Vikings in the North Atlantic
September 12, 2011Posted by Anthropology Times under Archaeology | Permalink |
The Archeology of the Norse North Atlantic
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 19: 331-351 (Volume publication date October 1990)
Thomas H. McGovern
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)
Letters to My Tutor…
My dearest Simone,
Reading this review I thought it would be great to pal around the net looking for the latest info on the research discussed. l wanted to read more on what McGovern referred to as the controversial claims regarding settlement of the Faroe Islands: “Pioneering palynological work by Johannes Johansen claimed to have identified evidence of early cereal cultivation by pre-Norse Celtic monks ca. AD 600.” So far, I’ve come across several non-academic sites that mention the possibility of Celtic monks in AD 600, so it would seem the notion is a popular one; but not much on the more official word. I imagine that no new evidence has been found and the claim remains controversial. Maybe one day the story of new evidence will break and it will be all excitement. McGovern also mentions the controversial claims of Margret Hermanns-Audardottir that there was a pre-Viking Scandinavian colony in Iceland. A stub Wikipedia page basically repeats this information with nothing new added.
I wonder what criteria go into determining whether controversial claims are worthy of mention in a scholarly work. How big a role does merit play as opposed to the reputation of the researcher or the sponsors of the research.
I’m certain I’ve watched a couple films on Viking archaeology and at least one on Vinland and the dig site at L’Anse aux Meadows. Reading McGovern left me wanting to re-watch films on this site. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has a series of pages with information on Vinland archaeology with video clips, including one that takes you inside a Viking long house, and audio clips including an excerpt from the stories of Leif Eriksson. The “next” link in the bottom right corner is a bit discreet, but click it to page through the information at the site.
It’s super late, so I will leave you with that and my warmest regards,
S.
10:58 pm, 3 October 2011
[…] by archaeological data, or came mostly from historical sources. A previous article I read on Norse archaeology that covered some of the same time period, made mention of specific dig sites in the body of the […]