NORUMBEGA (Library Blog)

Monday, December 23, 2013

Eben Norton Horsford and His Norumbega

Ever wonder why there are Norse references dispersed in and around the Boston area?  

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The Norse evidence is dispersed around the Boston area because the evidence there are TWO plausible American histories that Norse Catholics were living in the Boston Area for over three centuries, from AD 1360 to 1,675. 

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The Great Migration chapter of "The Children of the Morning light tells how the Wapamnaog [White as snow folks]  lived as Chirsitians in the "city under a city." [p 41] There is only one "city under a city."   They city is in Turkey, where very early Christians sought safety.  

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The Great Migration also tells of a later migration walking toward the south until they they reached Connecticut [p 46].  The White Beaver stanza of the oldest American history supports the Wapamnaog tale.  The White Beaver stanza is dated to about AD 1360.  European histories support both American histories.  The European histories add the detail  that 4,000 Norse Catholics migrated from Greenland.  Assuming that White Beaver led half the group,  the Norse Catholics, who reached Norumbega about 1360 must have numbered 2,000 or more.

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In 1675 most Norse Catholics were nearly exterminated in the 2nd Puritan war.  Nineteen Massachusetts tribes, including the Wampanoag and the Narrgensett (Narrow passage place) descended from those Norse Catholics.  The keeps of two 13th century churches indicate that other Norse catholics had came to the Boston area at least a century earlier.  That 1260 date is within the time frame of King Harkon IV who was the commander of the greatest navy in the world.

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Eben Norton Horsford (1818-1893), scientist, Harvard professor, and amateur archaeologist, began his life-long effort in the mid-19th century to prove that an ancient Viking settlement, believed to have been established in the year 1000,  once thrived in the Cambridge and Watertown areas along the Massachusetts* (Charles) River, and at the confluence of the Massachusetts River and Stony Brook tributary on the Waltham-Weston boundary.

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*In 1616 Prince Charles, who was at the young age of 15, replaced all the "barbarian" [Old Norse] names on the map of John Smith's 1614 voyage with English names.  He named the major river after himself, "Charles."  Captain Smith was not comfortable with the name changes because Norumbega had been on the explorer's maps for 144 years.  So he made a table of old and new names.  The old name for the Charles River was Massachusetts River, which means "Mighty Sea Place."

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The mythological ancient Norse city of Norumbega was once understood to have been located in the northeastern section of North America, in what the Vikings called “Vineland” (or “Vinland”), long before Horsford’s findings.  In the 16th century, French explorer Jean Alfonse (or Allefonsce) described finding the city and its inhabitants in the Penobscot River region of Maine, and many early maps of North America place Norumbega in this region.  

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The ancient Norse country of Norumbega (Norway)** was located in the northeastern section of North America long before Horsford’s findings.  The LOK Map is evidence that the Norwegians, Portuguese, and English knew where Norumbega was in the 15th century.  The map is solid evidence that Norwegians and Portuguese had been to Norumbega twenty years before Columbus sailed.
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**Norumbega is Portuguese spelling for Norway.  The Portuguese and Norwegian were sailing together in American waters in the late 15th century.
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In the early part of the 17th century Samuel de Champlain set out to locate Alfonse’s discovery, but was not able to find any trace of the city; as a result, Champlain removed all mention of it from his maps.  
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Champlain found the Massachusetts River.  His men raped some Lenape women.  In order to escape the angry pursuing Lenape, Champlain's crew shot some of the Lenape men.  As Champlain's ship sailed away to Arcadia, a French settlement, the Lenape on shore signaled that the French should never return.  Champlain never did.  
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The French never removed Norumbega from their maps. [See LENAPE EPIC: LENAPE MIGRATION]. The English did remove Norumbega every chance they got.  Just as the English changed the name of "Christian Mer (Sea)." The English replaced the centuries old "Christian Mer" with "Hudson Bay,"  The French kept the name "Christian Mer" on the map, but were forced to put the name in the wrong place--the polar sea.  The fate of the "Christian Mer" name supports the belief that the English also played name games with Norumbega to disguise the existence of Norse Catholics.

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Horsford authored many works on the subject, which included a lot of visual evidence (such as photographic plates of his archaeological discoveries, and maps of areas he deemed significant) that supported his theory that Norumbega was located in Cambridge and Watertown.

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 He went so far as to erect Norumbega Tower in 1889 on the Weston-Waltham border of the Stony Brook on the site where he believed the city’s fort was once situated.

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Horsford recognized the tower as evidence that Norse lived in Norumbega.  Thirty Years later, Hjalmar Holand, showed the world that a similar tower in Newport RI was a keep of a Norwegian church.  Holand found 19 other 13th century churches in Northern Europe with similar keeps.  
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A plaque was also placed along the Charles River in Cambridge that marks the supposed site of Leif Erikson’s house, and a statue he commissioned of Erikson can be seen on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.

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Horsford and his daughter Cornelia found Norse evidence almost everywhere they looked because there WAS Norse evidence in more places than they looked.  For example, they did not find the Wampanoag history.   Horsford's fatal error was associating the saga information to explain the physical Norse evidence along the Massachusetts River.  When scholars determined that the saga information did not apply to the physical evidence along the Massachusetts River, Horsford was ridiculed and the Norse physical evidence was ignored.
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The scholars had only the Columbus was first myth as their plausible history.  Thus they believed, unlike the scientist Horsford, that they did not have to do their own research to determine how the physical evidence got into the Massachusetts River.  A century later, today's scholars still believe the Columbus was first myth.  The educators are still not true scientists, who examine evidence and develop a probable reason for its existence.  For over a century they have not recorded that evidence in school books.
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The Norumbega Tower is very strong evidence that the Columbus was first myth is not valid.  But people, who still believe the Columbus was first myth, write blogs about a SCIENTIST, who was a fool to believe that the physical evidence he found meant that Norse were in the area.

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 In addition to the physical evidence, Horsford claimed to have found etymological connections between Old Norse used in the sagas and Algonquian vocabularies, suggesting that similarities in place names further proved there was Viking influence in the area.

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Reider T. Sherwin wrote eight volumes of the Viking and the Red Man.  In the forward of volume four Sherwin wrote "The Algonquin Indians Language is Old Norse." ..."The truth cannot be defeated."  But academic linguists ignored Sherwin.  So those linguists cannot list the sixteen states that have Old Norse names.  Massachusetts is one of them.
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His research, though, was not without strong criticism from the academic community (see The Defences of Norumbega),
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The Puritan fathers wanted all school kids to learn the Columbus was first myth.  That way the kids would not ask embarrassing questions about 13th century keeps.  The kids would not ask, "Why were more than a 1,000 old men, women, and children from the Kings Provence exterminated after they went into a swamp to avoid the fighting?" 
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So today the academic community criticizes Horsford, but never resolves the ancient physical evidence.  As long as controversy exits, the educators do not change early American History.  The controversy will exist as long as the academic cannot push aside their Columbus was first myth.  If they could they might realize that a tower that looks like a keep of a 13th century Norse Catholic church really is a keep of 13th Norse Catholic church.
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and the archaeological discoveries in L’Anse aux Meadows on the island of Newfoundland are widely accepted as being the only true evidence (so far) of Norse pre-Columbian contact with North America.

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Your statement implies a lack of evidence.  There are tons of evidence which are evidence of the academic communities' ability to ignore the results of scientific investigations because those results did not support the Columbus was first myth. Your blog really just helps the teachers in middle school to teach the kids the Columbus was first myth.   Meanwhile the Norumbega tower still stands.

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Thirty Five years ago, four archaeologists, seven Ph. D.s and 16 of the best scholars on Norse in America were featured in a film Viking Visitors in America.  They reached a conclusion that there were Norse in America 1,000 years ago and the Norse were still in western Minnesota four centuries later.   The film was designed to be shown in many classrooms. like all other educational films in the 1980s.  Instead the film was not promoted by the Educators, who wanted to believe what they were taught.  They were taught that Columbus was First.

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There are many other scholars and physical evidence, who had the same experience of being ignored by Eurocentric academics: Rafinesque, Holand, Sherwin, the Norse Catholics, who created the Maalan Aarum (Walam Olum), the family that holds the Viking Sword found in Ulen, MN, Patricia Sutherland,  Steve Hilgren and the other people who found whetstones, Orval Friedrich and other people, who have found hundred of stones with holes drilled into them, the well documented 14th Century artifacts (more than a dozen) found in Minnesota,  the 15 Norse boats along the Viking waterway,  the whaling knife in western Minnesota, Prince Knudson's sword, ax, and fire steel,  the dikes of Lake Alexandria, the Viking Altar Rock,  the jetties in Stakke Lake,  the grave maker in western Minnesota, the two recordings of the "ten men dead: and then there is the 120 miles of the Viking Waterway, where massive modified terrain are evidence of Norse in America for four centuries.

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Will you change the blog to advocate that the teachers give an accurate description of the evidence to the kids and let them decide for themselves?
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The library’s collection includes a number of books and pamphlets authored by Horsford and his daughter, Cornelia, who followed in her father’s research footsteps, on the topic of Norumbega.  For further information on these items or others in the library’s collection, please call our reference desk at 617-727-2590 or email us via our our “Ask a Librarian” page.