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Europeans in Pre-Columbian Baffin Island?


Abramelin

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What I found interesting is that Adam von Bremen said these Frisians came/departed from East Friesland. Now what was a holy place for these East Frisians (and also for Danes, Norse and Swedes and the other Frisians)? That was Helgoland, an island in the German Bight, west of Denmark.

In addition to German, the local population, who are ethnic Frisians, speak the Heligolandic dialect of the North Frisian language called Halunder. Heligoland was formerly called Heyligeland, or "holy land", possibly due to the island's long association with the god Forseti.

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Heligoland

How did the Vikings (maybe) call Baffin Island: Helluland.

And 'Halunder' is the language spoken on 'Halund'.

Haligoland/Heligoland/Helgoland/Halund >>> Helluland?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helluland

http://en.wikipedia....cheDialekte.png

Please have a look at the bottomline: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg .

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What I found interesting is that Adam von Bremen said these Frisians came/departed from East Friesland. Now what was a holy place for these East Frisians (and also for Danes, Norse and Swedes and the other Frisians)? That was Helgoland, an island in the German Bight, west of Denmark.

In addition to German, the local population, who are ethnic Frisians, speak the Heligolandic dialect of the North Frisian language called Halunder. Heligoland was formerly called Heyligeland, or "holy land", possibly due to the island's long association with the god Forseti.

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Heligoland

How did the Vikings (maybe) call Baffin Island: Helluland.

And 'Halunder' is the language spoken on 'Halund'.

Haligoland/Heligoland/Helgoland/Halund >>> Helluland?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helluland

http://en.wikipedia....cheDialekte.png

Please have a look at the bottomline: http://upload.wikime...uropeanTree.svg .

Edited by Knul
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  • 2 weeks later...

Found a strange story that might 'prove' the Vikings even ended up in California after traveling along the North West Passage from Greenland during a warmer period in the Middle Ages:

SAN DIEGO COUNTY

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park - For sheer volume of strange phenomena, California's largest state park must also be its most mysterious as well.

Lost Viking Ship

Agua Caliente Springs (26 mi N of Ocotillo on Hwy S2) Today, the hot and cold springs in this desert canyon are maintained as a county park. Sufferers of arthritis and rheumatism park their mobile homes here for up to six months at a time, to enjoy the springs' soothing waters.

But back in the Thirties, Agua Caliente Springs were known only to a few locals, such as Myrtle and Louis Botts of nearby Julian. Myrtle, an amateur botanist. was especially fond of the springs. since brilliant wildflowers grew in the canyons above them.

In early 1933, she and her husband, on a wildflower hunt here, were camped at the mouth of a canyon, when a dirty old prospector wandered by and told them an amazing story. Up in the canyon a few days earlier, he had seen an old ship sticking out of a sheer mountain wall. When the desert rat then told the Bottses that he had also found Pegleg Smith's legendary lost mine, they thanked him for the information, saw him off, and had a good laugh.

But they weren't laughing the next day. That morning the Bottses hiked into the canyon, and when they passed beyond a steep grade, they saw the forward half of a large, ancient ship poking out of a mountainside, just as the prospector had told them. The vessel had a curved prow, circular marks along its sides where shields had once been, and four deep furrows in the bow. The craft was high above the Bottses, and the mountain wall that held it was a sheer, nearly impassible sheet of shale and clay. The couple noted its exact location, memorized the nearby landmarks in the canyon and excitedly headed back to camp.

Seconds after they returned to their camp, the devastating 1933 earthquake hit with full force. Their campsite was destroyed, so the two returned to their home in Julian.

Myrtle Botts was tantalized by the mysterious wreck, and immediately began to read up on ancient ships at the library where she worked. After several days of study, she decided that the craft most closely resembled one of the old Viking sea raiders, though she couldn't bring herself to believe that Norsemen sailed the ship over 40 miles of mountains to Agua Caliente. She and her husband resolved to visit Agua Caliente Springs the following weekend, and take pictures of the craft to prove it existed.

But when they returned to the canyon, they were stopped short by a slide that blocked the trail where they had hiked a week earlier. There was no trace of the ship or the canyon wall that held it. The Bottses decided that the earthquake had shaken tons of earth loose from the mountain, burying the craft beneath it.

The idea of a Viking ship stranded in the Borrego Desert may not be quite as preposterous as it sounds. During the great Norse expeditionary period from 900-1100 AD, high temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere melted away much of the Arctic ice north of Canada. At least one Viking ship may have sailed through the Northwest Passage there and down through the Bering Strait, though the prevailing east winds in the Arctic guaranteed that the adventurers would never make it back to Scandinavia.

A curious Indian legend implies that Vikings may have strayed as far south as Mexico. The Seri Indians of the Gulf of California's Tiburon Island still tell of the "Come-From-Afar-Men" who landed on the island in a "long boat with a head like a snake." They say the strange men had yellow hair and beards, and a woman with red hair was among them. Their chief stayed on the island with the redheaded woman while his men hunted whales in the Gulf. When they had finished hunting, the strangers went back on their ship and sailed away.

One version of the legend says their ship sank in the Gulf, and the survivors swam ashore and were taken in by the Mayo Indians. Even today, the Mayos sometimes produce children with blond hair and blue eyes, and say that they are descendants of the strangers that married into the tribe in ancient times. .

Others say that the fair-haired foreigners sailed farther up the Gulf and were never seen again. If, as some revisionist geographers insist, the Imperial Valley was once an extension of the Gulf of California, then the ship could have run aground on what are now the Tierra Blanca Mountains. So it may lie today buried under tons of earthquake-loosened rock and soil in the canyon above Agua Caliente Springs. . (For another account of a legendary desert ship, see IMPERIAL COUNTY: Salton Sea.)

http://www.klaxo.net/hofc/other/MystCal1.htm#p4

http://the-wanderling.com/longship.html

http://www.greatgodpan.com/2004/06/the_mysterious_lost_ship_of_th.htm

http://forest.facts.tripod.com/xvinland.htm

Source: Childress.....sigh

http://books.google.nl/books?id=Eh1WHqo0JN8C&pg=PA522&lpg=PA522&dq=Seri+Indians+of+Tiburon+vikings&source=bl&ots=Qztud_c3j-&sig=f_mgHAc0UaHK08ypeXxqjgFVmqc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sQf0UJ38PIeP0AXZ_IDYAg&ved=0CE4Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Seri%20Indians%20of%20Tiburon%20vikings&f=false

Did Vikings visit the Gulf which has been suggested as a possible source of the missing ship. The Seri Indians of Tiburon have legends and songs of these early white giants, who came in a long boat driven by sweeps, who were whalers living in big houses by the sea, in their own land. Whose weapons were the bow and arrow and spear. With them, said the Seris, was a red-haired woman, wife fo the captain, who wore her hair in big braids down her back and was even fairer than the men, who dressed in heavy clothes and had a big cloak or mantle. Freydis, daughter of Eric the Red, was in command of a Viking ship to the east coast of North America, in 1014, so Viking women did sail.

The blonde strangers stayed on Tiburon Island a year and four months, and then they sailed away with four families of Seri, promising to bring them back when they returned. But they never did return to Tiburon. Perhaps their long boat was grounded and abandoned somewhere in the Salton Sink and they walked out, either to Arizona where there was an early legend of blonde and redheaded Indians, or even as far as the Mayo River.

http://www.insidetheie.com/ghost-ship-desert-salton-seal

http://rav4adventures.blogspot.nl/2010/08/lost-viking-ship-in-desert.html

http://www.weirdca.com/location.php?location=52

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4209

W. J. McGee. - The Seri Indians (1898)

http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/w-j-mcgee/the-seri-indians-078/1-the-seri-indians-078.shtml

sp080320b.jpg

The long-dreamed of Northwest Passage would permit ships to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Davis Strait between Greenland and Baffin Island, through islands of northern Canada, along the coast of Alaska to the coast of Siberia.

http://www.sitenet.com/futureStudies/sp080320.htm

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The Last Viking

PART III: THREE STEPS BACK

THE MYSTERIOUS END OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM.

It would seem that the end of the First Millennium was not only noteworthy for the establishment of the first Viking Settlements on the west coast of Greenland, it was also around this time that the Arctic Dorset peoples mysteriously disappeared and the Thule peoples simultaneously emerged to take their place. Who were the replacements? According to the prevailing view, they were whale-hunting Inuit who originated in Alaska, but moved right through the Arctic Archipelago, on into Hudson Bay, then further east and north to Baffin Island, Devon Island, the eastern coast of Ellsmere Island and ultimately reached Thule on the northwest coast of Greenland.

(...)

At times the Vikings might well have occupied or even co-existed on some of the choicer Dorset sites - a reasonable assumption given that most sites would have been favourably located with some form of ready-made (if rudimentary) habitation. Perhaps some sites were abandoned completely, while others eventually reverted back to their original Inuit users, further masking signs of a Viking presence. Then again, there is the obvious corollary: if Inuit hunters from Alaska could reach Greenland in skin covered boats, what was there to stop the Vikings from proceeding at least as far in the opposite direction, i.e., journeying from Greenland to Alaska and beyond? Lack of arctic knowhow? Hardly, given that the Vikings had already managed to survive on the northwest coast of Greenland. Then there is the supposition that whale hunting in the Eastern Arctic was exclusively an Inuit practice. Here again, in light of their own needs and requirements the Vikings can hardly be excluded. Also, given the dearth of construction materials in the Arctic, the same argument likely applies - in some instances at least - to the "Thule" sites that featured whalebone in their construction. Here - isolated occurrences and/or cooperative ventures alike - small Viking ships would surely be useful, as would be the available manpower and Viking maritime expertise itself.So what is more likely to have taken place in the Eastern Arctic around the turn of the First Millennium? That the Alaskan Inuit in their skin-covered boats traveled thousands of miles across the Arctic Archipelago as far as Thule on the northwest coast of Greenland, or that the Vikings - already settled lower down the Greenland coast, with their superb ships, superior tools and their penchant for exploration, simply moved up the coast to Thule as a natural progression? And after that, sailed a short distance cross the top of Baffin Bay to Ellsmere Island (a scant 25 miles) and progressively extended their westward exploration to include other "Thule" sites along the way.

http://www.spirasolaris.ca/sbb4g1bv2.html

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Found a strange story that might 'prove' the Vikings even ended up in California after traveling along the North West Passage from Greenland during a warmer period in the Middle Ages:

Starting with the sheer impossibility of there actually being anyone named "Myrtle Botts" outside of a P.G. Wodehouse story....

Edited by PersonFromPorlock
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Found a strange story that might 'prove' the Vikings even ended up in California after traveling along the North West Passage from Greenland during a warmer period in the Middle Ages:

SAN DIEGO COUNTY

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park - For sheer volume of strange phenomena, California's largest state park must also be its most mysterious as well.

*snip*

I spent a couple winters mostly right in that area .. Salton Sea and Anza Borrego Dessert .. Awesome place ! to a northern possum like me lol. Anyway, i can see how a boat , at one time or another, might have ended up nearly anywhere in the lowest lying areas of that place . And then have been partially covered by the persistent rock slides.

I wondered why i always got the feeling of sitting on a sea bottom in that place!

post-86645-0-67023000-1358368837_thumb.g post-86645-0-73659300-1358368869_thumb.j Agua Caliente (where the dessert ship story takes place) is just West of the Salton Sea.

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Starting with the sheer impossibility of there actually being anyone named "Myrtle Botts" outside of a P.G. Wodehouse story....

http://www.death-rec...-Botts/Kentucky

http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?gl=allgs&gsfn=Myrtle%20M&gsln=Botts&gss=seo&ghc=20

.

Edited by Abramelin
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DNA tests debunk blond Inuit legend

http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2003/10/28/inuit_blond031028.html

In 1910 Vilhjalmur Stefansson visited the Copper Inuit inhabiting southwestern Victoria Island (Prince Albert Sound). He described meeting many men whose beards and hair were blonde and "who looked like typical Scandinavians". In his book My Life with the Eskimos, Stefánsson proposed several explanations for these physical features:

* Early mixture with Norse colonists from Greenland;

* Mixture with European whalers;

* Ancient migration of European-like people from across the Bering Strait;

He rejected the second explanation because "if the mixing of races is so recent, it would appear that it should be most conspicuous farther east where the whalers had their headquarters, fading away as one goes westward. The opposite is the case".

In 2003, two Icelandic scientists, the geneticist and anthropologists Agnar Helgason and Gisli Palsson announced the results of their research comparing DNA from 100 Cambridge Bay Inuit with DNA from Icelanders, and concluded that there was no match.

In 2008, in an article in Current Anthropology, Palsson concludes that recent work "refutes Stefansson’s speculations on the Copper Inuit".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blond_Eskimos

Does this mean Stefansson was lying, or that he was half-blind? Or that these 'blond Inuits' had moved out of the area or had simply died out?

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DNA tests debunk blond Inuit legend

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...lond031028.html

one problem with this, the inuit found in that area now are most likely not the inuit that were to be found in that region a century ago. the canadian government did forced relocations of the native populations in the north - those that managed to survive the smallpox, etc. I wonder if they took this into account or not (or took bones from the local graves from that period and beyond that to test)...

that being said, if the norse did not interbreed/produce some offspring with some of the natives at the time, I would truly be shocked. :)

Edited by Bavarian Raven
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Good research, my somewhat flip response stands corrected. But I do have grave doubts about a story that sounds so much like every Noah's Ark 'find' I've ever heard of, especially when the purported object can't be found later.

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DNA tests debunk blond Inuit legend

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...lond031028.html

In 1910 Vilhjalmur Stefansson visited the Copper Inuit inhabiting southwestern Victoria Island (Prince Albert Sound). He described meeting many men whose beards and hair were blonde and "who looked like typical Scandinavians". In his book My Life with the Eskimos, Stefánsson proposed several explanations for these physical features:

* Early mixture with Norse colonists from Greenland;

* Mixture with European whalers;

* Ancient migration of European-like people from across the Bering Strait;

He rejected the second explanation because "if the mixing of races is so recent, it would appear that it should be most conspicuous farther east where the whalers had their headquarters, fading away as one goes westward. The opposite is the case".

In 2003, two Icelandic scientists, the geneticist and anthropologists Agnar Helgason and Gisli Palsson announced the results of their research comparing DNA from 100 Cambridge Bay Inuit with DNA from Icelanders, and concluded that there was no match.

In 2008, in an article in Current Anthropology, Palsson concludes that recent work "refutes Stefansson’s speculations on the Copper Inuit".

http://en.wikipedia....i/Blond_Eskimos

Does this mean Stefansson was lying, or that he was half-blind? Or that these 'blond Inuits' had moved out of the area or had simply died out?

There seems to be little reason to doubt Stefansson. The wiki page you linked included details of earlier expeditions that reported seeing the same traits. It also linked to another article that gave detailed eye-witness corroboration. The idea that all these people are either stupid or lying is silly.

So what of this genetic evidence? The studies strike me as imperfect for a few different reasons. First of all, in collecting DNA samples they only concentrated on getting samples from people roughly in the geographic area in which the Copper Inuit are recorded. Their defined area seemed to be a significant portion of the region of Kitikmeot, whereas the historical accounts place the Copper Inuits as concentrated chiefly in the area around Coronation Gulf. Moreover, they did not indicate that they sought individuals who claimed Copper Inuit ancestry, nor did they seek out any potential blond individuals. So it is not clear that their DNA samples are actually representative of the population described by Stefansson and others.

Another significant issue is that the study uses only mtDNA evidence. The lack of evidence for Norse admixture in this case can be attributable to a couple shortcomings of this method. It could simply be that, given our historical knowledge of Norse expeditions, the interbreeding would likely be of Norse males with Inuit females--thus we would not expect to see any Norse mtDNA. Also, the recent history of the Copper Inuits indicates that their originally small population became even smaller thanks to the introduction of new diseases and economic difficulties, plus there may have been migrations out of the region leading to the loss of their Copper Inuit identity by these individuals. That is, the current population is quite small (Wikipedia gives a figure of 800 people, citing a book published in 1987), meaning any Norse mtDNA that had entered the population could easily have been bred out through simple genetic drift.

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Starting with the sheer impossibility of there actually being anyone named "Myrtle Botts" outside of a P.G. Wodehouse story....

And finishing with the fact that if this the same place where Agua Caliente county park is currently located, it's about 372 meters above sea level, not counting the canyons.

Edited by Oniomancer
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There seems to be little reason to doubt Stefansson. The wiki page you linked included details of earlier expeditions that reported seeing the same traits. It also linked to another article that gave detailed eye-witness corroboration. The idea that all these people are either stupid or lying is silly.

So what of this genetic evidence? The studies strike me as imperfect for a few different reasons. First of all, in collecting DNA samples they only concentrated on getting samples from people roughly in the geographic area in which the Copper Inuit are recorded. Their defined area seemed to be a significant portion of the region of Kitikmeot, whereas the historical accounts place the Copper Inuits as concentrated chiefly in the area around Coronation Gulf. Moreover, they did not indicate that they sought individuals who claimed Copper Inuit ancestry, nor did they seek out any potential blond individuals. So it is not clear that their DNA samples are actually representative of the population described by Stefansson and others.

Another significant issue is that the study uses only mtDNA evidence. The lack of evidence for Norse admixture in this case can be attributable to a couple shortcomings of this method. It could simply be that, given our historical knowledge of Norse expeditions, the interbreeding would likely be of Norse males with Inuit females--thus we would not expect to see any Norse mtDNA. Also, the recent history of the Copper Inuits indicates that their originally small population became even smaller thanks to the introduction of new diseases and economic difficulties, plus there may have been migrations out of the region leading to the loss of their Copper Inuit identity by these individuals. That is, the current population is quite small (Wikipedia gives a figure of 800 people, citing a book published in 1987), meaning any Norse mtDNA that had entered the population could easily have been bred out through simple genetic drift.

My remark about Stefansson maybe being blind or a liar was of course meant sarcastically, and the link you posted explains he wasn't alone in his observations.

-

I also had some problems with the DNA research, and you explained it better than I could have done.

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Good research, my somewhat flip response stands corrected. But I do have grave doubts about a story that sounds so much like every Noah's Ark 'find' I've ever heard of, especially when the purported object can't be found later.

All I can say is that it is suggested the remnants of the ship were finally buried in a landslide.

And having read tons about what the Vikings accomplished, I don't think it is too farfetched to assume they did indeed once travel along the Northwest Passage when it was possible. Only finds in Alaska or even California can prove this, of course.

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And finishing with the fact that if this the same place where Agua Caliente county park is currently located, it's about 372 meters above sea level, not counting the canyons.

From my post about the story:

Others say that the fair-haired foreigners sailed farther up the Gulf and were never seen again. If, as some revisionist geographers insist, the Imperial Valley was once an extension of the Gulf of California, then the ship could have run aground on what are now the Tierra Blanca Mountains. So it may lie today buried under tons of earthquake-loosened rock and soil in the canyon above Agua Caliente Springs. . (For another account of a legendary desert ship, see IMPERIAL COUNTY: Salton Sea.).

I have no idea how large and deep that Salton Sea may have been a thousand years ago.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea

History

Geologists estimate that for 3 million years, at least through all the years of the Pleistocene glacial age, the Colorado River worked to build its delta in the southern region of the Imperial Valley. Eventually, the delta had reached the western shore of the Gulf of California (the Sea of Cortez/Cortés), creating a massive dam that excluded the Salton Sea from the northern reaches of the Gulf. Were it not for this dam, the entire Salton Sink along with the Imperial Valley, including most of the area occupied by Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, would all be submerged, as the Gulf would extend as far north as Indio.[2]

As a result, the Salton Sink or Salton Basin has long been alternately a fresh water lake and a dry desert basin, depending on random river flows and the balance between inflow and evaporative loss. A lake would exist only when it was replenished by the river and rainfall, a cycle that repeated itself countless times over hundreds of thousands of years – most recently when the lake was recreated in 1905.[3]

In 1900, the California Development Company began construction of irrigation canals to divert water from the Colorado River into the Salton Sink, a dry lake bed. After construction of these irrigation canals, the Salton Sink became fertile for a time, allowing farmers to plant crops.

Within two years, the Imperial Canal became filled with silt from the Colorado River. Engineers tried to alleviate the blockages to no avail. In 1905, heavy rainfall and snowmelt caused the Colorado River to swell, overrunning a set of headgates for the Alamo Canal. The resulting flood poured down the canal and breached an Imperial Valley dike, eroding two watercourses, the New River in the west, and the Alamo River in the east, each about 60 miles (97 km) long.[6]Over a period of approximately two years these two newly created rivers sporadically carried the entire volume of the Colorado River into the Salton Sink.[7]

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You guys both kinda missed the most crucial part:

The lake occupies the lowest elevations of the Salton Sink in the Colorado Desert of Imperial and Riverside counties in Southern California. Like Death Valley, it is below sea level. Currently, its surface is 226 ft (69 m) below sea level

The flat part of Agua Caliene Springs again about 372 meters above sea level at the nearby airstrip.

http://www.totalescape.com/active/leisure/hotspr/aguacaliente.html

Click on the google earth link. Those mountains to the left are the canyons they would've gone up into.

You can the outline of most of the former sea too if you zoom out. Even if it was twice as wide though, standing water doesn't stand uphill.

Granted, there's a dry river bed running up the valley and several side streams, possible just alluvial, going into a couple of the canyons, but not very big ones and not anything that would been deep enough for a boat to end up well over a hiker's head on it's own, which would've necessitated somebody the thing into the canyon and up the mountainside.

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You guys both kinda missed the most crucial part:

The lake occupies the lowest elevations of the Salton Sink in the Colorado Desert of Imperial and Riverside counties in Southern California. Like Death Valley, it is below sea level. Currently, its surface is 226 ft (69 m) below sea level

The flat part of Agua Caliene Springs again about 372 meters above sea level at the nearby airstrip.

http://www.totalescape.com/active/leisure/hotspr/aguacaliente.html

Click on the google earth link. Those mountains to the left are the canyons they would've gone up into.

You can the outline of most of the former sea too if you zoom out. Even if it was twice as wide though, standing water doesn't stand uphill.

Granted, there's a dry river bed running up the valley and several side streams, possible just alluvial, going into a couple of the canyons, but not very big ones and not anything that would been deep enough for a boat to end up well over a hiker's head on it's own, which would've necessitated somebody the thing into the canyon and up the mountainside.

I don't know the area, but it is known the Vikings often dragged their boats over land for many miles on their way to the sea or to another river.

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.. i'm starting to wonder if the location in the story got confused with one of the many Aqua Caliente (hot springs) in the area. We camped by one 'aqua caliente' that wasn't a county park. I'm not sure if that one was below sea level but , much of the area is. .. I read that in 177? it poured rain for three days straight and boats at the Salton Sea ended up elsewhere.

.. anyway, I'd suspect a spanish boat to be relocated there before a viking one?

*

Edited by lightly
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I remain sceptical of any story that sounds like a mishmash of Lost Ark and Lost Gold Mine stories. The thing, whatever it may be, is always found by accident and then can't be found again - and never is.

If the original discovery really happened, we should keep in mind that it was in southern California, a region long known for the peculiar enthusiasms of its inhabitants. Did someone build a replica Ark because the voices told him to, possibly after seeing a picture of a Viking longboat? Or just think that that canyon wall was a perfect place to put the California version of a garden folly?

OK, I'm not too serious :P; but the 'normal' world can be a very strange place.

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.. i'm starting to wonder if the location in the story got confused with one of the many Aqua Caliente (hot springs) in the area. We camped by one 'aqua caliente' that wasn't a county park. I'm not sure if that one was below sea level but , much of the area is. .. I read that in 177? it poured rain for three days straight and boats at the Salton Sea ended up elsewhere.

.. anyway, I'd suspect a spanish boat to be relocated there before a viking one?

Yeah, I once visited Aguas Calientes, a village near the Urubamba river and Machu Picchu in Peru. It just means 'hot waters' or 'hot springs'.

We can only go by a couple of stories: one describes finding a typical Viking dragon boat (or longboat), another, much older story (or legend) talks about tall blond people coming in that area a thousand years ago.

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I've pick-up the story a little late... not always following UM as much as I wished. I always had a great interest in the Knight Templars since childhood, where in a history class I learned the last of the knight Templar Grand-Master, Jacques de Molay was burned on March 18 1314. That day happen to be my B-day. Since then I've read everything and anything on those now very famous Knights.

I would like to bring few points up.

First: When Hughes de Payens came back from Jerusalem in 1229, he went first to Troyes to officialy create this new Knighthood. Why is a very big question that has never been really nor thoughfully answered yet. The Knight of St John of Jerusalem were already in place for at least 100 years so why not join them. The Knight of Lazarus were in existence for at least 900 years so talk about a long life. Right after that, Hughes de Payens went to England and started to enlist. Most noblemen of the time where descendant of Viking who invaded UK in 1066. Willam the b****** (or the Conqueror) is often seen as the Duke of Normandy but he was a direct descendant of Rollon the Viking. When the French got tired of Viking invasion in the 8th century the French king gave him Normandy to bring peace to his country.

Now one might ask where I'm going with this. The Normand were Viking, they knew their history, they traded with the VIking of the North, they knew of Vineland. When Hughes de Payens (which by the way means Pagan) started recruting in England, he was recruting Viking.

Second: As soon the Templars were established, they created a huge port in La Rochelle.

The Knights Templar had a strong presence in La Rochelle since before the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who exempted them from duties and gave them mills in her 1139 Charter.[4] La Rochelle was for the Templars their largest base on the Atlantic Ocean,[5] and where they stationed their main fleet.[6] From La Rochelle, they were able to act as intermediaries in trade between England and the Mediterranean.[5]

link here

Historians have attempted to convince the world that this particular port was to create a link between the Mediterreanean sea and England... Heu methink Templar knew how to read a map better than anyone at the time and they knew Calais was better suited than La Rochelle. See Map.. La Rochelle is in the middle of the country on the Atlantic side... which would be logical if the Templar were sailing toward Vineland.

CarteFranceGde.gif

Now yeah I do believe the Inuit may had contact with Templars and yeah I do believe it's a cross on that statue.

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The problem with the Knights Templar is that they came into existence in the first part of the 12th century (1129 CE), and those finds date from no later than 1000 CE.

So that's why I liked that story of Adam von Bremen who mentioned East Frisians setting out on a journey to the far North East around 1040 CE.

<snip>

Did Frisians live in the Faroer? Yes, they did, and as pirates at its southern tip. But that was during the middle ages (around the 12th century CE, Akraberg).

OK, here's something new (I think), and again from Adam von Bremen:

Frisian expedition to the North Pole

[iv. 39.] “Archbishop Adalbert, of blessed memory, likewise told us that in his predecessor’s days certain noblemen from Friesland, intending to plough the sea, set sail northwards, because people say there that due north of the mouth of the river Wirraha [Weser] no land is to be met with, but only an infinite ocean. They joined together to investigate this curious thing, and left the Frisian coast with cheerful song. Then they left Dania on one side, Britain on the other, and reached the Orkneys. When they had left these behind on the left, and had Nordmannia on the right, they reached after a long voyage the frozen Iceland. Ploughing the seas from this land towards the extreme axis of the north, after seeing behind them all the islands already mentioned, and confiding their lives and their boldness to Almighty God and the holy preacher Willehad, they suddenly glided into the misty darkness of the stiffened ocean, which can scarcely be penetrated by the eye. And behold! the stream of the unstable sea there ran back into one of its secret sources, drawing at a fearful speed the unhappy seamen, who had already given up hope and only thought of death, into that profound chaos (this is said to be the gulf of the abyss) in which it is said that all the back-currents of the sea, which seem to abate, are sucked up and vomited forth again, which latter is usually called flood-tide. While they were then calling upon God’s mercy, that He might receive their souls, this backward-running stream of the sea caught some of their fellows’ ships, but the rest were shot [Pg 196]out by the issuing current far beyond the others. When they had thus by God’s help been delivered from the imminent danger, which had been before their very eyes, they saved themselves upon the waves by rowing with all their strength.

[iv. 40.] “And being now past the danger of darkness and the region of cold they landed unexpectedly upon an island, which was fortified like a town, with cliffs all about it. They landed there to see the place, and found people who at midday hid themselves in underground caves; before the doors of these lay an immense quantity of golden vessels and metal of the sort which is regarded by mortals as rare and precious; when therefore they had taken as much of the treasures as they could lift, the rowers hastened gladly back to their ships. Then suddenly they saw people of marvellous height coming behind them, whom we call Cyclopes, and before them ran dogs which surpassed the usual size of these animals. One of the men was caught, as these rushed forward, and in an instant he was torn to pieces before their eyes; but the rest were taken up into the ships and escaped the danger, although, as they related, the giants followed them with cries nearly into deep sea. With such a fate pursuing them, the Frisians came to Bremen, where they told the most reverend Alebrand everything in order as it happened, and made offerings to the gentle Christ and his preacher Willehad for their safe return.”

http://www.gutenberg...3-h/40633-h.htm

Adam von Bremen lived in the second half of the 11th century:

http://en.wikipedia..../Adam_of_Bremen

He talks about the Frisians sailing to the North Pole and mentions their contemporary, the reverend Alebrand, to whom they told about their adventures after they returned.:

http://de.wikipedia....rand_von_Bremen

So the Frisians are said to have reached... what? Greenland? America?... in the middle of the eleventh century.

http://en.wikipedia....lehad_of_Bremen

The Zeno brothers lived in the 14th century: http://en.wikipedia....i/Zeno_brothers

Their story about those mythical islands, like Frieslant Island, is said to be a fabrication (based on the Faroer), but could Adam von Bremen have been their source?

And did the Frisians reach the Americas in the 11th century CE??

Niccolò Zeno.

The voyages of the Venetian brothers, Nicolò & Antonio Zeno, to the northern seas in the XIVth century : comprising the latest known accounts of the lost colony of Greenland and of the Northmen in America before Columbus

http://archive.org/d...netia00zenorich

Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum - Adam von Bremen

http://archive.org/d...urgen00adamuoft

Tschan, F.J. (ed.) Adam of Bremen: History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen (New York 1959)

http://books.google....epage&q&f=false

An Eleventh-Century Frisian Voyage to

Labrador: Possibilities and Probabilities

Donald D Hogarth

University of Ottawa, Canada, 2011

Scholars have largely dismissed Adam of Bremen’s account of an eleventh

century Frisian voyage to “the northwest” due to elements of the story

characterized as too mythological or obscure to be worthy of study. This

article attempts to bring some clarity to the opposing views, highlighting

what might be a “possible” interpretation of this problematic voyage.

[..]

Summary of the northwest voyage of the Frisians: possible

sequence and events

Sometime about 1040 ce, a group of East Frisians, led by several noblemen, left

the mouth of the Weser River, sailed west to England, turned north to the Orkneys,

probably passed or landed at the Faroes, then landed on Iceland. From here, the

story becomes less definite, due to a complete lack of place names. However, the

route around Greenland — across Davis Strait to the Cumberland Peninsula of Baffin

Island and into Frobisher Bay, skirting the coast of southern Labrador — follows

a well traveled Viking trail. Off Cumberland Sound they would have encountered

icebergs, in Frobisher Bay, fog and giant tides, and off Resolution Island, fierce tidal

currents. Then, finally, they landed on Castle Island in Chateâu Bay, Labrador, where

a skirmish with Viking treasure guards took place. The Frisians made off with some

of this treasure and, in order to be absolved of piracy back home, invented a tale of

treasure-hoarding Cyclopes and their giant vicious dogs. Part of their treasure was

given to the Church in memory of their patron saint, Willehad. The voyage may have

been motivated as a raid of retribution under the guise of a journey of exploration or

a missionary venture.

http://docserver.ing...DFC0F0057DCCFF7

This Hogarth thinks the Frisians raided the raiders, aka the Vikings.

But like I posted on Februari this year, Martinus Hamconius claimed the Frisians even sailed to the silver mines in Mexico, also in the 11th century:

[xxxiv] See Martinus Hamconius, writing before 1620, who claims that Netherlanders reached the mines of Mexico and settled Chile in Charles Van den Bergh, “Nederlands Aanspraak" ("Dutch Claim"), op.cit., pp.30-33.

http://www.unexplain...15#entry4218689

So the "Inka" story in the OLB has a basis, be it some 3000 years too late...

.

Edited by Abramelin
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those finds date from no later than 1000 CE.

though to be fair, while the finds at this site are from no later than 1000, there are other "norse" finds throughout the arctic up until the 15th century or so.

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