LEGEND OF THORVALD

The proposed Viking boulder was featured, along with Hampton "witch" Goody Cole, in the old town's 300th anniversary guide book in 1938. In 1948 a runic expert, Olaf Strandwold, said he could read a message in the rock and listed it among a catalog of Norse artifacts in North America. New Hampshire writer Eva Speare popularized it in her books of Granite State lore.

Adding a touch of authenticity, Yale scholars around this time suddenly came up with a medieval map that appeared to prove that Vikings knew where they were traveling and mapped America. The authenticity of the Vinland Map had been hotly debated for decades and recent signs suggest that is a clever forgery. But for a while, when the Vinland Map was hot news, the Hampton legend seemed unstoppable. If Thorvald was not buried in this tourist town within walking distance of the busy commercial beach boardwalk, he should have been.

History is as much about fame as fact. Write and talk about something a lot and it becomes famous. Write and talk about something famous long enough, and it becomes historic. By the 50's the rock had been moved to make way for a sewer main for a housing site. Now it was an endangered rock. Tourists began chipping off pieces for souvenirs. A Massachusetts man attempted to carry the whole thing away in a truck. In 1973 local amateur archeologists searched for Thorvald's burial remains and came up empty. Finally, in 1989 Thorvald's Rock was moved to the Tuck Museum where it rests in one piece.

Members of the Hampton Historical Society that run the wonderful little museum have begun to soft pedal the Viking story in favor of authentic facts about this amazing old puritan town. Those ancient runes, one critic suggests, may have been made by glacial movement and enhanced by the teeth of a steam shovel, or by the had of a man hoping to raise the value of his waterfront property.

"It's a fake," said Elizabeth Ackroyd, then head of the museum's collections committee told me a few years ago. "You know that don't you? Apparently Mr. Lamprey thought this up on his own. Various people have looked at it since, and you can safely say they did not come away impressed."

Despite the vivid imaginations of Hampton real estate agents and beach promoters, it seems unlikely that Thorvald died on what would become the small strip of New Hampshire seacoast. It seems even less likely that, in the midst of a hostile Indian attack, his crewmen would take the time to carve a farewell message onto a stone. And let's not forget that Boar's Head, scientists estimate, has eroded some 300 feet back from the Atlantic Ocean in the last millennium. Still the nagging question remains -- how far south did those darned Vikings come?

When a 75-foot replica Viking longship ICELANDER visited Portsmouth Harbor a few years ago, I called the event publicist. Magnus Bjarnason, Icelandic Consulate General, was coordinator of the visit. The Icelandic sagas, he said, have proven to be very accurate historical documents. But how far south did they come? – I asked. Deferring the question to a higher authority, Mr. Bjarnason passed on the phone number of Jon Baldvin Hannibalsson, the Icelandic Ambassador to the United States. I placed the call to Washington, DC.

"You want to ask the ambassador if Leif Eriksson's brother is buried in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire?" Mr. Hannibalsson's secretary seemed dubious, but admitted that the ambassador had a fascination with history, and she put me through.

"History is the national past-time in Iceland," the ambassador told me enthusiastically. "Everybody there has a genealogy to the year 1,000 AD and beyond." The surprising response to the touring replica ship, the ambassador said, showed how incredibly popular Viking history has become among Americans. If half the people who requested travel information on Iceland since seeing the ship actually visited the island nation, he noted, there would be no room to accommodate them all. A concurrent Viking exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, he said, attracted a million visitors a month.

I explained about our fake Viking rock in Hampton and noted that Icelanders should take the hoax as a compliment. Thousands of Americans appear to be obsessed by Vikings, we agreed. I tried to pin him down as to how far south he thought the Vikings traveled, but an ambassador is a politician after all.

"You should talk to Pall Bergthorsson," Ambassador Hannibalsson said, and so I found myself dialing the author of the book, "The Vinland Millennium." I reached the 77-year old scientist at his home in Iceland and repeated my theory of the fake Viking grave stone. This whole quest for knowledge, along with my phone bill, was taking on epic proportions. But I was pleased when the scholar agreed with my theory on general principles.

"I cannot see that it is likely that Thorvlad went so far as to Hampton Beach," Bergthorsson said, and I believe he was smiling. He agreed that the carving of a rune stone under the threat of Indian attack was also unlikely. Hastily fashioned wooden crosses, he said, would have been more appropriate burial markers -- and long since washed away. The author says it is unlikely Leif's brother came this far south in such an early voyage -- and he has his own theory of Thorvald's grave site.

"I think I have found this place traveling around in Nova Scotia that matches the saga on the east coast of Cape Breton Island. The saga leads me to this," he said.

Yet there is hope for Hampton. Pall Bergthorsson is convinced that Vikings may have passed by New Hampshire shores in other later voyages, however. A Viking coin from the appropriate era was recovered at nearby Penobscot Bay in Maine. He feels certain that the first millennium explorers found their way to New York City too, landing in Brooklyn. The first American child born of European parents, he believes, was a first millennium Viking girl, not a Pilgrim.

But it's time to put this saga to rest. The only authentic thing named Thorvald in Hampton is a little street off Surfside Park. But do not mourn, brave Seacoast tourists. Hampton may have lost a Viking gravestone, but it has regained a good-sized boulder in the bargain.

Copyright © 2005 by J. Dennis Robinson. Al rights reserved. Photos by SeacoastNH.com. Originally posted here in August 2000.

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