“Rediscovering Vinland, Proof”

By Fred N. Brown III

Two websites, vinlandsite.com and Vinlandsite-Science.org have been “visited” by many since uploading of the former, which indicates a consistent, if low-key interest in the age old tales of bygone Vikings to the New World. Visitors from many nations have not yet offered any counter to the presentations of which this author is aware. Early papers were endorsed by the then President of Iceland and were also remarked in Rolex Awards for Enterprise, published in 1955. Other papers, public and private have been received mostly with neutral responses but, on the other hand, with no contradictions or counter-arguments forwarded.

The Author would be happier if his enterprise had generated more discussion and counter-argument, but for some reason that has yet yet to be fathomed, the subjects of Vikings and Vinland in halls of both American and English “Academe” is almost exclusively negative; even hostile. My periodic advances to colleges and universities have all been responded to with either disregard or silent dismissal. A major English newspaper occasionally printed thoughtful and balanced articles usually followed by nothing less than hate-mail in its letter section. I know of no program or course of study anywhere in North America’s educational systems, except, perhaps in some few primary schools.

So open these pages not in expectation of tranquility, but of engagement. World famed Vinland will never be lost, but it may be subdued without reasoned interest of all students of History..

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781663251275

Fred N. Brown III

FRED N. BROWN III: Choir boy; Toolmaker; Boatman; Marksman and Historian tackles just about anything even though his budding musical career terminated by an epidemic of spinal meningitis at age thirteen. All five of these missions came into play when he, reading in a small New England town library, chanced upon a series of books concerning the original discovery of America. Old New England legends hold Vinland adventures a millennia past and even thought to have been into New England itself. His sailor career was enhanced by his all season living aboard 38 foot motor vessel “Bonnet” for eight years, round and about Narragansett Bay, living a Viking style life binding him to this enterprise to come. A long term reading program in a small town library had earlier livened his understanding of the Sagas of Iceland, from whence the Vinland adventures had originated, stunned by detail within the numerous medieval illustrated vellums still extant in a Reykjavik museum and libraries around the world. Confounded by the extent of detail and information available within, a vivid tale of seafaring and human drama of magnificent scale of Grand Opera revealed itself. Eventually, this coalesced into such interest that the contents of this book became possible. The Author came to know ancient Vikings and locate beyond doubt their destinations in the New World. If you read this book, you will know as well.

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Copyright © 2023 Fred N. Brown III.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-5128-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5127-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023904087

iUniverse rev. date: 03/01/2023

Contents

Preface

Proof:

A Declaration that the True and Precise Location of Historic Vinland Was and Is Pettaquamscutt River Valley in the State of Rhode Island

Summary

Notes

About the Author

Preface

A lamb lost its life to create a single page of the Vinland Narratives (Sagas); a church scrivener devoted perhaps a week or two to compose it more than eight hundred years ago. The Sagas are part of world history, speaking to us of majestic events, and it is only a small portion of pages that record the first arrival of European people in the New World.

Consider a winter Sunday afternoon in medieval days when Scandinavian families congregated to entertain each other with tales from grandparents who may have actually traveled to Vinland in the Americas. In a dark corner dimly lit by a flickering candle, a scribe listens and jots marks upon birch bark scraps for memory of his artistry to come, perhaps a visiting skjald—a tale-teller—absorbing for future transmission. The result clearly shows the reverence of the Roman Catholic Church and its responsibilities to its parishioners, their births, marriages, offspring, and deaths, those things that are the composites of history, civilization, and the human spirit. Many pages like this have been collected in Saga Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland, where even contemporary scholars can read back to past events.

On another, more recent winter afternoon in a New England library, this author came upon a series of volumes concerning the subject of these tales of Vinland, a land far to the south of that polar church to where numbers of Scandinavian forebears had voyaged and even settled. And then, for some mysterious reason, they became forgotten and lost to their histories—but not their memories.

The five or six volumes were arranged in such a way that I was able to detect a sort of narrative and chronology of several of many translations of the Vinland Sagas. They so captured my interest to the point where I commenced a reading program lasting some three years, simply to imagine facts on paper to some sort of chronicle. Along the way of gathering information, I found that others had done the same as I and there seemed a strong tendency for some to place Vinland and its hero, Leifur Eiriksson, to the very locale