Norse Discoveries In America Scholars Choice Edition PDF Download

Excerpt from Norse Discoveries in America Discredited at the start, the Norse claim of the discovery of the American continent five centuries before Columbus has gradually gained a respectful hearing from American scholars, and to-day, nine hundred years after the interesting event, stands finally admitted in the opinion of those best qualified to judge the question. In preparing a commemorative essay on the subject it is therefore, fortunately, not necessary to enter into an elaborate defence of the correctness of the main features of the Icelandic sagas as handed down to us in several well-authenticated manuscripts from the 14th century, corroborated as they are by a number of striking references, dating back to the middle of the 11th, to the testimony of the cautious and entirely disinterested Adam of Bremen. The question now before the historian and antiquarian is not whether the hardy Norse sailors of the nth century reached the American continent after having established themselves in its antechamber - Greenland. The question is how far south they proceeded, and whether or not they established a permanent settlement in any of the newly-discovered regions. The first of these points can only be settled in one of two ways. Either there must be discovered unmistakable archmological traces of the Norsemen of that remote period or the geographical hints and descriptions given in the sagas may be followed and a locality fixed upon, chiefly by a process of exclusion. The former of these methods has repeatedly been employed, its climax having been reached in the well-meaning but exceedingly doubtful conjectures of Prof. E. N. Horsford. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.