Douglas Hunter - Beardmore: The Viking Hoax That Rewrote History

BEARDMORE

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246 Beardmore

The Viking Hoax That Rewrote History

Douglas Hunter

BEARDMORE

The Viking Hoax That Rewrote History

DOUGLAS HUNTER

Carleton Library Series 246

McGill-Queens University Press

Montreal & Kingston London Chicago

Douglas Hunter 2018

ISBN 978-0-7735-5466-5 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-7735-5534-1 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-0-7735-5535-8 (ePUB)

Legal deposit third quarter 2018

Bibliothque nationale du Qubec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free.

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. Lan dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de lart dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Hunter, Douglas, 1959, author

Beardmore : the Viking hoax that rewrote history / Douglas Hunter.

(Carleton library series ; 246)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-0-7735-5466-5 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-7735-5534-1 (ePDF). ISBN 978-0-7735-5535-8 (ePUB)

1. America Discovery and exploration Norse. 2. Ontario Antiquities. 3. Vikings Ontario. 4. Hoaxes Ontario. 5. Royal Ontario Museum Archaeological collections. 6. Museums Acquisitions Ontario Toronto. I. Title. II. Series: Carleton library ; 246

This book was typeset by True to Type in 10.5/14 Sabon

For Crawford

Contents

Acknowledgments

This book had its genesis in the research for my doctoral dissertation, Stone of Power (York University, 2015). As I gathered evidence for the misappropriation of Indigenous cultural materials in support of spurious ideas of early European voyages to the Americas, I amassed several files on dubious claims of Viking voyages. In 2013, I had my first, intrigued look at materials on the Beardmore hoax in the archives of the Royal Ontario Museum and Trent University. As the hoax did not fit my thesis, I set the case aside, knowing I would return to it if I ever had the chance. After completing my PhD, I began chipping away at the small mountain of Beardmore evidence in what turned out to be several collections in several archives. Hard as it might be to believe, noodling around in the Beardmore mystery became my way of relaxing during my postdoctorate at the University of Waterloo, when I was also preparing my dissertation for publication (as The Place of Stone, with University of North Carolina Press, in October 2017). When my postdoctorate ended in the spring of 2017, I began focussing almost exclusively on completing the manuscript for Beardmore. I owe thanks to innumerable people in my doctoral and postdoctoral years who listened to my tangential musings about this scandal. Their feedback helped me to appreciate how the story mattered to archaeologists, historians, and museologists. As well, without the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council during my doctoral and postdoctoral years, and the government of Canada when I held a Vanier Canada graduate scholarship, I never would have been able to devote the initial time I did to probing the Beardmore case.

This book exists because of the enthusiasm and support of editor Jonathan Crago and the staff and editorial board at McGill-Queens University Press, who green-lit the project on the basis of an outline and a sample chapter. The anonymous referees who read and commented on the first draft (which was more of a work in progress) provided invaluable guidance for refining my effort to tell as well as contextualize a vexatiously complex story. K. Joanne Richardson was the able copyeditor who gave my words a final polish.

While I visited in person the archives of the Royal Ontario Museum, Trent University, the Fisher Collection at the University of Toronto, and the United Church of Canada, the aid of archivists at other collections saved me from making prohibitively expensive trips in hope of finding one letter that could shed more light on the hoax. A former York classmate and tireless task-tackler, Keri-Lyn Durant, ran down newspaper articles and pages in city directories for me in Thunder Bay.