The Defences of Norumbega

The Defences of Norumbega

Professor Eben Norton Horsford

1891

This coffee-table-sized book, jam packed with large black & white photographs and fold-out map reproductions in black India ink on onion skin paper, 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.
Additional background on this subject is available from the following links.

http://greisnet.com/needhist.nsf/VikingsontheCharles!OpenPage

The book itself has been scanned and made available as a sequence of images:

http://www.nsexplore.ca/norumbega/

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the book is its singular collection of ancient map reproductions, most of which depict not only the northeast American coast, but also several Canadian provinces, especially Nova Scotia. These have been scanned separately (as well as the photos) at high resolution, and most are not otherwise easily available (on or off the web), especially at a resolution where the fine details can be clearly seen.

http://www.nsexplore.ca/norumbega_maps/

Each page of the book, and each map, has been thumbnailed and indexed. Even when you are looking at a full-res map/photo image, however, depending on your browser settings, you might not see it at maximum resolution (which typically will be larger than your screen dimensions). For that, you may need to view the individual map/photo image in a separate window, or save it to disk first and then view it separately.

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