Yale University Library (with the full co-operation of the British Museum) had initiated its own investigation in 1968 commissioning the firm of McCrone Associates of Chicago, specialists in small particle analysis. By 1972 the firm developed the appropriate equipment and techniques for carrying out the work. When Walter McCrone came to London in November 1973 and reported that he and his colleagues were getting results, the RGS invited him to take part in their symposium, 'The Strange Case of the Vinland Map', arranged for February, 1974. Yale agreed to this and promised to announce McCrone's findings a week before the symposium took place. Thus the timing of the RGS symposium explains the press announcement on January 26, 1974.

Once again the map was front-page news, now as an alleged forgery. The McCrones' investigations showed that the map had to be redated post c. 1920. As the ink of the other two manuscripts had proved to be the usual iron gallo-tannate, these did not come into the same category of being suspect documents.

The essence of the McCrones' report was that they found in the ink of the map the compound titanium dioxide. The globular particles in the ink, examined by scanning and transmission electron microscopy, matched in chemical composition, crystalline structure, shape and range of particle size, commercially-produced, anatase titanium dioxide paint pigment (crystalline in this context refers to the arrangement of the atoms in the crystal, not to the visible shape). This pigment was not available until about 1920.

The next stage may be described as the attempted rehabilitation of the document. In 1985 the two volumes (the Vinland Map and 'Tartar Relation' and 'Speculum') were sent to the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory, University of California, Davis, for examnation. The Crocker Historical and Archaeological Projects team and representatives from Yale University subjected the documents to two days of study and analysis. T. A. Cahill and his colleagues published their results in Analytical Chemistry, 1987. They used the PIXE milliprobe (Proton Induced X-ray Emission Milliprobe), a technique unavailable to forensic research in the early 1970s. A total of 159 multi-elemental PIXE milliprobes were performed, including spatial analyses of the parchment. The results appeared to show that titanium and the other medium and heavy elements are present only as trace elements in the inks, with titanium reaching no more than about 0.0062% by weight. In the light of these results they contested the claim that the map was a twentieth-century forgery.

Walter and Lucy McCrone did not accept this conclusion and published their rebuttal in Analytical Chemistry, 1988.[11] They pointed out that Cahill was analysing both ink and parchment, for PIXE is an effective tool for examining macro-samples, not particles and it cannot detect compounds, only elements. 'It is difficult therefore to relate the data in the two papers because of the gross difference in procedures and instrumentation…All of us at McCrone Associates and the Research Institute rest easy with our conclusion that the Vinland map is a forgery.'

In 1990 Kenneth M. Towe, a mineralogist of the Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, published comments on the Cahill results in Accounts of Chemical Research.[12] Under the title 'The Vinland Map: Still a Forgery', he argued that the re-examination of the map by Cahill et al did not invalidate the basic McCrone Associates findings. Towe concludes: 'The clear disparity between the microscopical descriptions made of the Vinland map and those of the indisputably genuine documents must be explained in any argument that the map is a genuine fifteenth century document.'

Mr Baynes-Cope accepts the conclusion of the McCrones and Towe, but emphasises a feature that the other investigators appear to have missed; the one which gave him and Werner the vital clue back in 1966. The Vinland map inklines do not appear black under ultra-violet, unlike all known medieval inks except some primitive inks known to have been used in the Balkans and Iceland. Mr Baynes-Cope made comparisons with reputable manuscripts not written in classical iron gallo-tannate ink but in traditional old inks which are water based. Some tests were done in Iceland, others in Yugoslavia. No inks were found to match the Vinland map ink which appears to be a paint medium dissolved in a solvent which is not water and what more natural bearer of a paint pigment could there be.

The physical analysis suggests that the Vinland map inklines were formed by successive applications of two inks, producing a broad brownish yellow line, partly covered with a black line. The yellow inks have calcium and titanium as major elements. Iron is conspicuously absent in the yellow, except as traces. The black ink samples on the other hand have a large percentage of iron. Since the ink (not the black line) of the map comprises a small amount of inorganic Ti02 in a mainly organic medium, what is needed now is an analysis of this which should be possible by modern methods.

So the essence of the McCrones' proof was that they found a modern artefact in the ink. This has not been overturned by Cahill et al. Secondly Mr Baynes-Cope makes the major point that no medieval ink is known which is comparable to the Vinland map ink. Both investigations lead us to the conclusion that the map dates to the twentieth century and is probably a forgery. If this is the case, then its creation was a clever operation possibly by more than one person.

However, if the map is not strictly a forgery, another possibility is that it might have been drawn as a jeu d'esprit on a blank parchment leaf of the manuscript. There was a Serbo-Croat priest Luka Jeli?, who died in 1922, and was writing articles about the Norse 'evangelisation' of North America before Columbus. He might have drawn the map. Some of the legends are similar to the wording in Jeli?'s transcriptions of early documents in the Vatican. Some paint made of pigment anatised titanium dioxide came into use in about 1920 and so it is a possibility. It is more likely, however, than an unidentified forger used Jeli?'s work, and that this explains the similarities.

Such debates over the content of the map and whether it is consistent with a suggested date of 1440 have been muted in recent years. Attention has focussed on the physical evidence. Another argument against the map's authenticity is the lack of evidence of provenance. Witten recently made some further disclosures.[13] He revealed that Ferrajoli gave him the impression (or did not deny the suggestion) that the manuscript of the Vinland map and 'Tartar Relation' came from the collection of Don Luis Fortuny, a collector still living in Barcelona, and now of advanced years. Witten gave this information to Marston and Vietor of Yale University Library and left them to follow it up but there is no indication that they did so. Although Fortuný is still alive, the others - Ferrajoli, Marston, Vietor and Skelton – involved in the history of the Vinland map, are now dead.

Fake, forgery, or jeu d' esprit; or a true map of the 1440s? Despite the attempts to rehabilitate the map, the weight of evidence supports (in my view) the verdict of fake or forgery. Further scientific investigations should be undertaken, however, to resolve this fascinating enigma once and for all.

References:

1. R. A. Skelton. Thomas E. Marston and George D. Painter, The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965) p.223.
2. R. A. Skelton, 'The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation,' Geographical Magazine, 1966, pp.662-68.
3. The Times Literary Supplement, November 25, 1965.
4. Skelton, Marston and Painter, 1966, p.662.
5. John Parker in Wilcomb E. Washburn, Proceedings of the Vinland Map Conference (Chicago, 1971) p.20.
6. Washburn, 1971, p.27.
7. Washburn, 1971, p.x-xi.
8. The Observer, February 5, 1967.
9. 'The strange case of the Vinland Map,' Geographical Journal 140 (1974), p.183-214.
10. 'The Vinland Map revisited: new compositional evidence on its inks and parchment', Analytical Chemistry, 59 (1987), pp.829-33.
11. Walter C. McCrone, 'The Vinland Map' Analytical Chemistry 60, (1988) pp.1009-18.
12. Kenneth M. Towe in Accounts of Chemical Research 23, (1990) pp.84-87.
13. Laurence Witten, 'Vinland Saga recalled' in Yale University Gazette 64 (1989) pp.10-37.

Further Reading:

Robert McGhee. 'The Vinland map: hoax or history'? The Beaver 67 (2) April-May 1987, 67 (2), pp.37-44.

Acknowledgements:

I express my thanks to A. D. Baynes-Cope for invaluable help on the physical evidence.

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COPYRIGHT 1990 Helen Wallis, All rights reserved.
No portion of this article nor the accompanying illustrations can or may be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.

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