{"id":15536,"date":"2018-11-28T19:30:46","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T00:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=15536"},"modified":"2020-04-30T11:05:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T15:05:02","slug":"positive-proof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/positive-proof\/","title":{"rendered":"Positive Proof"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"colin-sargent-final-xs\"<\/span>B<\/span>reaking news: Viking ships really did explore the coast of Maine. We\u2019re proud to reveal four sightings\u2014all in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

Built in Haugesund, Norway, the longship Draken Harald H\u00e5rfagre<\/em> slipped into Boothbay Harbor July 13-15. The dragon ship ravaged Rockland from July 22-25 before turning to Portland Harbor from July 27-30, tying up at Four Points Marina at 58 Fore Street.<\/span><\/p>\n

One hundred fifteen feet long, the ship was launched in 2012 as the pet project of Sigurd Aase, a billionaire oil magnate and president of Crudecorp ASA, Stavanger, Norway.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier Viking visits to our shores are harder to document. Time<\/em> Magazine raised some eyebrows in August, 1957, when the \u201cMaine penny\u201d was discovered by Guy Mellgren while sifting through Native-American digs at Penobscot Bay on Naskeag Point in Brooklin. According to Wikipedia, the \u201cNorwegian silver coin [dates] to the reign of Olaf Kyrre, King of Norway (1067-1093 AD).\u201d To believers, it\u2019s sparkling \u201cevidence of Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact.\u201d To others, it\u2019s heads or tails. <\/span><\/p>\n

In a story called \u201cNice Digs,\u201d Dr. Bruce Bourque of Bates College floated the notion that the Viking coin is a miracle of trade, not travel: \u201cDuring the late pre-history, people traded a lot. A stone like jasper spread all over the northeast like crazy. I think the Norse penny got caught up in this trade network. A lot of stone found in that same Brooklin site was from Labrador, and I think the coin was traded by the Norse people to the natives somewhere up north in Labrador, where the Vikings were active.\u201d [Portland Monthly<\/em>, Summerguide 1993.]<\/span><\/p>\n

Sages through the ages channel the hope that Viking explorations reached this far south, including those of the retail persuasion. Remember The Viking sm\u00f6rg\u00e5sbord on Route 1 in Ogunquit, where you could design your own ice-cream sundaes? There\u2019s even a rumor that the Vikings introduced the ancestor of the Maine coon cat to our shores. Sail into the mystery with Teig Tyrson\u2019s The Vikings of Maine: The Hunt for the Norsemen in the Land of Norumbega<\/em>. For many, pinpointing an early Viking presence boils down to how you define the word \u201cVinland\u201d and its ambiguous boundaries. I\u2019m pretty sure the Vikings made it to Hollywood.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, hey, it\u2019s Christmas. Cynicism be damned. Nobody can say the Vikings never made it to Maine\u2014not after seeing these great pictures (for more, click here<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to\u00a0view past\u00a0Letters from the Editor.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[231],"class_list":["post-15536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor","tag-december-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15536"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18498,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15536\/revisions\/18498"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}