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title: "Norumbega: The Lives of a Myth"
author: Jacob Signorovitch
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In Weston, Massachusetts, across the Charles River from Brandeis University, an
unusual structure rises among the trees; a forty foot stone tower, complete
with spiral staircase and ramparts, weathered and stained with time, looking
distinctly out of place within earshot of I-95. The story of how it came to be
there involves Vikings, a baking soda magnate, the discovery of America, and,
at the center of it all, the mythical city of Norumbega. As one explores the
surrounding area, the name appears again and again: a map will tell you the
structure's name is Norumbega Tower, and running alongside is Norumbega Road.
Further south, one finds a Norumbega Park, and another road called Norumbega
Court. This paper will explore how one man in the late 19th century, Eben
Norton Horsford, combined Norse saga and a mythical New England city into a
theory for the original discovery of America, what motivated him to do so, and
the legacy he left behind.

The myth of Norumbega originated in the sixteenth century, during the Age of
Exploration. To European explorers, it was variously a town, city, or country,
somewhere along the coast of New England, inhabited by amiable and civilized
natives. First given the name *Nurumberg* by Giacomo Gastaldi in a 1548 edition
of Ptolemy's Geography,[@KirsNor98, 34] the myth can be traced back to a
conflation of two separate accounts. The first is that of Giovanni da
Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer under King Francis I of
France.[@GreeneLife37, 4-7] He was one of the first Europeans to explore the
area around Narragansett Bay in 1524[@KirsNor98, 36, 39], and recounted his
experiences in a letter to the king. He described a pleasant harbor inhabited
by friendly and civil natives.[@KirsNor98, 39] They practiced "more systematic
cultivation [of crops] than the other tribes," and were "very like the manner
of the ancients [i.e., western antiquity]."[@KirsNor98, 39] In the letter,
Verrazzano names the place *refugio*, "on account of its beauty."[@KirsNor98,
39] Despite Narragansett Bay being quite far from where Norumbega would
eventually be described, geographical ambiguity allowed his account to become
"at the heart of the Norumbega legend."[@KirsNor98, 39] Specifically, the
mention of a "more civilized" tribe of natives would become a core aspect of
the mythical city in all future renditions. The second account, which lends the
myth its name and location, is that of Jean Alfonce de Saintonge, a pilot on
Jacques Cartier's exploration of the Penobscot Bay area.[@KirsNor98, 41]
Sailing up the Penobscot River, which he called the *Norenbègue*, he described
"a city called *Norombegue* with clever inhabitants [...] The people use many
words which sound like Latin and worship the sun, and they are fair people and
tall."[@KirsNor98, 41] These two accounts, Varrazzano's *refugio* and
Saintonge's *Norombegue*, eventually merged into a single myth, canonized by
the cartographer Gastaldi, of an advanced Native American city more similar to
Europe than its neighbors.[@KirsNor98, 41]

Over the centuries that followed, more accurate maps and exploration revealed Norumbega
not as the advanced society it was believed to be but only "a settlement on the
outer Penobscot shore."[@KirsNor98, 55] Still, the myth lay dormant, disproven
yet still alluring. Enter Eben Norton Horsford, a mid-nineteenth century
chemist working in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Best known for his invention of
modern baking powder,[@JackHors92, 343] Horsford had long harbored an interest
in history and archaeology. He collected fossils around his father's farm in
Moscow (now Leister), New York where he grew up,[@JackHors92, 340] and became
interested in learning the language of the Seneca Indians[@JackHors92, 340] to
which his father worked as a missionary.[@JackHors92, 103] Later, he would
often visit his wife's family estate on Shelter Island, New
York,[@AdamsMemBiog08, 104] where he became interested in the island's history.
He even "erected a monument to the Quakers, who found shelter there from
Puritan persecution."[@AdamsMemBiog08, 104] This pattern of research and
monument building would be repeated several times throughout Horsford's life,
culminating in Norumbega Tower. Horsford's most famous accomplishment, and how
he was able to fund these projects, would come in 1856 with his invention of a
revolutionary new baking powder recipe without a fermentation
step.[@JackHors92, 343] He founded the Rumford Chemical Works, named after the
Rumford Professorship position he held at Harvard, which would make him a
fortune.[@JackHors92, 343] While in Cambridge, Horsford became fascinated by
the possibility of Vikings in New England. This idea had some
precedent;[@FlemPicHist95, 1079] in 1841, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote *The
Skeleton in Armour*, a poem about a Norse warrior whose body was discovered by
Fall River, Massachusetts.[@LongBall41, 29-41] But it was with Horsford the
idea came to be most associated.[@FlemPicHist95, 1080] In 1887,[@HorsDisc87,
10] Horsford wrote the dedication for a large bronze statue of
Erickson,[@GuttVal18, 86] commending him for his early discovery of America. To
this point, modern scholars agree; archaeological evidence at L'Anse aux
Meadows in Newfoundland constitutes a "pre-1492 presence of Europeans in the
Americas."[@LedgeHorz19, 2] According to Icelandic sagas, it was here Erickson
built the settlement of *Vinland*. Horsford, however, believed Erickson to have
sailed far further south after making the continent, all the way down to Cape
Cod. He explains his reasoning:

> ...if you will be kind enough to hold up to your mind's eye, now for a
> moment, any familiar map of North America. Look at the east coast. From
> Greenland, along the line to the southwest, you will notice three projections
> into the sea. They are Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod.[@HorsDisc87,
> 9]

He disregards Newfoundland as an option, saying "[it] is bold, rocky,
mountainous, of meagre vegetation, and with few beaches."[@HorsDisc87, 10] How
Horsford was received in the moment, if those around him were surprised by this
theory, is unclear. But when he published the dedication, titled *The Discovery
of America by Northmen*, his theories drew the ire of contemporary historians.
One author, Justin Winsor, found issue with Horsford's theory that Vikings had
left a noticeable imprint on Native American language:

> Nothing could be slenderer than the alleged correspondences of languages, and
> we can see in Horsford's *Discovery of America by Northmen* to what a
> fanciful extent a confident enthusiasm can carry it.[@WinsNar89, 98-99]

Horsford begins his next book on the Vikings, *The Problem of the Northmen*, by
directly addressing Winsor's comment,[@HorsProb89, 1] demonstrating that he was
willing to openly spar with historians to defend his theory. Horsford's belief
and confidence that there were Nordic elements present in Native American
language may have been informed by his early years with the Seneca in New York.
Horsford then continues to present evidence for the location of Leif Erickson's
houses: "If anyone interested will walk from the junction of Elmwood Avenue
with Mt. Auburn Street [...] he will be at the site of the objects of interest
which had once been there, and which I had predicted might there be
found."[@HorsProb89, 14] Here Horsford was remarkably confident in his claims,
inviting his audience to see the evidence for themselves. He claims there are
"inequalities of the surface," which are "the remains of two long log houses,
and huts, or cots."[@HorsProb89, 14] He states they are arranged "'some nearer,
some farther from the water,' as the sagas say,"[@HorsProb89, 14] again drawing
on the sagas as his primary source. Outside of just Horsford, there existed a
wider movement around the promotion of Leif Erickson in the late nineteenth
century. Newspapers at the time rarely mention Leif without mentioning his
preceding Columbus,[^1] which may have been part of a widespread anti-Italian
and anti-Catholic sentiment. Several other proponents of Vikings in New England
also believed "the 'Aryan race,' in particular its 'Teutonic' [i.e., German]
branch, was superior to all others."[@FlemPicHist95, 1078] Horsford, however,
seems to have only been interested in Leif and never brings up racial
superiority or a disdain for Columbus. In fact, he states that Leif's prior
discovery of America "would dim, by the measure of the faintest Indian-summer
haze only, the transcendent glory of the life-work of Columbus."[@HorsDisc90,
16] So, while some of the enthusiasm around Horsford's work may have been
motivated by a desire to diminish Columbus as an expression of pro-Nordic
anti-Italian sentiment, it seems the man himself was driven by his own
curiosity in what he saw as little-researched historical possibility.

It was during one of his visits to Shelter island when "a chance reference let
fall by one of his guests" would introduce Horsford to the legend of
Norumbega.[@JackHors92, 344] The term seems to have been widely known in New
England at the time; both an article from the Worcester Daily Spy in 1875 and
one from the Vermont Phoenix in 1894 mention Norumbega in passing, the reader
assumed to be familiar. Horsford, having grown up in New York, was only
introduced to the myth after his retirement and became energetically intrigued.
He read the accounts of Alafonce and Verrazzano, and describes them in one of
his books.[@HorsDisc90, 14] In this same book, *Discovery of the Ancient City
of Norumbega*, Horsford mentions the existence of so many maps that prominently
display Norumbega that "one could not help thinking that they must have some
foundation in truth; the alternative [would have] involved too many
conspirators, of different nationalities."[@HorsDisc90, 13] How Horsford made
the connection from Norumbega to Leif Erickson is a little less clear, though
it was most likely etymological. We have seen already Horsford's early interest
in Native American language from his early years with the Seneca in New York,
and it seems he thought the name "Norumbega" peculiar. He describes how "many
hundreds of years ago the country we call Norway was called Norbegia or
Norbega,"[@HorsDisc90, 19] and that in "the Algonquin family of languages,
which prevailed throughout New England, could not [...] utter the sound of *b*
without prefixing to it the sound of *m*."[@HorsDisc90, 18] Thus, he reasons,
*Norumbega* is but a Native American corruption of what the Vikings would have
called Norway. Horsford uses physical evidence to support his claim as well. He
mentions several instances where the first settlers of Massachusetts found
natural dams or weirs, which could be used for fishing (the fish would be
stopped and collect before the weir on their way upstream to
spawn).[@HorsDisc90, 33-34] He also describes walls and other structures on the
floor of Boston Harbor and Back Bay, evidence of "the ancient seaport of
Norumbega."[@HorsDisc90, 37] To Horsford, all this evidence proved the
existence of a great Viking fort of Norumbega, and necessitated the
construction of a monument. We have seen this pattern before; once to the
Quakers who found refuge on Shelter Island, and again in Boston to Leif
Erickson for discovering America. To justify the monument, he gave four
reasons:

> 1. It will commemorate the Discovery of Vinland and Norumbega in the
>    forty-third degree, and the identification of Norumbega with Norway, the
>    come country to which this region was once subject by right of discovery
>    and colonization.
> 2. It will invite criticism, and so sift out any errors of interpretation
>    into which, sharing the usual fortune of the pioneer, I may have been led.
> 3. It will encourage archæological investigation in a fascinating and almost
>    untrodden field, and be certain to contribute in the results of research
>    and exploration, both in the study and the field, to the historical
>    treasure of the Commonwealth.
> 4. It will help, by reason of its mere presence, and by virtue of the
>    veneration with which the Tower will in time come to be regarded, to bring
>    acquiescence in the fruit of investigation, and so allay the blind
>    scepticism, amounting practically to inverted ambition, that would deprive
>    Massachusetts of the glory of holding the Landfall of Leif Erickson, and
>    at the same time the seat of the earliest colony of Europeans in
>    America.[@HorsDisc90, 40]

These convictions say much about the man Horsford was. As already seen from his
comments on Columbus, he was not motivated by dislike of the Italians; rather,
he sought to bring "the glory" of Leif's discovery to Massachusetts, his home
for the majority of his working life. Second, he is remarkably humble in his
theories; this is particularly evident in his second point, and to an extent
the third. He accepts that "the trustworthiness of my conclusions
might be tested by the spade,"[@HorsDisc90, 41] and that he had not been
able to do much of his own archaeology. Horsford did not build the tower to be
himself remembered, rather to inspire others to continue his work. Indeed, the
plaque at the base of the tower does not bear his name.

Eben Norton Horsford would die two years after *The Discovery* was published,
on January first, 1893.[@AdamsMemBiog08, 103] He believed himself a pioneer; at
the cutting edge of discovery, the first breakthrough in a movement that would
long outlive him. After his death, however, there seemed to be little interest
around his ideas. His biographers mostly gloss over the veracity of his
theories, focusing more on his achievements in chemistry, and his large and
generous donations to various colleges in the area.[@JackHors92, 345] The tower
remains. A century of wind and rain have made its words near impossible to
read, and trees now obscure it from the river.

[^1]: Springfield Weekly, 1893

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# References