AMERICAN LITERARY FORGERIES. 137 



chroniclings passed into disrepute, and American antiquaries of the 

 sensational type resumed their search for runic inscriptions. 



With the thrilling incidents of the great conflict between North and 

 South, the Potomac had become an historical river to the civilized 

 world ; and so the antiquarian field of research changed its ground, 

 and there appeared in June, 1867, in the Washington [Tnion a wonder- 

 ful account of discoveries just made in that neighborhood by " Thomas 

 C. Raffinnson, Fellow of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries of 

 Copenhagen." Professor C. C. Eafn was the great authority in the 

 Antiquitates Americance, for the Northmen's Vinland, Huitraman- 

 naland or Whitemen's Land, Irland il mikla, or Ireland the great, &c.; 

 and so Raffinn-son now fitly followed up his discoveries. 



This learned Northern Antiquary was, it seems, on an esploratory 

 tour in the States, though unheard of by the worshipful mob of lion- 

 hunters; and so he writes to the Union, "Permit me through your 

 columns to publish the details of the discovery, near the city of "Wash- 

 ington, of the remains of an Icelandic Christian woman, who died in 

 the year 1051, and of the inscription in Runic characters which marks 

 her grave, the announcement of which has already spread by telegraph 

 through the New World to the Old." The learned Antiquary proceeds 

 accordingly to comment on the historical importance of a disclosure 

 which confirms the discovery and extensive explorations of the Ameri- 

 can Continent by the adventurous Northmen, five centuries before the 

 landing of Columbus. It gives, he says, " another illustration of the 

 great length of time it requires to write an accurate and truthful 

 history ;" and he therefore craves the readers' indulgence in favour of 

 his present narrative, begging them "to await the publication, within 

 the coming year, of the full account of my archaeological researches in 

 the Orkneys, Iceland, America, &c., wherein the more copious text 

 will be accompanied with maps and drawings." 



But a marvellous preliminary discovery has to be first related, quite 

 in the old eighteenth century style, though surpassing even Lady 

 Wardlaw's recovery of an antique parchment from the Dunfermline 

 Abbey vaults. " In 1863," writes the Danish explorer, "■ in digging 

 about the ruins of the ancient college at Skalholt — said to have been 

 built in 1057 by Bishop Isleif, — in Iceland, the Latin MS., bearing, 

 date 1117, and now known as the Skalholt Saga, was exhumed entire.'^ 

 What opinion European archgeologists would be likely to form in 

 reference to this idea of digging up a manuscript seven or eight 



