not, they
argued, be enough for the titanium to be a visible component of the ink.
McCrone countered that "If Cahill's 10 ng/cm2 is concentrated in an ink line, it corresponds to nearly 4 million anatase particles in a 1 cm length
of ink line." (1988, p. 1016) McCrone does not provide the details of his calculation, but the following assumptions will yield 2 million particles
per cm of ink line, which is reasonably close: 10 nanograms Ti per cm2 of target area per Cahill et al's maximum value; 0.5 cm2 inked line per
cm2 of target area; 0.1 cm2 inked line per linear cm of inked line; elongated ellipsoidal anatase crystals with long axis averaging 0.15 micron per
McCrone (1988, p. 1011), and both short axes half that or 0.075 micron; TiO2 60% Ti by weight; density of anatase 3.9 gm/cc (per the Kronos,
Inc. website). Simply shortening the long axis to 1.2 micron and the short axes to 0.6 micron would in fact yield McCrone's 4 million figure.
Cahill's median Ti value of 1.0 ng/cm2 is far more representative of the Ti content of the ink than his maximal value of 10 ng/cm2. Using it
reduces the number of particles to 400,000 per cm of inked line using McCrone's calculation, or 200,000 using mine. Either way, this still sounds
like a lot of particles. However, it must be remembered that each crystallite is shorter than the wavelength of visible light (about 0.4 - 0.7 micron)
, and therefore is unresolvable under even the strongest conceivable visual microscope. If these unresolvable particles were spread out one deep,
they would cover less than 0.2% of the inked area, using my assumptions.
However, the anatase crystallites on the map are not spread out as individuals, but rather are clumped together into particles approximately 5 to
10 micron in dimension, as pointed out above. If each of these aggregates is a flake 1 micron deep as suggested by McCrone's Figures 4 and 5,
each would contain about 60,000 crystallites under the above assumptions if solidly packed, or perhaps only 15,000, if they average only about
25% TiO2 per the data in Table I of McCrone and McCrone (1974). If there are 200,000 crystallites per linear cm, there would then be only a
dozen or so of these mold-spore-sized aggregates per typical linear cm of ink line, hardly enough to be a visible component of the ink. (Most
fungal mold spores are 2-20 microns in diameter, and as such are invisible to the naked eye.)
There therefore really is a substantial difference between Cahill's findings and the impression McCrone gives that the anatase is an important,
visible component of the yellow line. McCrone's online Vinland Map Update indicates that he was still sticking by his original position shortly
before his death in 2002. As he correctly points out, the mere fact that the Cahill group's methods are "high-tech" does not necessarily mean that
they are more accurate than his more traditional techniques. Both their studies should be replicated by other laboratories to determine which is in
error. Towe (1990) generally supports McCrone, but does not demonstrate where Cahill et al. have gone wrong, if they have.
The Brown and Clark Raman Study
More recently, Brown and Clark (2002), using advanced Raman microprobe spectroscopy, report that they have confirmed McCrone's finding of
anatase at at least five points in the yellow line, but not elsewhere on the map, and conclude that a modern origin for the VM is "strongly
indicated."
Brown and Clark use an approximately 5 micron diameter laser spot size and do not report whether anatase was found in every target they
examined or in just a few out of a great many. The fact that they use this beam to search for other minerals and are able to declare them to be
altogether absent suggests that they may have searched the entire map for anatase and found only 5 spots containing detectable anatase.
However, in a private communication, Clark has confirmed, without giving details, that their findings are indeed quantitatively inconsistent with

However, in a private communication, Clark has confirmed, without giving details, that their findings are indeed quantitatively inconsistent with
the Cahill group's. Nevertheless, given the findings of Weaver and Olin, there is no reason that even an abundance of pigment-sized anatase
particles should necessarily cast doubt on the authenticity of the map.
Brown and Clark do search for, and fail to find, traces of ilmenite, which they argue should have been present if ilmenite had been the source of
the anatase per Olin's mechanism, given the imprecisions of medieval ink manufacture. Unfortunately, Olin (2003) does not address this specific
criticism. It is conceivable that any ilmenite fragments would have been large enough to have settled out at one of the steps in the manufacture,
so it would have been useful if Brown and Clark had actually prepared some ink from ilmenite and detected ilmenite in a line made from it. This
issue deserves further investigation.
By 2002, Brown and Clark should also have known about Weaver's 1976 article, if only from Washburn's mention of it in the 1995 reissue of
VMTR (p. xxvi), and therefore should not have repeated the equally erroneous McCrone claim that anatase crystallites such as those found on
the VM do not appear in nature. At the very least, as Raman specialists, they should have known and cited a 1997 paper by Enver Murad of the
Bavarian State Geological Bureau, who shows that "Raman spectroscopy allows the detection of anatase in kaolin down to a concentration of
0.02%." Indeed, Murad shows a Raman spectrum for a kaolinite clay which, if added to Brown and Clark's spectrum for the uninked parchment,
looks essentially like their spectrum for the inked parchment. Murad points out that the principal Raman line of anatase is so strong that for years
researchers erroneously believed that it was a line of kaolinite itself, rather than of the small percentage of TiO2 that commonly accompanies it.
Murad's findings suggest that Brown and Clark may be detecting only a very small amount of anatase, even within the miniscule targets analyzed
with their microprobe.
Brown and Clark do find with their Raman probe that the VM ink, unlike that of the TR, contains substantial amounts of carbon black.
Unfortunately, they do not provide a Raman spectrum for iron gallotannate itself, so that their Raman technology by itself does not tell us
whether or not iron gallotannate itself is present. They nevertheless conclude, from the fluorescence behavior of the VM ink, that it is not iron-
based.
Brown and Clark finally raise a further argument against authenticity, one that is not directly based on their Raman spectroscopy expertise:
It is generally accepted that prior to the development of the printing press, manuscripts were written in either carbon-based or iron
gallotannate inks. A common means of differentiating between them is by the identification of erosion of the parchment or paper
substrate by iron ions leeching from the iron gallotannate inks. This causes considerable discoloration and embrittlement of both paper
and parchment, often leading to brown or yellow staining and, sometimes, considerable loss of the fabric of the manuscript. This trait is
not evident in manuscripts produced with carbon-based inks, which are inherently more stable than iron gallotannates. Had the VM been
drawn in a medieval iron gallotannate ink, a yellowing at the borders of the ink such as that seen on the map might have been expected.
Knowing that such yellowing is a common feature of medieval manuscripts, a clever forger may seek to simulate this degradation by the
inclusion of a yellow line in his rendering of the map. However, this study has shown that (a) the black ink on the VM is carbon-based
making the natural occurrence of such a feature impossible and (b) that the VM shows no evidence of embrittlement of the parchment or
associated parchment loss.
The Brown and Clark paper provides no reference for this information, but Clark (private communication) has kindly referred me for details to
the Iron Ink Corrosion Website by Elmer Eusman et al.
In fact, however, Eusman himself states that "Aged carbon ink and iron gall ink are sometimes hard to distinguish from one another. Visual
examination alone does not provide enough information to identify the ink" (barring actual corrosion, presumably). It therefore appears, contra
Brown and Clark, that visible corrosion is not an invariable consequence of iron ink.
According to Walter McCrone, all black medieval ink, not just iron-based ink, tends to develop a yellow stain around the inked lines over time.
On p. 30 of his 1998 article, he states, "One thing we know about any black ink lines is that after a few hundred years, a narrow yellow border
should be visible along the ink lines due to migration and yellowing of organic components of the ink; these stain the parchment fibers yellow.
This is usually a requirement for, and a proof of, age." Thus, whether or not there is corrosion caused by the chemicals in the pigment, the
organic components themselves (ie primarily gum arabic in the case of iron ink per Carvalho 1904) cause a yellow stain that gradually spreads.
That this is not just a slip of McCrone's declining years is indicated by similar (though less detailed) statements in his 1988 Analytical Chemistry
article: "The black upper line was drawn, and generally well-centered, over a broader yellow line. The latter simulates the natural diffusion and
yellowing of an ink medium into the parchment which takes place normally over hundreds of years" (p. 1014), and, "The forger apparently knew
that the medium in an old ink line diffuses very slowly over a few hundred years to cause a yellow border along its length" (p. 1015). Again, it is
not the iron or even the gallo-tannic acid, but rather the medium (gum arabic dissolved in water that has since evaporated) that causes the stain
he has in mind.
This is not to say that the iron pigment itself cannot cause a stain, or even damage, to the parchment. However, unless McCrone is mistaken
here, a (noncorrosive) yellow stain would appear with age whenever the same or similar organic medium is used to apply any pigment. Of
course, McCrone has been known to be mistaken on other specifics, as for example about the existence of pigment-sized anatase particles in
nature, or about the feasibility of calcination during the middle ages. However, until there is a published demonstration that he is wrong, the
matter is unsettled.
Eusman states that carbon ink was indeed made with gum, to keep the carbon in suspension, so that the same organic medium was sometimes
present in carbon ink as in iron ink. Furthermore, the soot was at most 80% carbon particles, according to him, with the remainder including tarry
materials. Tar would impart a yellow stain if it migrated with the gum into the fibers, so that if McCrone is right about the mechanism, a yellow
stain could easily form with carbon ink.
On the other hand, Eusman notes that pigments were often added to iron ink, to make it more visible as it was applied. Lampblack would serve
this purpose, so that carbon in the ink does not itself prove that the ink was not primarily of the common iron type. Soot could even have become

On the other hand, Eusman notes that pigments were often added to iron ink, to make it more visible as it was applied. Lampblack would serve
this purpose, so that carbon in the ink does not itself prove that the ink was not primarily of the common iron type. Soot could even have become
the dominant pigment if in a preservative effort, some chemical was applied that almost completely removed the iron.
It should be noted that according to Carvalho (1904), isinglas (a pure form of gelatin made from sturgeon bladders), rather than gum arabic, was
most commonly used to make carbon ink, at least in oriental recipes. Olin (2003, p. 6747) notes that McCrone's infrared spectroscopy of the ink
did identify the presence of gelatin, though she notes that this could be "a result of hydrolysis of the collagen of the parchment by the acid
present due to the deterioration of an iron gallotannate ink." In summary, the Brown and Clark argument that carbon in the ink, plus a yellow line
with no corrosion, by itself demonstrates forgery, has not at present been substantiated.
Clark (2004) critiques Olin's (2003) note in Analytical Chemistry. His principal argument is that the ink is carbon-based, and that therefore Olin's
mechanism is irrelevant to the appearance of anatase in the ink. However, he still makes no mention of Weaver's finding of VM-sized anatase
particles in kaolinite clay (1976), or of Murad's detection of even trace amounts of anatase in the Raman spectra of such clays (1997). Instead, he
expressly states that such particles do not occur in natural weathered mineral samples, in direct contradiction to Weaver.
Enterline's Transfer Mechanism
Yet another mechanism to account for the presence of pigment-sized anatase crystals in the VM ink has been proposed by James Enterline
(2002, Appendix).
Enterline observes that the 1937 edition of Plenderleith's manual on conservation methods recommends cleaning manuscripts (presumably for
mildew) with sodium hypochlorite, i.e. household bleach. In particular, if the ink is believed to be fragile, Plenderleith recommends first
covering the document with tissue paper and brushing the bleach into the document through the tissue paper.
Enterline proposes that if the tissue paper (e.g. old-style typewriter carbon-copy paper) had been whitened with modern anatase pigment and
bound with casein, the bleach would soften the casein and some of the pigment could be transferred to the document. In particular, since the
bleach would also soften the binder in the ink, which was commonly gum arabic, a type of glue, the anatase particles pressed into the ink would
actually become bound into it. On drying these would be retained, while any that adhered to the paper would not.
Enterline reports that when he tried this with an iron-tannin pseudo-ink on paper, using thin paper from a 1952 Bible that would have been bound
with casein, he found that anatase pigment particles were retained by the ink, but not by the paper beyond the ink line.
Enterline first proposed his very cogent mechanism at a 1977 cartographic conference, but it was not published until 2002, and has not yet been
widely discussed.
Baynes-Cope and Fluorescence
The well-cited anatase debate has drawn attention away from other important technical studies of the map, and in particular from Baynes-Cope's
1974 finding that the Map reacts in an unusual way to UV light:
The behavior of the ink under ultra-violet light was of particular interest. Iron compounds quench the fluorescence induced in the
background by ultra-violet light and for this reason, faded iron gallo-tannate ink, yellowish-brown by daylight, will appear black against
a bluish or yellowish fluorescent background under this form of lighting. The inks used in both the Tartar Relation and the Speculum
Historiale showed this phenomenon whereas the ink used both for the outline of the map itself and for the text on the leaf did not show
this phenomenon. (Baynes-Cope 1974, p. 210)
As stressed by Wallis (1990), this is an interesting feature that still deserves explanation.
Figure 12 below shows the photo of the VM that accompanied McNaughton's article in the Smithsonian's 2000 Vikings volume. Most of the
map's background in McNaughton's photo has a weird blue cast to it, even though the parchment is actually tan. The only exceptions are the
unobtrusive patches on the back of the map, which show through brightly as yellow, and a faint smear of yellow in the western Atlantic below
"Vinilanda." Evidently the map in this photograph is exhibiting the blue and yellow fluorescence under UV light that was described by Baynes-
Cope. The modern parchment patches glow yellow rather than blue like the map, either because they were cured with different chemicals, or, as
is more likely in light of the faint yellow smear in the Atlantic, because of the glue that holds them in place. It is therefore safe to conclude that
McNaughton's photograph was taken under UV light, even though he makes no mention of this fact.

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Vinland Map Seite 1

The Vinland Map --

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Conclusions and Outstanding Issues

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The New Tartar Relation

McNaughton's Disappearing Ink

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McNaughton's Disappearing Islands

Canerio's "Mystery Island"

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Saenger's Diphthong Objection

VM caption employing the æ diphthong --

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Saenger's "Punctilious" Objection

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Saenger on Shailor's Catalogue Entry

Saenger portentously announces that

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Saenger's Apocryphal Allusions to other Paleographical Authorities

Other Saenger Objections

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Technical Considerations: McCrone's Anatase Particles

Weaver on Anatase in Clay

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Olin's Medieval Ink Preparation

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The Cahill PIXE Analysis

The Brown and Clark Raman Study

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Enterline's Transfer Mechanism

Baynes-Cope and Fluorescence

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