http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1252307.htm

Danish experts will travel to the U.S. to study evidence that the Vikings landed in the New World five centuries before Columbus.

A controversial parchment said to be the oldest map of America could, if authentic, support the theory that the Vikings arrived first.

The map is said to date from 1434 and was found in 1957. Some people believe it is evidence that Vikings, who departed from Greenland around the year 1000, were the first to land in the Americas.

The document is of Vinland, the part of North America believed to be what is today the Canadian province of Newfoundland, and was supposedly discovered by the Viking Leif Eriksen, the son of Erik the Red.

Three researchers from the Danish Royal Library (http://www.kb.dk/index-en.htm) and School of Conservation hope that modern techniques developed in Denmark will be able to "shed more light on this document whose authenticity is questioned worldwide", said Rene Larsen, head of the School of Conservation in Copenhagen and the leader of the project.

The trio will on Monday begin their work on the map, which is kept at Yale University (http://www.yale.edu/)'s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in Connecticut.

The three have been "authorised to, for two to three days, photograph, analyse with microscope and undertake various studies of the document and its ink, but not alter it", Larsen said.

He said the results of the study would be presented early next year.

"We hope that the new techniques that we have developed in Denmark ... will help to better [date] the document and ink with which the map was drawn in order to lift the veil on its authenticity or counterfeit," he said.

The map was considered a sensation when it was found. Experts largely agree that the parchment dates from the 1400s, but by the 1970s some experts had begun arguing that the ink used contained materials that were only developed in the 20th century.

U.K. chemist Professor Robin Clark, from University College London (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/), has meanwhile said he believed the document was a fake.

He based his conclusion on the work of another researcher, Dr Walter McCrone, who in the 1970s found that the ink contained a derivative of titanium dioxide, which did not exist until the 1920s, according to the journal Analytical Chemistry (http://pubs.acs.org/journals/ancham/).

U.K. chemist Professor Robin Clark, from University College London, has meanwhile said he believed the document was a fake.

He based his conclusion on the work of another researcher, Dr Walter McCrone, who in the 1970s found that the ink contained a derivative of titanium dioxide, which did not exist until the 1920s, according to the journal Analytical Chemistry.

Thats pretty damning.

I didn't realize that Lanse Aux Meadows was still being disputed as a viking settlement.

If we are to believe the Kensington Runestone, then we have evidence that the Vikings made it far beyond Newfoundland. According to the stone, they made it all the way to what is now the Upper Midwest in the USA (halfway across North America).


Read this if you are interested:

The Kensington runestone is a roughly rectangular slab of greywacke, 30 by 16 by 6 inches and weighing about 200 lbs, covered in runes found in Kensington, Minnesota in 1898. Supposedly, it proves that Viking explorers were able to penetrate nearly halfway across the North American continent.

...

According to [the finder's] story, the stone was lying in the root system of a tree at least 10 years old. That the stone had lain under a tree was proved in 1899 by nine inspectors who saw that a root fit perfectly around the stone.

...

After being initially dismissed as a fake, the stone was used as a step to [the farmer who discovered it]'s granary. It lay there, face down, until it was rediscovered by a historian, Hjalmar Holand, in 1907. Holand's investigation of the stone created enough interest that further studies were undertaken, most notably by Newton Winchell for the Minnesota Historical Society.

...

Winchell, to a large extent, relied on the physical aspects of the find. Though the original poplar tree under which the stone was found had since been destroyed, several other poplars of the same size were cut down and examined. It was discovered by ring count that they were 40 years of age. As the county in which the stone had been found was not settled until 1858, it seemed unlikely that the stone could be a forgery. Perhaps more importantly, Winchell, a highly respected geologist, studied the weathering of the stone and concluded that the inscription was roughly 500 years old [which would mean it was left there circa 1400].

source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_runestone)