376 ANlSrUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



ians it was not intense enough to leave any such traces among the 

 native population. 



The Norsemen in North America in the Middle Ages did not make 

 the imprint on the history of world culture that Columbus and his 

 successors did. All the same, it is of great interest to endeavor to 

 establish where and when they had their American bases. 



Leaving now the literary sources we turn to archeology. 



WHAT DO AMERICAN MONUMENTS AND OBJECTS SHOW, AND 

 HOW SHALL WE INTERPRET THEM? 



At the suggestion of Lithgow Osborne, president of the American- 

 Scandinavian Foundation, New York, I was requested in the summer 

 of 1948 to travel to the United States for the purpose of making a 

 systematic study, based upon journeys and personal examinations, of 

 as much as possible of the archeological material in the States and 

 Canada likely to throw light on the question of whether Scandinavian 

 Norsemen lived in North America in pre-Columbian days. The work 

 was to be done under the auspices of the Foundation and with a grant 

 from the Viking Fund, New York. I accepted the offer and spent 

 about three months in the United States and Canada in the autumn of 

 1948. There I had the opportunity of making myself acquainted with 

 material that was both voluminous and varied. My studies and 

 judgment of this American material are crystallized in the following 

 report. I thank the American-Scandinavian Foundation for most 

 active support and the Viking Fund for its generous financial aid. My 

 thanks are also due to President Lithgow Osborne for his effective help 

 and cooperation; to Dr. Henry Goddard Leach, former president of 

 the Foundation, for much guidance and good advice; and to my 

 friend Dr. Hugh Hencken, of Cambridge, Mass., then president of 

 the Archeological Institute of America, for great hospitality and 

 helpfulness. 



It seems natural to begin the report with an examination of three 

 monuments, arranged chronologically according to their alleged age : 

 the Beourdinore fund at Toronto, Canada, claimed to date from the close 

 of the Viking age; the Neioport Tower ^ held by somebody to have 

 a medieval origin; the Kensington runic stone^ now at Alexandria, 

 Minn, (a replica in the U. S. National Museum, Washington, D. C.), 

 giving itself in its inscription to the year 1362. The rest of the Ameri- 

 can epigraphic material forms a natural association with the latter 

 monument. I have, then, discussed briefly under Sites some occur- 

 rences in situ in New England, with a separate expose on the mooring 

 stone phenomenon. This is followed by a reference to the various 

 North American ohjects supposed to date from pre-Columbian times. 



