# The Vinland Map > Unidentified maker (probable modern forger) - Uncertain. The parchment itself radiocarbon-dates to circa 1411-1468 and is genuinely medieval. The ink and drawing on it were added later: they copy specific errors found only in an 18th-century (1782 or 1783, sources differ) facsimile reprint of Andrea Bianco's 1436 world map, which sets a firm earliest possible date, and the ink's titanium dioxide pigment (anatase) was not manufactured in its synthetic rounded form before roughly the 1920s. A chemical wash or coating applied to the parchment has also been read as bearing trace fallout markers that would place that treatment no earlier than the early 1950s. Yale's working position since 2021 is that the map was drawn in the 20th century on a genuine but unrelated piece of 15th-century parchment. > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unidentified-vinland-map-forger/vinland-map-yale/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-13 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unidentified maker (probable modern forger) - **Date:** Uncertain. The parchment itself radiocarbon-dates to circa 1411-1468 and is genuinely medieval. The ink and drawing on it were added later: they copy specific errors found only in an 18th-century (1782 or 1783, sources differ) facsimile reprint of Andrea Bianco's 1436 world map, which sets a firm earliest possible date, and the ink's titanium dioxide pigment (anatase) was not manufactured in its synthetic rounded form before roughly the 1920s. A chemical wash or coating applied to the parchment has also been read as bearing trace fallout markers that would place that treatment no earlier than the early 1950s. Yale's working position since 2021 is that the map was drawn in the 20th century on a genuine but unrelated piece of 15th-century parchment. - **Medium:** Ink (a black carbon overlay on a yellow anatase-bearing line, bound in a collagen/gelatin medium) drawn onto a genuine 15th-century parchment bifolium - **Dimensions:** 27.8 x 41.0 cm parchment sheet, folded to form a bifolium of two conjoined leaves, each carrying half the map - **Object type:** Map - **Period:** Claimed at unveiling: International Gothic, circa 1440. Current assessment: 20th-century forgery on a genuine circa-1411-1468 parchment support. - **Current location:** Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary A parchment bifolium, 27.8 by 41.0 centimetres, bound since 1957 with a genuine medieval manuscript called the Tartar Relation and drawn with a map that purports to show pre-Columbian Norse exploration of North America under the label Vinlanda Insula. It surfaced through an Italian dealer, Enzo Ferrajoli di Ry, later convicted of stealing manuscripts from a Spanish cathedral library, was bought by a New Haven bookseller, and was quietly financed into Yale's hands by the philanthropist Paul Mellon before its unveiling by Yale University Press on 11 October 1965, one day before Columbus Day, to immediate controversy.Forgery allegations followed within a decade. Walter McCrone found a modern synthetic pigment, anatase, in the ink in 1974; a UC Davis team led by Thomas Cahill found far less of it in 1985-1987 and reopened the case for authenticity; the argument ran through Analytical Chemistry and other journals for the next twenty years without full resolution, complicated by a genuine 1411-1468 radiocarbon date for the parchment itself, which never settled the separate question of when the ink was applied.Yale's own conservation science team closed the case, in the university's own view, in 2021: full-sheet elemental mapping found a titanium compound absent from genuine medieval ink pervading every line, and a genuine medieval note on the reverse had been partly overwritten in the same modern ink to fabricate a binding instruction. The map remains at the Beinecke Library, retained now as a documented forgery rather than as evidence of Vinland. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1411-c. 1468** Unknown scriptorium or workshop `[documented]` (manufacture of the parchment support) Radiocarbon date range (95 percent confidence) for the parchment sheet itself, established by accelerator mass spectrometry on a trimmed sliver. This dates the animal skin only, not the map drawn on it. - **-1892-1893** Archdiocese / Cathedral Library of La Seo, Zaragoza `[documented]` (documented pre-1957 custody (Tartar Relation and Speculum Historiale fragment only, no map recorded)) A codex containing the Tartar Relation and a Speculum Historiale fragment was lent by the Archdiocese of Zaragoza to the Exposicion Historico-Europea in Madrid, per a contemporary exhibition catalogue identified by researcher John Paul Floyd. The catalogue makes no mention of a map bound into the volume. - **c. 1780s at the earliest-1957** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap: composition of the map and its introduction into the bound volume) No documentary trace of the map itself exists before 1957. The map's cartographic model (a facsimile of Andrea Bianco's 1436 world map published in the 1780s) sets the earliest possible date of composition; when between then and 1957 it was drawn, and by whom, and when it was joined to the genuine Zaragoza manuscripts, is not established. - **c. 1960-1965** Enzo Ferrajoli di Ry (dealer) `[disputed]` (theft of manuscripts from La Seo cathedral library, Zaragoza (documented for approximately 110 of some 583 items; connection of this specific volume to that documented theft wave is not established, and the dating conflicts with the 1957 sale date below)) Ferrajoli was convicted 13 October 1964 by the Audiencia Territorial de Zaragoza and sentenced to eight years and one day for theft from La Seo. Published theft chronologies date the wave he was convicted for to approximately 1960-1965, which is difficult to reconcile with his having already sold the Vinland volume in 1957; at least one Spanish-language source instead places the thefts generally across the postwar period through the late 1950s. This record does not resolve the conflict. - **1957** Enzo Ferrajoli di Ry, offered via the London dealer Irving Davis `[documented]` (offer to the British Museum, declined) Ferrajoli brought the bound Map-and-Tartar-Relation volume to London in summer 1957 and offered it to the British Museum, which declined to purchase it, partly on the grounds that the map's wormholes did not appear to align with those of the Tartar Relation. - **1957** Laurence C. Witten II (dealer) `[documented]` (purchase from Ferrajoli) Witten bought the bound volume from Ferrajoli for 3,500 dollars and brought it to New Haven, offering it to Yale, his alma mater, in October 1957. Witten later admitted (1974, published 1989) that he had misrepresented aspects of the acquisition and had never independently verified Ferrajoli's account of the volume's source. - **1958** Thomas E. Marston (Yale curator), acquiring the Speculum Historiale fragment `[documented]` (separate acquisition of the companion Speculum Historiale from the London dealer Irving Davis) Marston bought a damaged Speculum Historiale fragment (books 21-24) independently, then identified matching wormholes with the map and Tartar Relation, the basis for the three-volume claim. The price paid, and whether it was covered by the same Mellon funding as the map purchase, is not consistently reported in the sources consulted. - **1958-1965** Paul Mellon (philanthropist, anonymous purchaser and prospective donor) `[documented]` (purchase, held privately and secretly pending publication) Mellon financed the purchase, reported at approximately 300,000 dollars, on condition the object's existence remain secret until a scholarly book vindicating it had been completed, a condition that limited outside expert consultation during the authentication process. - **1965-present** Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library `[documented]` (gift and public announcement, followed by continuous custody through the 2021 forgery determination) Mellon's gift was announced 11 October 1965 with publication of The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (Skelton, Marston and Painter), one day before Columbus Day, producing immediate controversy including protest from Italian-American communities and reaction in Italy. Yale has held the object continuously since, including through McCrone's 1974 forgery finding, decades of contested countertesting, and its own 2021 conservation science determination that the map is a modern forgery. Its only documented exhibition outside New Haven was a loan to the Mystic Seaport Museum, Connecticut, May-October 2018. ## Open questions - Who actually drew the map? No forger has been identified on documentary evidence. Kirsten Seaver's candidate, Josef Fischer, died in 1944, apparently before a chemical intervention on the parchment datable no earlier than the early 1950s. - Where was the map itself before 1957? John Paul Floyd's 1892-1893 exhibition catalogue documents a pre-1957 Zaragoza home for the Tartar Relation and Speculum Historiale fragment, but records no map bound with them. The map has no documented existence before Ferrajoli produced it. - How does Ferrajoli's 1957 sale of the volume square with published theft chronologies for La Seo cathedral that date the thefts he was convicted of to 1960-1965, after the sale? This chronological tension is unresolved in the sources consulted. - What exactly did Laurence Witten lie about in his 1974/1989 confession, beyond the general admission that he misrepresented the acquisition? The specifics of what was fabricated in his original account have not been fully published. - Was the map ever genuinely bound with the Tartar Relation and Speculum Historiale as claimed in 1958, or was it introduced into an already-existing genuine two-volume Zaragoza set? The wormhole match that founded the three-volume claim has been disputed by later physical examinations. - What price did Yale, via Paul Mellon, actually pay for the Speculum Historiale fragment specifically? Sources report figures from roughly 300,000 dollars (sometimes cited as covering the whole acquisition) to a separate sum in the high six figures approaching a million dollars, without agreement. - Has Yale's 2021 elemental analysis been published as a peer-reviewed paper? At the time of the announcement the team stated an intention to publish in scholarly and cartographic journals; no such peer-reviewed paper reporting that dataset was located during this research. - What became of Enzo Ferrajoli after his release from prison? He is reported to have died in Switzerland within a few years, but at least one source treats that account as possibly fabricated. - Does a current, itemised insurance valuation exist for the object now that Yale has declared it a forgery, and if so, on what basis is a proven forgery still valued for insurance purposes? ## Sources - [1] Wikipedia, 'Vinland Map'. Tertiary source consolidating a large secondary literature; flagged for replacement with the primary journal articles and the Yale University Press book itself. - [2] Yale University Library, 'Beinecke Library's Vinland Map determined to be a fake' (2021). - [3] Yale News, 'Analysis unlocks secret of the Vinland Map -- it's a fake' (1 September 2021). - [4] NPR, 'Vinland Map, Thought To Be The Oldest Map Of America, Is Officially A Fake' (30 September 2021). - [5] Smithsonian Magazine, 'Vinland Map Identified as 20th-Century Forgery'. - [6] McCrone Research Institute, 'The Vinland Map' (case history of Walter McCrone's 1972-1974 analysis). - [7] Cahill, T.A., Schwab, R.N., Kusko, B.H. et al., 'The Vinland Map, Revisited: New Compositional Evidence on Its Inks and Parchment', Analytical Chemistry 59(6), 1987, pp. 829-833. - [8] Brown, K.L. and Clark, R.J.H., 'Analysis of Pigmentary Materials on the Vinland Map and Tartar Relation by Raman Microprobe Spectroscopy', Analytical Chemistry 74(15), 2002. - [9] Towe, K.M., 'The Vinland Map Ink Is NOT Medieval', Analytical Chemistry 76(3), 2004, pp. 863-865. - [10] Clark, R.J.H., 'The Vinland Map, Still a 20th Century Forgery', Analytical Chemistry 76(8), 2004, p. 2423. - [11] Towe, K.M., Clark, R.J.H. and Seaver, K.A., 'Analysing the Vinland Map: A Critical Review of a Critical Review', Archaeometry 50(5), 2008. - [12] Donahue, D.J., Olin, J.S. and Harbottle, G., 'Determination of the Radiocarbon Age of Parchment of the Vinland Map', Radiocarbon 44(1), 2002, pp. 45-52. - [13] Olin, J.S., 'Evidence That the Vinland Map Is Medieval', Analytical Chemistry 75(23), 2003. Argues for a natural, medieval-consistent origin of the ink's anatase; superseded in this record's synthesis by later Yale findings but recorded as part of the genuine published dispute. - [14] Fine Books & Collections Magazine, 'The Vinland Map Saga: An Interview with Author John Paul Floyd'. - [15] vinlandmap.info, 'The Vinland Map: Hoaxes within hoaxes' (detailed sourced timeline site, Clues 1-75). Independent research site; flagged for cross-checking against archival sources where cited for specific dates. - [16] Wikipedia, 'Laurence Claiborne Witten II'. - [17] Anton Castro, 'El robo de los libros de la Seo' (2006), on the La Seo cathedral library thefts and Enzo Ferrajoli di Ry's biography, conviction and reported death. - [18] Kathleen McCook, 'Zaragoza Manuscripts', on the chronology and scale of the La Seo cathedral library thefts (approximately 583 items, 1960-1965, roughly 110 attributed to Ferrajoli). Secondary source; flagged for cross-checking against the Spanish judicial record given the chronology tension noted in open_questions. - [19] Yale University Library Digital Collections, catalog records for the Vinland Map (Beinecke MS 350A), the Speculum Historiale (Beinecke MS 350) and the Hystoria Tartarorum. - [20] Mystic Seaport Museum, press materials on the 2018 exhibition 'Science, Myth & Mystery: The Vinland Map Saga', on loan from the Beinecke Library. - [21] Washington Post, 'Norse Map or German Hoax? Still No Rest for Vinland' (16 February 2004), on the Josef Fischer forger theory. - [22] Royal Society, 'Robin Jon Hawes Clark. 16 February 1935 - 6 December 2018', Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 2020. - [23] Taylor & Francis Online, review essay 'The Vinland Map, R. A. Skelton and Josef Fischer', discussing Kirsten Seaver's forger theory and the radiocarbon evidence for a post-1953 chemical intervention on the parchment. - [24] Wikimedia Commons file metadata (extmetadata/LicenseShortName records) for each image used in this record's gallery. - [25] Biblio.com / AbeBooks bibliographic listings for Skelton, R.A., Marston, T.E. and Painter, G.D., The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), confirming authorship, publisher and publication date. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.