Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1884 — Bancroft, the Historian, and the Scandinavians. [ARTICLE]

Bancroft, the Historian, and the Scandinavians.

Mr, George Bancroft, whose history of the United States is regarded as one of the most important contributions to American history, has made several important changes in his revised edition just issued from the publishing house of Appleton & Co., New York. In his late edition Mr. Bancroft asserts that the claim of the Northmen to the discovery of America 500 years before Columbus planted the cross on the island of San Salvador, rests on “narrations mythological in form and obscure in meaning.” In the year 1837 the claims of the Norwegians to the discovery of America in the tenth century were thoroughly and searchingly investigated by the Society of Northern Antiquarians at Copenhagen, and a splendid work, Antiquitates Americana;, published, which reduced tradition and “mythological narrations” to authentic history, showing to the world that not only were the Norwegians the discoverers of Greenland, but that they landed on the shores of New England and as far south as the coast of New Jersey, and even Carolina. Those bold mariners passed from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to Greenland, thence to Labrador and farther south along the Atlantic coast. The researches of the Copenhagen society have produced facts and documents showing that the Northmen, in the tenth century, were the greatest navigators and explorers in the world, that they were the terror of Europe eten as far south as Sicily and Greece, whose coasts they invaded, and that it was those sturdy pioneers who gave the name of Vinland to the southeast cost of New England, having landed in the vicinity of Boston harbor and other points. Since the publication of this great work the intelligent and learned world have accepted the proofs and facts therein contained and collated to be the truth of history. Prof. Anderson, a celebrated scholar and professor of the Scandanavian languages in the University of Wiscon in, cites 127 works treat ing on this subject, and of these 113 give their judgment in favor of the Northmen being the first discoverers of America, and that as early as the tenth century. Nine, including Washington Irving, are in doubt, and only five, including Bancroft, the United States historian, cast their judgment in the negative. Prof. Anderson cites in the affirmative such illustrious names as Adam of Bremen, Grotius, Torfseus, Mallet, Crantz, Benjaman Franklin, Malte-Brun, Wheaton, Alexander von Humboldt, Edward Everett, Rafu, Cullen Bryant, and many others. The Northmen earned the name of sea kings. The women partook of the fierce character of the men. Intrepidity in the midst of the clash of arms and obiiviousness to danger could alone win their hearts. They even overran England, wrested Normandy from France, captured Belgium, and made incursions into Spain. They were foremost among the Crusaders, leading in the van of Peter the Hermit and the chivalry of Europe, in rescuing the tomb of our Lord, and they laid with their battle-axes, on the streets of Constantinople, the foundations of a great empire. “The old Norse Vikings,” says Professor Anderson, “sailed up the rivers Rhine, Scheldt, the Seine and Loire, conquering Cologne and Achen, where they turned the Emperor’s palace into a stable, filling the heart of eten the great Charlemagne with dismay. They carved their mystic runes' upon the marble lion in the harbor of Athens in commemoration of their cbnquest of that city, just as they left their runic inscriptions upon the rocks of America in commemoration of their visits to its shores.” The tenth century was the period of their greatest enterprise, when they turned their direction westward, discovering Iceland, Greenland, and the countries now known as the United States and Canada. A youth’s history of the United States, by T. Wentworth Higginson, Boston, though an ordinary school book, gives as an opinion that the Vinland of the Northmen was on the American continent; and the American Cyclopaedia says that the discovery of Greenland led to the discovery of the main land of America by Bjarni, son of Herjulf, in the year 986. In' the faee of the universal and everwhelming proofs that have been obtained through so many sources, it is difficult to see why Mr. Bancroft should fail to give them credence in his history of the Uni ed States. The fact that America was discovered by the Norwegians 500 years before Columbus does not in the least detract from the achievements and fame of the latter. It is certain that there was no knowledge in Europe at the time that there was any such country as America in existence, hence Christopher Columbus was an original discoverer of this continent, and to him, above all others, is the world indebted for the greatest event in the whole history of civilization. In the words of Edward Everett, Columbus has so near “approached the work of his Creator as to bring an unknown w v orld to the knowledge of his fellow men”—Town of Lake Vindicator.