by Hans Holzer
But Mallery’s discoveries were not generally accepted, and it remained for another investigator to rediscover much of Mallery’s evidence all over again, in 1963. This was Dr. Helge Ingstad of Norway, who had spent three years excavating in Newfoundland. Dr. Ingstad found the remains of a Viking settlement, consisting of houses and even an entire iron smelter, and because he was able to utilize the new radiocarbon dating process, his discoveries were widely publicized. According to Ingstad, the Vikings founded their settlement about 1000 A.D., giving dear old Columbus a Chris-come-lately status. But in one important detail Ingstad differed with Mallery’s findings: He placed the initial Viking camp at L’Anse au Meadow, fifteen miles farther north than Mallery’s site on Sop’s Island.
Then Yale University jolted the traditionalists even more by announcing that an old pre-Columbian map of the area it had was authentic, and that it clearly showed Viking sites in Newfoundland.
Now the Viking saga refers to Leif’s initial camp as having been in wooded hills on a long lake, that a river flowed into or through this lake, and that there was an island opposite the coast of the promontory they had landed on. There have been considerable geological changes in North America since the eleventh century, of course, the most important one, from our point of view, being the change in the level of the ocean. It is estimated that the water receded about four feet every hundred years, and thus what may have been water in the eleventh century would be dry land by now. This is important to keep in mind, as we shall presently see when our own investigation into the Viking sites gets under way.
While Ingstad did find Norse remains at the site he felt was Leif Ericsson’s first American camp, Mallery did not do as well at the site he had picked for the encampment, Pistolet Bay, fifteen miles to the south. His choice was based solely on his interpretation of the Viking sagas and on the old maps. The Yale map, discovered by a rare book dealer in Europe and studied at the university for eight long years before their decision was made, shows an island with two large inlets, which Yale thinks represent the Hudson Strait and the Belle Isle Strait. The map bears the inscription in Latin, “Island of Vinland, discovered by Bjarni and Leif in company.” The map was made by a Swiss monk in 1440.
There seems to be general agreement among scholars now that the Vikings did sail across the ocean from Greenland, then down the coast of Labrador until they reached Newfoundland, where they made camp. Mallery claims that the Sop’s Island site farther south from both L’Anse au Meadow and Pistolet Bay, where he had dug up the remains of houses and many iron artifacts, was inhabited by Vikings for a considerable period of time, and he dates the houses from the eleventh century to the end of the fourteenth century. The generally accepted archaeological view is that the Vikings lived in Greenland from about 1000 to 1500 A.D. The North American colonization period does seem to fall into place with this view.
Whether the iron artifacts found in North America were actually made there or whether they were brought there by the Vikings from their Scandinavian or Greenland settlements is immaterial: The iron implements do date back to the early Middle Ages, and if Mallery is correct, the Vikings may even have been the forefathers of an iron-making civilization he says existed in North America before Columbus.
* * *
While Mallery’s claims of Norse penetrations to Virginia and Ohio are supported only by isolated finds, there is much stronger evidence that a famed runic stone found at Alexandria, Minnesota in 1898 may be the real McCoy. Until very recently, this stone containing an unknown runic inscription had been considered a fantasy product, as the “establishment” scholars could not conceive of Viking invaders coming that far inland. Another such stone, however, was found in 1912 at Heavener, Oklahoma, quite independently from the first one.
* * *
For over fifty years the puzzle remained just that, with occasional discussions as to the authenticity of the stones settling absolutely nothing. Then in 1967, a new approach was used to break the secret. A retired Army cryptographer named Alf Mongé got together with historian O. G. Landsverk to study the two stones anew. The result of their collaboration was a truly sensational book entitled Norse Cryptography in Runic Carvings. Now these men were not crackpots or Johnny-come-latelies in their fields. Mr. Mongé was the man who broke the principal Japanese codes during World War II and was highly honored by Britain for it. Dr. Landsverk is a Norwegian expert on Viking history. The two men worked together for five years before announcing the results to the world.
First, they deciphered a stone found near Byfield, Massachusetts, which apparently contained a date within the long Runic legend. The Norsemen had used code to convey their message. Since the native Eskimos and Indians could not read, this was not because of enemy intelligence, but the Vikings considered cryptography an art worth practicing, and practice it they did. They did not know Arabic numbers, but they used runes to represent figures.
The Massachusetts stone contains the date of November 24, 1009 A.D. as the date of the landing there. The stone unearthed in Oklahoma had the date of November 11, 1012 A.D. on it, and a second stone contained the dates 1015 and 1022. The traditional date of Leif Ericsson’s arrival in America is 1003 A.D.
Mongé and Landsverk now reconstructed the dates of the various Norse expeditions. According to them, the Vikings definitely were in Oklahoma as early as 1012 and in Minnesota as late as 1362. It is noteworthy that these dates again coincide with Mallery’s findings: He placed the period of the Sop’s Island houses between the eleventh century and 1375 A.D.
That the Viking landings in North America were no brief, isolated affair had become clear to me from studying the record and its various interpretations. The press played up the cryptographer’s discoveries, but even so astute a journal as Newsweek failed to see an important point in the new material: The two explorers were confident that the real Vinland was located in Massachusetts!
The Vikings had come to North America, then sailed along the coast—not necessarily all at once, but perhaps after a number of years initially in one area—and reached the Southwest. Sailing up the Mississippi, they could have traveled inland by way of the Arkansas and Poteau Rivers until they reached Oklahoma. Other groups might have started out from Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes region and reached Minnesota in that way.
Thus the puzzle of the runic stones had finally been solved. What had caused scholarly rejection for many years, was actually proof of their genuineness: the “misspellings” and “inconsistencies” in the runic writings of the stones found in inland America were actually cryptograms and code writing, and the dates based on the Catholic ecclesiastical calendar with which the newly Christianized Norsemen were already familiar, are repeated several times in the messages, so that any doubt as to the correctness of these dates has been dispelled forever.
Though the Mayor of Genoa and Spanish admirers of Christopher Columbus have grudgingly admitted defeat on technical grounds, they still maintain that the Vikings did nothing for history with their forays into America, while their man, Columbus, did a lot. Well, of course, when one considers how the Spaniards killed and robbed the Native Americans, or whenever they allowed them to live, treated them as slaves, one wonders if that great expedition of 1492 was really such a blessing after all. While the Vikings certainly defended themselves against native attacks, we do not seem to find any record of the kind of colonialization the Spaniards became famous—or, rather, infamous—for.
I felt that the evidence for the Newfoundland sites was far too strong to be ignored. Surely, a Viking camp had existed there, but was it the first camp? Admittedly, the description of the site in the sagas did not fit exactly with the layout of Newfoundland. Were the archaeologists not using their finds and ignoring the physical discrepancies of the reported sites? Certainly they had evidence for Viking presences there, but the case was by no means closed.
* * *
Long before the Mongé–Landsverk collaboration, a book by Frederick Pohl bearing on the matter
was published. Pohl’s account, published in 1952, is called The Lost Discovery, and it was followed in 1961 by another book, They All Discovered America, by Charles Michael Boland. Both books point out that Cape Cod might be the site of Leif Ericsson’s landfall. According to the latter work, it was in 1940 that explorer Hjalmar Holand suggested to Pohl that the New England shoreline should be investigated carefully to find a place that fit the description given in the sagas of Ericsson’s first camp: a cape, a river flowing from or through a lake into the sea, and an island that lay to the northward off the land.
Pohl did just that, and after long and careful research decided that the site was on Cape Cod. He found that the Bass River, in the east-central section of the cape, did indeed flow through a lake into the sea. The lake is called Follins Pond, and when Pohl investigated it more closely he discovered some ancient mooring holes at the shore and in the lake itself. These mooring holes were quite typical of the Viking methods in that they enabled them to secure their longboats while at the same time being able to strike the lines quickly in case of need to get away in a hurry. The most important one of the holes Pohl found in a rock skerry fifty feet from shore, in the center of Follins Pond.
* * *
What remained to pinpoint was the offshore island Leif had seen. Pohl thought that Great Point, now a part of Nantucket, was that island. He reasoned that it was frequently cut off from Nantucket after a storm or at high tide and thus appeared as an island rather than the sandspit it is today.
* * *
Boland, dissatisfied with Pohl’s theory of the landing site despite the mooring holes, searched further. Digging in an area adjacent to Follins Pond in 1957, Boland found some colonial remains, but no Norse material. Very little interest could be aroused in the official body responsible for digs in this area, the Massachusetts Archaeological Society. In 1950, the Society members had dug at Follins Pond briefly, finding nothing, unless an obscure, handmade sign near one of the houses in the area referring to “Viking Sites”—presumably to lure tourists—is considered a “result.” In 1960 the society returned at the invitation of Frederick Pohl and did some digging at Mills Pond, next to Follins Pond. The results were negative.
Boland carefully searched the cape further and finally concluded that the campsite had been to the north of the cape. Not Great Point, but the “fist” of the cape, the Provincetown area, was the “island” described in the ancient sagas! Boland took the Salt Meadow and Pilgrim Lake south of that area to be the lake of the landfall. He was reinforced in this belief by an opinion rendered him by expert geologist Dr. Rhodes W. Fairbridge of Columbia University: The waters of the Atlantic were two to three feet higher one thousand years ago than they are today. This, of course, is not as extreme a rising as the increase in the level calculated by Mallery, who thought the land rose as much as four feet every century, but all scholars are agreed that the ocean has indeed receded since the Viking era.
There is, however, no river flowing from or through a lake in this area, even if the island image is now a more fitting one. Boland’s view also satisfies the requirement of position: The saga speaks of an island that lay to the north of the land. If the Bass River, which does flow through Follins Pond, were the proper site, where is the island to the north?
The same argument that Boland uses to make Provincetown his island also holds true of Great Point: The ocean was higher in the eleventh century for both of them, and consequently both could have been islands at the time. But looking from the mouth of the Bass River toward Great Point is looking south, not north—unless the navigators were confused as to their directions. But the Vikings knew their stars, and such an error is highly unlikely.
Boland’s arguments in favor of the north shore of Cape Cod are indeed persuasive, except for the description of the river flowing through a lake. Had there perhaps been two camps? Was the saga combining the account? If we could have some other method of testing the site Pohl thought was Leif Ericsson’s first camp, perhaps we could then follow through with extensive diggings, rather than relying so much on speculation and guesswork.
Cape Cod as a Viking site is not too well known, although the Viking presence in America in general terms is reasonably established among the general public. I decided to try an experiment in ESP to determine if a good psychic might not pick up some significant clues at the site.
The rules would be strict: The psychic would have no access to information about the matter and would be brought to the site in such a way that she could not get any visual or sensory clues as to the connotation or connections of the site with the problems under investigation. Whatever she might “get,” therefore, would be primary material obtained not in the ordinary way, but by tuning in on the imprint present at the site. Further, I made sure not to study the material myself to avoid having information in my subconscious mind that might conceivably be “read” by the psychic. All I did know, consciously, until after our visit to Cape Cod, was that a Viking connection existed between the site and the past. But I didn’t even know how to get to Follins Pond, and as subsequent events proved, it took us a long time to locate it.
I asked Sybil Leek, who had been my medium in many important cases in the past years, to be ready for some work with me in the late summer of 1967. Mrs. Leek never asks questions or tries to find out what I expect of her. A professional writer herself, she does her psychic work as a kind of contribution to science and because she agrees with my aims in parapsychology. She is not a “psychic reader” in a professional sense, but the ESP work she does with me—and only with me—is of the highest caliber. When I called Sybil, I mentioned that I would need her presence at Cape Cod, and we arranged for her to meet me at the Hyannis airport on August 17, 1967. My wife Catherine and I had been doing some research in New Hampshire and would be driving our Citroën down from there. My wife is a marvelous driver, and we arrived at the airport within ten minutes of the appointed hour. It was a warm, humid afternoon, but Sybil felt in good spirits, if I may pun for the nonce.
I explained to her at this point that we had a “ghost case” to attend to in the area that evening; prior to driving to the place where we would spend the night, however, I wanted to do some sightseeing, and perhaps there was a spot or two where I’d like her to gather impressions. We drove off and I consulted my map. Follins Pond was nowhere to be found. Fortunately, I had had some correspondence with the gentleman who owned a ghost house we were to visit later that day, and he, being a resident of the area, knew very well where the pond was located.
Sybil was in the back of the car, resting, while we drove steadfastly toward the eastern part of Cape Cod. There were no signs whatever indicating either the Bass River or any ponds. Finally, we drove up to a gas station and I asked for directions. Despite this, we got lost twice more, and again I had to ask our way. At no time did Sybil take part in this, but when she heard me mention Follins Pond, she remarked, somewhat sleepily, “Do you want to go swimming?” It was hot enough for it, at that.
The neighborhood changed now; instead of the garish motels with minute swimming pools in back and huge colored neon lights in front to attract the tourist, we passed into a quiet, wooded area interspersed with private homes. I did not see it at the time, but when we drove back later on, I found, tucked away in a side street, a blue sign pointing in the general direction we had come from, and reading “Viking Rocks.” I am sure Sybil did not see it either on our way down or back, and it may be the work of some enterprising local, since the Viking “attractions” on the cape do not form part of its official tourist lure or lore.
* * *
We had now been driving over twice the time it was supposed to have taken us to get to the pond; we had crossed a river marked Bass River and knew we were going in the right direction. Suddenly, the curving road gave upon a body of water quietly nestling between wooded slopes. The nearest house was not visible and the road broke into a fork at this point, one fork continuing toward the sea, the other rounding the p
ond. The pond, more like a small lake, really, was perhaps a mile in circumference, heavily wooded on all sides and quite empty of any sign of human interest: no boats, no landings, no cottages dotting its shores. Somewhat toward the center of the water there was a clump of rocks.
We halted the car and I got out, motioning to Sybil to follow me. Sybil was dressed rather stylishly—black dress, black, fringed feather hat, and high-heeled shoes. It was not exactly the best way to go around an area like this. The shore of the pond was wet and soft, sloping steeply toward the water. With the tape recorder at the ready, I took Sybil toward the water.
“What is your immediate impression of this place?” I inquired.
“We should go right to the opposite bank,” Sybil said, “and come around that way.”
I didn’t feel like getting lost again, so I decided to stay, for the present at least, on this side of the pond.
“The water has gone over some building,” Sybil added, trying to focus her psychic sense now. “There is something in the middle of the lake.”
What sort of thing?
“Something like a spire,” she said. A church here in the middle of the pond? Then were there any people here?
“Yes,” she replied, “people have settled here, have been living here….”
“How far back?”
“Difficult to say at this stage, for there is another overlaying element here.”
“You mean two different period levels?”
“Yes. But the main thing is something rising high like a church spire. Something very sharp in the center. It isn’t necessarily a church spire, but something like it. It could be a masthead, something very sharp and triangular, at any rate. It was big and very important to the people who were here. People coming and going. And there is a lane here, one of the oldest used paths to where we are. I seem to be getting the date of 1784.”