Vikings on Point Rosee - Some more evidence, please!

The International reporting of a possible Norse ruin on Point Rosee, Newfoundland, has reached new and unseen levels in the Viking-craze among some people in America (USA/Canada). Renowned space archaeologist Sarah Parkac and her husband and fellow archaeologist, Greg Mumford, have left the archaeological world close to speechless with their new discovery of "Viking enterprises" seen from outer space. With the help of satellite imagery, Dr. Parkac has located "something" on a small Peninsula in the south-west of Newfoundland. 

The new Iron lady of Viking-satellite studies

With hardly any evidence the world media is reporting something called a Viking settlement on heavily eroded Point Rosie. A report presented by Greg Mumford on Academia.edu really doesn't add so much more, except for a non detailed mention of a series of radiocarbon dates which might indicate a very wide habitation time span. Why are we not allowed to see the details? In the report, there is also not very detailed mention of a preliminary metallurgical report of 22 pages. The iron remains depicted in Mumford's Academia.edu report, which are referred to as "probables bog iron ore roasting installation" have to bee explained much better. It takes more than a charred stone to roast bog iron.

Photographs of probable turf constructions found at Point Rosie bear very little resemblance to turf constructions of the early Icelanders and the first Norse settlers in Greenland. Other people than the Norse (Viking age settlers of Iceland and Greenland)built sod houses. Even the Dutch, in the late Iron Age as well as much later.

"Space archaeologist" Sarah Parkac, who allegedly located the structure on Point Rosee, although it is very clear on Google Earth after one plays with any photo processing program (see image at top), has made mistakes in her interpretation of ruins in Egypt. Maybe I am just too conventional and envious, when I suggest that egyptologists, who are the special protégés of the colourful State Archaeologist of Egypt, Zahi Hawass, who move into the boggy and foggy North Atlantic, do their homework. Before everything Norse is dubbed VIKING, and the archaeologist involved don't have the slightest clue how Norse turf structures look like, this find is being promoted as a sensation.

It is also to say the least sensational, that a "Viking expert" like Douglas J. Bolender, who belongs to a team doing research in North-Iceland, is the main authority on a "probably Norse settlement" in Newfoundland. The Boston based team lead by John Steinberger, which Bolender worked with at Stóra-Seyla in Skagafjörður, N-Iceland, once claimed the team had found a 11th century bronze coin from Denmark. With no coinage of bronze coins in Denmark at that time, I pointed out that a bronze coin in the 11th century Denmark would be a major sensation. The Viking experts from Boston didn't know that what they found was a dress ornament copying very crudely a coin, its depiction and legend. Although the team was notified about their hilarious mistake, the copper disc is still catalogued as a "coin/copper disc" in the reports and publications of the team. On Icelandic Television John Steinberg commented his use of geo-radars, which by the way has lead to lot of interesting results for Icelandic archaeology. Steinberg argued: "We can see what we are going to find, before we find it" (see here). My advise in 2008 was: "But you sure ain't goin' to discover what you find, if you don't make an effort to know". That is also an advise I would give the Egyptologists in Newfoundland, who use satellites in their quest for "Vikings", and don't have the faintest idea how the "Vikings" used turf.

With this recent turn in so called "Viking studies" on Point Rosee, which I hope will turn successful and produce better evidence, I wish that the Vikings will not be found on the moon, too soon.

There's a great discussion on the Rosee Point finding at FB North Atlantic Archaeology 

Athugasemdir

[FORNLEIFUR, 2.4.2016 kl. 16:32]

There's a great discussion on the Rosee Point finding at FB North Atlantic Archaeology