Kirsten A. Seaver (born 1934) is a Norwegian-American historian and author known for her writing about the exploration of North America. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and previously taught at Stanford University. [1]
In the United States, Seaver worked for Harvard University as secretary at the university library and consultant on their Scandinavian collections, from 1956 to 1960. She later taught Norwegian at Stanford, from 1975 to 1982. In 1994 she joined the Meta Incognita Project, [2] studying Martin Frobisher's Arctic expeditions and attempt to start a colony in Canada. [3]
Seaver is best known for her 2004 book on the history of the Vínland Map, a map whose authenticity has been debated since its first appearance in 1957 and is now considered a forgery. [4] She has also published novels in German and Norwegian.
Novels
Selected research
In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap is the primordial, magical void mentioned in three poems from the Poetic Edda and the Gylfaginning, the Eddaic text recording Norse cosmogony.
Vinland, Vineland, or Winland was an area of coastal North America explored by Vikings. Leif Eriksson landed there around 1000 AD, nearly five centuries before the voyages of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. The name appears in the Vinland Sagas, and describes Newfoundland and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence as far as northeastern New Brunswick. Much of the geographical content of the sagas corresponds to present-day knowledge of transatlantic travel and North America.
The Vinland Map was claimed to be a 15th-century mappa mundi with unique information about Norse exploration of North America but is now known to be a 20th-century forgery. The map first came to light in 1957 and was acquired by Yale University. It became well known due to the publicity campaign which accompanied its revelation to the public as a "genuine" pre-Columbian map in 1965. In addition to showing Africa, Asia and Europe, the map depicts a landmass south-west of Greenland in the Atlantic labelled as Vinland.
Leif Erikson, also known as Leif the Lucky, was a Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to set foot on continental America, approximately half a millennium before Christopher Columbus. According to the sagas of Icelanders, he established a Norse settlement at Vinland, which is usually interpreted as being coastal North America. There is ongoing speculation that the settlement made by Leif and his crew corresponds to the remains of a Norse settlement found in Newfoundland, Canada, called L'Anse aux Meadows, which was occupied approximately 1,000 years ago.
The Norse exploration of North America began in the late 10th century, when Norsemen explored areas of the North Atlantic colonizing Greenland and creating a short term settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland. This is known now as L'Anse aux Meadows where the remains of buildings were found in 1960 dating to approximately 1,000 years ago. This discovery helped reignite archaeological exploration for the Norse in the North Atlantic. This single settlement, located on the island of Newfoundland and not on the North American mainland, was abruptly abandoned.
Markland is the name given to one of three lands on North America's Atlantic shore discovered by Leif Eriksson around 1000 AD. It was located south of Helluland and north of Vinland.
A mappa mundi is any medieval European map of the world. Such maps range in size and complexity from simple schematic maps 25 millimetres or less across to elaborate wall maps, the largest of which to survive to modern times, the Ebstorf map, was around 3.5 m in diameter. The term derives from the Medieval Latin words mappa and mundus (world).
Claudius Clavus (Suartho) also known as Nicholas Niger,, , was a Danish geographer sometimes considered to be the first Nordic cartographer.
Norumbega, or Nurembega, is a legendary settlement in northeastern North America which was featured on many early maps from the 16th century until European colonization of the region. It was alleged that the houses had pillars of gold and the inhabitants carried quarts of pearls on their heads.
Great Ireland, also known as White Men's Land (Hvítramannaland), and in Latin similarly as Hibernia Major and Albania, was a land said by various Norsemen to be located near Vinland. In one report, in the Saga of Eric the Red, some skrælingar captured in Markland described the people in what was supposedly White Men's Land, to have been "dressed in white garments, uttered loud cries, bore long poles, and wore fringes." Another report identifies it with the Albani people, with "hair and skin as white as snow."
Estêvão Gomes, also known by the Spanish version of his name Esteban Gómez, was a Portuguese explorer. He sailed in the service of Castile (Spain) in the fleet of Ferdinand Magellan, but deserted the expedition when they had reached the Strait of Magellan and returned to Spain in May 1521. In 1524, he explored the coast of present-day New England and Nova Scotia. As a result of Gomes' expedition, cartographer Diogo Ribeiro was the first to accurately portray North America with a continuous coastline stretching from Florida to Nova Scotia.
Erik Gnupsson or Eiríkr Gnúpsson, also known as Henricus, may have been a bishop of Greenland.
L'Anse aux Meadows is an archaeological site, first excavated in the 1960s, of a Norse settlement dating to approximately 1,000 years ago. The site is located on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador near St. Anthony.
Joseph Fischer, S.J. was a German clergyman and cartographer. Fischer had an eminently successful career as a cartographer, publishing old maps. In 1901, while he was investigating the Vikings' discovery of America, he accidentally discovered the long-lost map of Martin Waldseemüller, dated 1507. This map, which claims to update Ptolemy with the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, is the first known to display the word America. The map was purchased from its owner by the United States Library of Congress in 2001 for ten million dollars.
Zuane Pizzigano, was a 15th-century Venetian cartographer. He is the author of a famous 1424 portolan chart, the first known to depict the phantom islands of the purported Antillia archipelago, in the north Atlantic Ocean.
Mainly a decoration piece, the Borgia map is a world map made sometime in the early 15th century, and engraved on a metal plate. Its "workmanship and written explanations make it one of the most precious pieces of the history of cartography".
Alexandra Andreyevna Voronin was the Russian wife of Norwegian fascist Vidkun Quisling, the leader of Nasjonal Samling (NS), the political party which collaborated with the German occupational force in Norway during World War II.
Marcus Beneventanus was a medieval Italian publisher of maps and books.
Kodlunarn Island, known as Qallunaaq in Inuktitut and originally named Countess of Warwick Island, is a small island located in Frobisher Bay in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. During the 1570s, explorer Martin Frobisher led expeditions to the island to mine what he believed was gold ore. The ore turned out to be worthless, and the island was ignored by explorers until Charles Francis Hall, inspired by oral history accounts from the Inuit of Frobisher Bay, visited the site in 1861 to investigate the remains of Frobisher's expeditions. Notable features of the island include two large mining trenches and the remains of a stone house built by Frobisher in 1578. Kodlunarn Island was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1964.