Beardmore: The Viking Hoax that Rewrote History (Volume 246)

by Douglas Hunter

In 1936, long before the discovery of the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, the Royal Ontario Museum made a sensational acquisition: the contents of a Viking grave that prospector Eddy Dodd said he had found on his mining claim east of Lake Nipigon. The relics remained on display for two decades, challenging understandings of when and where Europeans first reached the Americas. In 1956 the discovery was exposed as an unquestionable hoax, tarnishing the reputation of the museum director, Charles Trick Currelly, who had acquired the relics and insisted on their authenticity. Drawing on an array of archival sources, Douglas Hunter reconstructs the notorious hoax and its many players. Beardmore unfolds like a detective story as the author sifts through the voluminous evidence and follows the efforts of two unlikely debunkers, high-school teacher Teddy Elliott and government geologist T.L. Tanton, who find themselves up against Currelly and his scholarly allies. Along the way, the controversy draws in a who’s who of international figures in archaeology, Scandinavian studies, and the museum world, including anthropologist Edmund Carpenter, whose mid-1950s crusade against the find’s authenticity finally convinced scholars and curators that the grave was a fraud. Shedding light on museum practices and the state of the historical and archaeological professions in the mid-twentieth century, Beardmore offers an unparalleled view inside a major museum scandal to show how power can be exercised across professional networks and hamper efforts to arrive at the truth.

Genres: Archaeology, Nonfiction, History

512 pages, Hardcover

First published August 21, 2018

About the author

Go to my website to learn more about my work.
In addition to being a writer and graphic artist, I hold a PhD in history (2015) from York University. I'm currently completing a book on the early career of Canadian landscape artist A.Y. Jackson, covering his formative years leading to the founding of the Group of Seven and his experiences as a soldier and war artist in the First World War. Hopefully, it will be out in 2021.

Reviews

[Doug Adamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a page-turner easy read. This is not to say that it is not well-written or difficult to read or understand. Hunter lays out a well-researched, pain-stakingly detailed account of the discovery of "the find" and the efforts both to disprove it and to undermine, if not silence, the attempts to disprove it. The opening and closing chapters serve as a rebuke and a caution against hubris in academia and the corridors of power. One small note, while page 34 (paragraph 2) states that "One of Elliott's teenager daughters, fifteen-ear-old Helena or sixteen-year-old Margaret brought him the relics" this is clearly a reference to one of Eddy Dodd's daughters as page 19 lists Dodd's daughters as Margaret and Helena. Whether this was a mix-up in the writing or the editing is unclear. That said, given the vast number of characters, major and minor, that appear in the book (which includes a five page-long list of recurring characters), this is a very minor fault.

[Robert Meek · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting and well researched work. I found that the first few chapters were slow but by the halfway point I was fully engaged in the efforts of Elliot and Tanton.

[Hilliary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned it; I’m not up to this book at this time. Dense, detailed, needs an actual attention span.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 3 out of 5]

A detailed detective story that traces how a few artifacts found their way from the wilds of Northern Ontario to the Royal Ontario Museum in the 1930s.