Mystic — Mystic Seaport Museum has opened two major new exhibits — one on the discovery of artifacts at early Viking burial sites in Sweden and the other on the controversial Vinland map, which purportedly offered proof that Vikings reached North America long before Columbus.

“Vikings Begin,” which is on display in the Thompson Exhibit Building, and “Science, Myth and Mystery: The Vinland Map Saga,” which is housed in the R.J. Schaefer Gallery, have attracted crowds since opening last week, with 300 people attending a sold-out Viking beer garden party at the museum on May 19. In addition, the Draken Harald Hårfagre, a recreation of a Viking longship that sailed here from Norway in 2016, remains docked at the museum waterfront.

Elysa Engelman, the Seaport’s director of exhibits, said Thursday the hope is that visitors who view the Viking exhibit come away with the realization that Viking life was more complicated, cosmopolitan and interesting than they thought — the Vikings were traders before they were raiders, were expert craftsmen and women played important roles in their hierarchal society.

As for the Vinland map, which can be seen at the end of a comprehensive exhibit that took a year to design and build, Engelman said the museum hopes visitors come away with an understanding of how one small parchment document, which was said to date back to the mid-1400s but has been proven a fake, stirred up so much controversy when it was unveiled by Yale University in 1965.

The display of Viking artifacts comes from Museum Gustavianum at Uppsala University in Sweden, where researchers had unearthed Viking graves near the university. The university is using a $6 million grant from Sweden’s government to study the artifacts. The traveling exhibit is debuting in Mystic and will move on to other museums in the United States. It is the first time the artifacts have been shown outside of Sweden.

Sails expand their world

Visitors enter a darkened Thompson Building with backlit explanatory panels and the artifacts spotlighted in glass cases to show their exquisite detail.

Engelman explained they come from the boats in which Viking chieftains were buried and date to between 600 and 700 A.D., when early Viking culture was evolving. As farmers and traders, they were developing sails to power their longboats along with oars, which eventually would allow them to explore farther east, south and as far west as Newfoundland.

One of the exhibits displays arrow tips left in the remains of one of the boats, which have allowed researchers to determine the size and design of the vessels, according to Engelman. The display includes stone and amber beaded bracelets from Estonia, a green glass bowl and blue drinking glass from Italy and coins from the 9th century Carolingian Empire, all of which the Vikings acquired on their voyages. There is also a small, collapsible scale with silver weights that the Vikings used to determine the value of metals they wanted to trade for. Engelman explained those trade voyages later gave the Vikings ideas for places they could pillage as crops failed, possibly following a volcanic eruption.

Some of the more popular artifacts are expected to be two warrior helmets, a horse harness, an iron shield and body armor and a jeweled sword with a leather and metal scabbard. Visitors can touch a helmet and replica of a boat the Vikings were buried in.

A trip back to '65

In the Schaefer Building, visitors can see an exhibit on the scientific, cultural and historical aspects of the Vinland map. 

When Yale announced the existence of the 2-foot-long parchment map the day before Columbus Day in 1965, it generated controversy because it could have changed the story about when Europeans first arrived in North America. That was despite the fact that five years earlier, Norse artifacts were recovered from a settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, that date back to 1000, indicating Vikings were in North America long before Christopher Columbus. The map has not been exhibited outside of Yale before.

Visitors entering the exhibit first walk into a recreation of a 1960s living room, complete with paneling, green shag rug, a Sylvania television playing an ABC report about the map, and copies of magazines such as Newsweek and Times with stories about the map. It is where many American families would have heard of and discussed the map.

Across the room are newspaper headlines about the map and the controversy it generated.

“This is a 1965 American story, when Americans started questioning whether Columbus was the first European to arrive here. It’s that moment,” Engelman said. “We want to show why this meant so much to Italian-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, scientists and historians.”

Some Italian-Americans objected to the idea that a European explorer other than Columbus, who was Italian, had arrived in North America before him. The exhibit also has a photo of former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, then a law student at Yale, setting fire to a copy of the map at Yale in 1966.

There is a book full of letters Yale received about the map, one which calls those at the university “liars and bums” for making claims about the document.

Exhibits show how the issue was discussed in schools, how the map got to Yale and why the university thought it was authentic, the positions of experts at the time about the authenticity, scientific studies on the map and how it eventually was found to not be authentic.

A 20th century synthetic component of the ink on the 15th century parchment proved it was a fake. Who made the map or why is unclear. There is also a large diorama made by Seaport volunteers of the L’Anse aux Meadows settlement and what was found there.

Visitors can make up their own minds by eyeing the faded black and white Vinland map.

j.wojtas@theday.com

If You Go

What: "Vikings Begin," on display in the Thompson Exhibit Building, and "Science, Myth and Mystery: The Vinland Map Saga" in the R.J. Schaefer Gallery.

Where: Mystic Seaport

When: until Sept. 30. Viking Days on June 16 and 17.

More information: www.mysticseaport.org