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Publication Date

10-1-2020

Document Type

Article

First Page

67

Last Page

82

Abstract

This essay analyzes the attempt by influential Mainers during the half-century after Maine’s founding as a state to argue for the historical significance of two earlier founding moments: the early seventeenth-century Popham Colony and the purported medieval Norse voyages of discovery to Maine’s coast. By documenting and promoting a narrative of the new state that comprised these moments, they hoped to demonstrate the significance of Maine’s archives and history within those of the nation. In particular, these Mainers could use these founding moments to push against the centrality of Massachusetts within the region’s and the nation’s history. The latter part of the essay focuses on the theory of medieval Norse settlement in North America, which first intrigued Americans in the antebellum period— in particular, the alleged voyages to coastal New England around 1000 CE. The surprising origins of scholarly and popular American interest in Scandinavia took place between the 1820s and 1840s, when this theory was promoted by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries in Copenhagen via historical societies in the U.S. The Maine Historical Society was among those interested in this history, and after the Civil War it collaborated with the state government to sponsor a trip by an archival agent to Europe and the publication of documentary histories that placed the Norse voyages within the state’s history.

Derek Kane O’Leary received his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020. He recently joined the faculty as a history and literature teacher at Bard High School Early College in Washington, D.C. This article draws on research from his dissertation, Building the American Archive in the Atlantic World, 1776-1879 (UC Berkeley, 2020)

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