Tower Letter

8/9/2019 Tower Letter

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CITY HALL OF NEWPORTCITY COUNCIL37 BROADWAYRHODE ISLAND 02840UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Oslo: June 25, 2010

Subject: How the Viking Tower in Tou roPa rk originated.I am writ ing your office as an American with special in teres t inthe discovery of North America . This summer I vis i ted Ll anse ofMeadows on NewFoundLand to get an "on the ground " feel ing for thes i t e selected by the viking Leif Erikson in 998. As You knowCanada spent a considerable amount of money recreating longhousesnext to the actual place where foundations were investigated byarchaeologists and as well on an orientat ion centre for tour i s t s .The place i s now under UNESCO protect ion.What I learned there I hoped to bring with me when I planned mytour to Rhode Island where a stone st ructure of unknown originseemed to point to viking ac t iv i t ies as well , at leas t in name,although to a much l a t e r age. I f the norr0n \norse v ikings hadreal ly been there they must have spent a considerable time closeto the s i t e , the Touro Park, and they would have come by ships.The time of Leif ' s discovery was nearly 500 ye ars b efo re Columbusdiscovered the "West Indies", .the is lands which in fact had noconnect ion with India in the Far East as Columbus believed to h isdeath, but were the several is lands in the Caribean. Columbusnever se t h is fee t on North America's soi l ! Yet the City ofNewport has accepted to put a fu l l size bronce sta tue of Columbuson the main highway Memorial Blvd. intersect ion with Bellevue Ave.only a s ho rt d is ta nc e from Touro Park. The inscr ipt ion reads:"Discoverer of America" - .On the west side of the Tower, 14 feet above ground, the twovis i tors L0vfald and Bj0rndal in 1946 discovered runelike l e t t e rson a rock in the wall. I f interpreted by the method of Monge af te rthe Vatican calendar of Gardar for Greenland the date is Dec. 10,1116. That, according to a note on the upper l e f t hand corner ofthe Vinland Map, i s the f i r s t v i s i t of bishop Henricus GnupssonUpsi of Greenland to Vinland. According to the sagaes\his torybooks


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kept in Iceland Henricus again vis i ted Vinland in 1123. Since hewas a misionary bishop and Greenland not a t the time was part ofthe Norwegian kingdom, not before 1261, his voyages must have beenof serious importance, l ike consecrating a church for a Catholiccommunity. The only such found in America is the Tower which hasstrong resemblance to th e octahedr al s t ructure put up in Jerusalemand in Bethlehem by the mother Helena of roman emperor Constantinein 340 over the grave and bir thplace of Christ . Later churches inEurope added similar freestanding bi r th- and baptizing structures.With time the octahedral chapels were incorporated in the churchs t ructures where bapizing took place meaning a re cre atio n to thefa i th in Christ .Thus, a t rue copy, today the only one, of the birthstructure inBethlehem was bui l t in Bologna, I ta ly , by the pope of Rome, in themonastery of St.Stephan and par t of the St.Sebastian church. Ihave been there and measured the octahedral s izes . The Tower wouldneatly f i t into that s t ructure ! The pope bui l t i t in order toshow the cruzading people, who never got t ransport from I ta ly toThe Holy Land, what they would have seen had they come across.Now, back to the Vinland Map, which today is kept by YaleUniversity in Connecticut, the year 1116 is not s ta ted expl i t lybut accordingly, in la t in : "By the will of God, af te r a longvoyage from the is land of Greenland southward towards thewestermost par ts of the ocean - - - - - - Henricus (Erik), apostol iclegat\(deputy) and bishop of Greenland and surrounding areas,arrived in this t ru ly enormous and much r ich country in the nameof the Allmighty God, in the l as t year of our holy father(pope)Pascalis(II j-(1116), where he remained a long time Summer aswell as Winter and returned l a te r in nor th ea st er ly direct iontowards Greenland according to the wil l of his superiors." We alsoknow, according to the Vatican calendar, tha t the next bishop toGreenland was Arnold of Hamar (ci ty jus t north of Oslo) in 1124 and appointed there by king Sigurd Jorsalafarer of Norway.However, as You may have wondered, how could the poor people ofGreenland, who never bui l t viking ships - for trade or vikingpuposes - afford an expedition a l l the way to fa r off RhodeIsland. They would have to rely on a huge ship and the resourcesof royal dimensions. That king would be Sigurd Jorsalafarer whowas well known in Greenland and who had vis i ted The Holy Land inthe period 110S-1110, short ly a f t e r the 1s t crusade, where he hadtaken the l as t stronghold of the muslims, the fortress of Sidon.He had offered i t as a gif t to the king Baldwin of Jerusalem andreceived r ich compensations as he l e f t for Constantinopel on hisreturn voyage. To this day he is remembered by the cit izens ofSidon by a plaque on the City Hall there !Arriving in Norway he learned tha t his brother, 0ystein, in themeantime had ruled Norway ski l l fu l ly and added a large part ofSweden without war and bui l t 5 churches for the catholic mainchurch in Rome. The two brothers now ruled Norway t oget he r 0ys te inthe northern par t and Sigurd the southern. The northern par t


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already had an octaheral wooden church for Olav the Holy who fe l lin bat t le for the cathol ic cause on Stiklestad in 1030. He hadbeen declared "Holy" by the Vatican. That church would l a t e r(1152) be replaced by a cathedral in stone where the chapels wereoctahedral in form. At the time i t was the largest in Scandinavia.Sigurd had made several promises to the king of Jerusalem tofur ther the interests of the Mother church on his return tha twould bind the support of Norway. Sigurd established a caste l le -church to his new ci ty of Konghelle north og G0teborg where healso had valuable icons ins ta l led . He also arranged for the 10%introduction of a Vatican levy on a l l trade in Norway. But i tbecame an obsession with him tha t he never seemed to receiv e thesame famous acclaim from Rome as his brother had. However, theopportunity to change th is arrived with a l e t t e r from the fameousabbot Peter of the french monastery in Cluny. He challenged Sigurdto continue his effor t s for the in te res t of the Mother church aseagerly as his early se rv ic es fo r the church had been. Now hisbrother had died in 1123 and Sigurd was the sole king of a l l ofNorway. Sigurd accep ted the challenge of Peter and decided on aproject to spread the words of catholicism as far west (Vinland)as the church had reached to the east (China). He would evidentlybring the words of Christ to the Indians in the New World !What else but a Stone Tower to bap ti ze "Skre ll inge r" - and locateda t the same l a t t i tude as Rome ca 42 degrees ! When he had Gnupssonto leave Greenland he a t the same time ordered the Hamar bishop toGardar. He arranged for t ransportat ion possibly in the same hugeship as his brother had bui l t af te r the model of Ormen Lange. Hewould have provided both manpower and stores for the long voyageWest - to Rhode Island ! Sigurd died in 1130. We do not know i f heor the Vat ican received any return message from Newport as to thesuccess of his effor t s - which then remained unmentioned in theSagas.However, the resul ts of Sigurd's possible effor t s may have beenthe facts of the Tower, a t rue Viking Tower as i t is s t i l l cal led.I t has many technical deta i l s sim ilar to the churches in Gardar(Herjulfsnes) on Greenland. Such detai ls may also be compared tostone st ructures in Norway and elsewhere. I t is claimed tha tNorway imported stone masons from Ireland and Scotland as early asthe Hall bui l t in Bergen and the cathedral in Trondheim andpossibly to the Maria church in Oslo.Later the s i tuat ion in Norway became one of Civil war as the Lawof the Land allowed every o ffsp rin g o f kings to gather "Flokker"or groups of royal supporters to pretenders for kingship. BothGreenland and Vinland took second place as every fract ions insociety fought for the i r local in te res ts as they had in the pastbefore Harald Harfagre . The power struggle was now only checked bythe church which continued to support the i r pr ies ts and build newchurches. Thus the cathedral of Trondheim came into being in 1152.From what I have now oriented Your office about has also beendiscussed local ly with Newport's valued new representat ive who has

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offered h is p riv ate in i t i a t ive to support the community of Newporthis name is Jim Egan located on Mill s t ree t close to the Tower. Hes t i l l adheres to the English version of the origin of the Towerbut I believe that should rather apply to a real mil l on theIsland of Conanicut where an HOld windmillH is located to thenorth by my National Geografic map.Let me f ina l ly mention my own observations about findings Hon thegroundH regarding the Tower. I t i s said that the granite rock usedin some places of the arches are not found locally on the RhodeIsland. However, when i made a study of the beach along the Cl i f fWalk, in close vic ini ty of the Tower, I saw two large seams ofgranite on some t i l t ed skerr ies only ca. 200 yards from theentrance. I made photoes of these as included with this l e t te r .From th i s I also looked closer at the terrain north of the Firs tbeach and Memorial Blvd. The Easton's beach and the lake behindresembles so much the Espaves and Lanse aux Meadows at NewFoundLand tha t fur ther invest igat ion for a possible viking sett lementought to be undertaken. The only difference is the lack of af re shwa te r c reek . Has an estuary from the lake been changed by thel a te r Memorial highway ? I f so was any remnants of early se t t l e -ments found ? I kindly ask for Your comments on possible postholesand peat foundations for longhouses jus t north of the highway.My l as t surprise was the mention of a HNewport wineyardH on a ci tymap. I hurried to a local store jus t across the s t ree t from HotelViking and found to my p le asu re th e only local wine was theGreenvale produced only 6 miles from downtown ! I stronglyrecalled Verrezanos report about his v i s i t to Newport in 1525where he mentioned the exceptional H _ wine produced by the indiansin a european manner. H He wondered as well from where they mighthave learned the process ! He even writes about the way theindians sang a Hthanks for foodH song which he wrote downphonetically as to the refra in :H - affl igu hafr wir etingu " !Translated from old norse i t meant: r ichly have we been f e d . Healso commented on the i r abi l i t ies to build in local stone - . Butback to the wine. The winery had a history back to 1586 i t said onthe bot t le . Is i t possible that the t radi t ion was even older - andlearned by munks from overseas around the 12 th century ?

Sincerely,

rn t Holmboe KIa l ipanveien 77. 1475 Finstad. Norway.cc.Pictures of 1 . Tower rock runes. 2. Granite seams from Newport.


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Tower Letter