Bertram schofield and the Vinland map

EDITOR'S NOTE: The authenticity of the Vinland map, the discovery of which was announced in 1965, remains unproven. In 1998, Imago Mundi carried a Review Article in which Paul Saenger commented on the sequence of events surrounding the acquisition of a mid-fifteenth-century manuscript containing a text known as the 'Tartar Relation', an account of John de Plano Carpini's expedition to Mongolia in 1245-1247, and an hitherto unknown map of the world.1 Both text and map appeared in Geneva in 1957, were examined at the British Museum in the same year, and were eventually acquired by Yale University. From the start there was controversy over the map's authenticity. In the intervening thirty years doubts have focused on three key questions. The first two concern the significance of the map as 'the sole surviving witness to a lost thirteenth-century original recording the Norse discoveries of the tenth and eleventh centuries', and the question of whether palaeological, codicological and biochemical expertise sustain the genuineness of the map as a fifteenth-century artefact. The third question is, as Saenger puts it: 'Does the map's provenance cast doubt on the likelihood of its being genuine?'2 The story of the negotiations over the purchase of the map has been recounted-not always consistently-from various angles but never from that of the British Museum where, in the late 1950s, R. A. Skelton (1903-1970) was Superintendent of the Map Room and Bertram Schofield (1869-1998) was Keeper of Manuscripts. No complete or detailed record exists of what took place when the Museum was approached, nor do the few surviving papers shed any useful light on the matter. In the note below, Bertram Schofield's son Peter recounts his personal recollections about what his father told him at the time and what he has recently been able to establish about the involvement of the Department of Manuscripts

Cartography · Geography · Historical and Archaeological Studies

• Vinland re‐read

  Paul Saenger•Imago Mundi•1998

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• The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation

  Norman J G Pounds, R A Skelton et al.•Journal of American History•1966

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