Norumbega
Encyclopedia
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, inextricably connected with attempts to demonstrate Viking
Viking
The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
incursions in New England. Like Cathay
Cathay
Cathay is the Anglicized version of "Catai" and an alternative name for China in English. It originates from the word Khitan, the name of a nomadic people who founded the Liao Dynasty which ruled much of Northern China from 907 to 1125, and who had a state of their own centered around today's...
, it was a semi-legendary place name used to fill a gap in existing geographical knowledge.
An early reference was that of the French navigator Jean Allefonsce (1542) who reported that he had coasted south from Newfoundland and had discovered a great river. "The river is more than 40 leagues wide at its entrance and retains its width some thirty or forty leagues. It is full of Islands, which stretch some ten or twelve leagues into the sea. ... Fifteen leagues within this river there is a town called Norombega, with clever inhabitants, who trade in furs of all sorts; the town folk are dressed in furs, wearing sable. ... The people use many words which sound like Latin. They worship the sun. They are tall and handsome in form. The land of Norombega lie high and is well situated."
It often appeared on subsequent Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an maps of North America, lying south of Acadia
Acadia
Acadia was the name given to lands in a portion of the French colonial empire of New France, in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day Maine. At the end of the 16th century, France claimed territory stretching as far south as...
somewhere in what is now New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
. Norumbega was thought to be a large, rich Native
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
city, and by extension the river it was on, and the region surrounding it.
Samuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain , "The Father of New France", was a French navigator, cartographer, draughtsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat, and chronicler. He founded New France and Quebec City on July 3, 1608....
searched for Norumbega in 1604 and believed he had found Allefonsce's river in the form of the Penobscot
Penobscot River
The Penobscot River is a river in the U.S. state of Maine. Including the river's West Branch and South Branch increases the Penobscot's length to , making it the second longest river system in Maine and the longest entirely in the state. Its drainage basin contains .It arises from four branches...
, which he called "the great river of Norumbega". He sailed at far as the rapids at what is now Bangor, Maine
Bangor, Maine
Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...
, but finding only villages, his and subsequent maps deleted reference to Norumbega as a town, region, or even river. Most historians have subsequently accepted the Penobscot region as Allefonsce's source for Norumbega, though the matter was hotly contested by nineteenth century antiquarians, who argued that the name should be identified with their own river or region.
The city of Bangor
Bangor, Maine
Bangor is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States, and the major commercial and cultural center for eastern and northern Maine...
embraced the Norumbega legend in the nineteenth century, naming their Greek Revival style municipal hall "Norumbega Hall", a venue for public meetings and lectures. The building stood in the center of the city until destroyed in the Great Fire of 1911
Great Fire of 1911
The Great Fire of 1911 took place in Bangor, Maine. A small fire that started in a Downtown shed went out of control and destroyed hundreds of commercial and residential buildings.-History:It started in the afternoon of April 30, 1911 on Broad Street...
. A park named "Norumbega Mall" now occupies the site, and an adjacent building housing the University of Maine Art Gallery is now named "Norumbega Hall". There was also a Norumbega Bank in nineteenth century Bangor. In 1886 Joseph Stearns, the inventor of the duplex telegraphy system, built a mansion named "Norumbega Castle", which still stands on US Route 1 in Camden, Maine
Camden, Maine
Camden is a town in Knox County, Maine, United States. The population was 5,254 at the 2000 census. The population of the town more than triples during the summer months, due to tourists and summer residents. Camden is a famous summer colony in the Mid-Coast region of Maine...
, overlooking Penobscot Bay.
In the late 19th century, Eben Norton Horsford
Eben Norton Horsford
Eben Norton Horsford was an American scientist who is best known for his reformulation of baking powder, his interest in Viking settlements in America, and the monuments he built to Leif Erikson.-Life and work:...
linked the name and legend of Norumbega to sites in the Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
area, and built the Norumbega Tower
Norumbega Tower
The Norumbega Tower is a stone tower erected by Eben Norton Horsford in 1889 to mark the supposed location of Fort Norumbega, a Norse fort and city. It is located in Weston, Massachusetts at the confluence of Stony Brook and the Charles River.-References:...
at the confluence of Stony Brook
Stony Brook (Waltham)
Stony Brook is a stream largely running through Weston, Massachusetts, then forming the Weston/Waltham boundary, and emptying into the Charles River across from the Waltham/Newton boundary. It has two tributaries, Cherry Brook and Hobbs Brook, and its watershed includes about half of Lincoln and...
and the Charles River
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
in Weston, Massachusetts
Weston, Massachusetts
Weston is a suburb of Boston located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States in the Boston metro area. The population of Weston, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, is 11,261....
, where he believed Fort Norumbega was located (see the Horsford article for more on his claims). In honor of Horsford's generous donations to Wellesley College, a building named Norumbega Hall was dedicated in 1886 and celebrated by a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets...
.
The word "Norumbega" was originally spelled Oranbega in Girolamo da Verrazzano's 1529 map of America, and the word is believed to derive from one of the Algonquian languages
Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...
spoken in New England. It is often cited as meaning "quiet place between the rapids" or "quiet stretch of water".
See also
- Norumbega ParkNorumbega ParkNorumbega Park was a recreation area and amusement park located in "Auburndale-on-the-Charles" near Boston, Massachusetts. The associated Totem Pole Ballroom became a well-known dancing and entertainment venue for big bands touring during the 1940s....
, a park in Newton, Massachusetts established opposite Horsford's Norumbega Tower.
Further reading
- DeCosta, B.F. 1890. Ancient Norumbega, or the voyages of Simon Ferdinando and John Walker to the Penobscot River, 1579-1580. Joel Munsell's Sons, Albany, NY
- R. H. Ramsay, 1972. No Longer on the Map'
- Baker, Emerson W., Churchill, Edwin A., D'Abate, Richard S., Jones, Kristine L., Konrad, Victor A. and Prins, Harald E.L., editors, 1994. American beginnings: Exploration, culture, and cartography in the land of Norumbega (University of Nebraska Press)
- Diamond, Sigmund. (April 1951). "Norumbega: New England Xanadu" in The American Neptune vol. 11. pp. 95–107.
- 1941 edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia
External links
- davistownmuseum.org: The Davistown Museum, special-topic bibliographies: Bibliography of Pre-Columbian visitors to North America: The Ancient Dominions of Maine Norumbega Reconsidered and the Wawenoc Diaspora....The Myths of Norumbega Quote: "...The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages debunks the 19th century assertion of Norumbega as a Viking name and is the foremost among many historians who assert it is entirely a myth. "Norumbega, apart from the name, which means 'quiet place between two rapids' in Algonkin, was wholly created by European imagination." (pg. 464)..."
- http://www.nsexplore.ca/horsford.htmnsexplore.ca: The Defences of Norumbega. Professor Dr Eben Norton HorsfordEben Norton HorsfordEben Norton Horsford was an American scientist who is best known for his reformulation of baking powder, his interest in Viking settlements in America, and the monuments he built to Leif Erikson.-Life and work:...
. 1891] Quote: "...was written to advance the view of the author that Norse emigrants from the Greenland colony had founded a settlement near Boston, Massachusetts, dating from the beginning of the 11th century...The book itself has been scanned and made available as a sequence of images..." - 30-Apr-2002, The Straight Dope: Did Leif Erikson once live in Cambridge, Massachusetts? Quote: "...Around the intersection of Memorial Drive and Mt. Auburn St. there is a granite plaque in the ground, with the following: "On this spot in the year 1000 Lief Erikson built his house in VinlandVinlandVinland was the name given to an area of North America by the Norsemen, about the year 1000 CE.There is a consensus among scholars that the Vikings reached North America approximately five centuries prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbus...
."...Horsford did a little digging (literally) and found some buried artifacts that he claimed were Norse. On the spot he built the memorial you saw. He didn't stop there..." - "Vikings on the Charles" Needham Historical Society