The European Discovery of America
The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600
by Samuel Eliot Morison · first published 1971
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This volume presents an account of the great age of European exploration, describing all known voyages across the North Atlantic to the New World prior to 1600, and of the intrepid mariners, and the adventurers who sent them forth. The roll call includes all the great explorers: Leif Ericsson, John Cabot, Verrazzano, Gomez, Jacques Cartier, Martin Frobisher, John Davis, Sir Walter Raleigh and his kinsmen Grenville and Gilbert, and a full gathering of their competitors. This work also offers a look at the imaginary lands reported by early travelers (such mythical places as Antilia and the Seven
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In Samuel Eliot Morison's _The European Discovery of America_, he has an early chapter on "Flyaway Islands and False Voyages". He remarks on how long some of these lasted on the charts, after regular shipping routes went past or "over" them. Of course, navigation…
on “South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist'” ↗I noticed yesterday in S.E. Morison's The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, a mention of a book of exploration (mostly toward the far north, apparently), Inventio Furtunata (or Fortunae), mentioned in a letter to Columbus from an English merchant. At the…
on “A brief history of books that do not exist” ↗…in his account of Cartier's explorations, in Pioneers of France in the New World. I mention this because Parkman's histories are quite readable, if overwritten. I find that Samuel Eliot Morison's The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, instead derives it from caignedatze, an Iroquoian word for red copper, or any metal other than gold.
on “Name of Canada” ↗…Icelandic scholars who I consulted at Copenhagen in May 1969 believes the Vinland Map to be genuine, although they have every national and sentimental reason to accept it as such.' Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, notes to Chapter III, "The Norsemen and Vinland".
on “The Vinland Map is awash in 20th-century ink” ↗…fanciful interpretations of archeological remains along the Charles. Samuel Eliot Morison puts the point crisply: “In his imagination, every colonial ditch or paved cow-yard in that region became Norse.” (European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, p.67) https://bostonraremaps.com/inventory/norumbega-and-vinland-o...
on “It’s all in the ink: Vinland Map is definitely a fake, new analysis finds” ↗Of course a famous Norwegian thinks Columbus is Scandinavian! I'm reminded of the phrase Samuel Eliot Morrison used in his books on the European Discovery of America-"Scandinavery". Its about as realistic as the "runes" discovered in the midwest in the late 19th century. There's a bit of a cottage industry in the US of various ethnic groups either claiming Columbus…
on “Discovery of 1,000-year-old Viking site in Canada could rewrite history” ↗