Weird Island

1. VIKING RUINS in Rhode Island?

Episode Summary

There’s a mysterious tower in Newport, Rhode, and no one can explain when or why it was built. Could it be a Viking ruin?

Episode Notes

To Visit: 

1. Newport Tower: 5 Touro Park St W. Newport, Rhode Island, 02840
   Hours: Always available for viewing
2. Newport Tower Museum: 152 Mill St, Newport, RI 02840
3. Dighton Rock: 3rd Avenue, Berkley, MA. 02779
   Museum Hours: By appointment only; open daily at 9:00

SOURCES: 

1. The Controversy Touching the Old Stone Mill in the Town of Newport: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015089568243&view=1up&seq=53
2. The Archaeology of the Old Stone Mill in Newport, Rhode Island, by William S. Godfrey Jr.: https://www.jstor.org/stable/277246?seq=1
3. The Enigma Of Dighton Rock: https://www.americanheritage.com/enigma-dighton-rock#5
4. Dighton Rock, a Study of the Written Rocks of New England, by Edmund Delabarre: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b542245&view=1up&seq=32
5. Britannica, Vinland: https://www.britannica.com/place/Vinland
6. The Newport Tower, by Jason Colativo: http://www.jasoncolavito.com/the-newport-tower.html
7. The Newport Tower Museum: http://www.newporttowermuseum.com/styled-4/index.html

Music: 

• Swimmey Texture Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
• Thunderbird Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Episode Transcription

• Welcome to Weird Island—the podcast all about a little state that’s big on the weird! I have a good one for you this week! But first, since you’re new and I’m new to this, let me tell you about me. I’m your host, Sara and each week I’ll be sharing with you some of the strangest stories i can dig up from my state—Little Rhode Island. But this isn’t just a podcast for Rhode Islanders. It’s for all fans of weird history, oddities, mysteries, you name it. We just happen to have plenty of them here. So, with that, let’s jump in to our first story about an old stone tower with unknown origins - it’s basically the cold case of architecture. 
• There’s a mysterious tower in Newport, RI that sits at the center of many alternative histories of the United States, and to this day, no one is completely sure when or why it was built - or even exactly what it is. But there’s an understanding that if someone could definitively prove its origin, it might, perhaps, be evidence that America was discovered by someone before Christopher Columbus. Known as the Newport Tower, the structure is circular and made of stone. It stands on 8 legs linked by arches. Holes in the stone indicate there would have been wooden floorboards above the arches, creating a second floor, and there was likely some sort of structured top - perhaps a dome. There are also three windows and a fireplace built into the east wall. The tower is the source of mystery simply because it doesn’t look like any other structure in New England. 
• Widely thought to be the remains of a windmill, the strange looking structure baffles tourists and locals. Why would someone build a windmill with arches, a fireplace, windows and beautiful, rugged stonework? 
• People have been arguing about it for almost 200 years. Most likely, it was built in the late 1600s by colonial Americans, but what if it was built by Norse explorers? Or the Knights Templar? Or maybe… the Chinese? What would that mean for American history?
• Early speculation involved theories about Phoenicians, Romans, and Druids, but these theories were so improbable they gained little following. But in 1837, Danish  archaeologist Carl Christian Rafn proposed that the Vikings explored coastal North America centuries before Christopher Columbus, and that the tower was part of a Viking settlement. This theory gained a bit of a following! Even Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a Viking Ballad, titled The Skeleton in Armor, that helped catapult the theory into the popular consciousness. 
• If you need evidence of how much of a following this hypothesis gained, in the year 1847, a letter from a curious stranger appeared in the Newport Mercury, asking about the origin of the Old Stone Mill. It was answered in the Providence Journal, by someone who signed his response as: “Antiquarian from Brown University” and argued that the Old Stone Mill was built by the Norse. This response opened a heated debate that took place across a number of letters in the Journal between “Antiquarian” and another contributor, writing in under the name: “One of the Oldest Inhabitants of Newport” and arguing that the structure was built as a mill by early colonists, sometime in the late 1600s. 
• The Antiquarian argues that in 1832, an excavation around the Old Tower proved it was not an Old Mill, as suggested by its name and tradition, but was built initially by the Norse in the 11th century as a baptistery, during a journey of Bishop Eric in search of Vinland. He wrote that under the center of the ruin was clearly shown the foundation of the receptimum, or the place where the baptismal candidates stood while receiving the baptismal shower.
• The other writer counters with an argument for the traditional explanation supported by personal insight, claiming that as one of the oldest inhabitants of Newport, who was born and lived between seventy and eighty years, within 400 or so yards of the old stone mill, he had never known of any excavations made near it, “except once about the year 1797, when an excavation was made in the night time by a company of money diggers, directly under the center of the ruin, which was left open, and about four or five feet deep, but did not disclose the foundation of the receptimum mentioned in the report in question” 
• They go back and forth in lengthy and heated responses - not unlike internet conspiracy theory feuds of today. Here’s the gist of the debate: 
• The conventional understanding was that the Newport Tower was built by Benedict Arnold - and no, it’s not the one you’re thinking of, the notorious traitor of the American Revolution. It was his great-grandfather, who moved to Newport from Providence in 1653 and later was appointed the first RI Governor. Arnold owned a piece of land estimated at 16 acres and it’s believed that on the eastern part of it stood the Tower. His will is one of only a handful of written accounts of the tower from the time, and is most often looked to as evidence pinpointing its origin. In the will, dated 1677, Arnold writes that he’d like to be buried between his house and his “stone built Wind Mill.” It’s this possessive phrasing - “My stone built windmill” - that modern historians point to as evidence of Arnold having had the structure built.
• But the history of the structure is far from settled. In fact, many (including the Antiquarian from those mid-1800s letters) believe that the Tower was in fact built by Vikings. The hypothesis, popularized by Rafn - the Danish Archaeologist I mentioned earlier-- sprouts from uncertainty around how far south the early Viking explorers of North America came in search of the legendary Vinland. Vinland--or the land of wild grapes--was an area of coastal NA explored by the Vikings, led by Leif Erikson, in 1000 AD - and recounted in oral traditions that were later written down as Norse sagas. No one is sure exactly where Vinland might really have been, but some - like Rafn - suggested it may have been as far south as coastal Massachusetts and RI.
• The tower isn’t the only evidence pointed to in support of that idea. Rafn also studies  another local mystery--Dighton Rock--as evidence of Norse settlement in the area. Dighton Rock is a mysterious boulder, originally discovered in the Taunton River--roughly 30 miles away in Dighton, MA. The 40-ton, 11 foot long boulder is covered in Petroglyphs, or carved designs, of unknown and ancient origin, that have never been definitively explained, though many have tried! And unlike some other written rocks discovered in America, that were later thought to be forgeries, this one isn’t. It was first described and a sketch was made in 1680 by the Reverend John Danforth, and the sketch has since been preserved in the British museum. There were many early theories. In 1767, Ezra Stiles (then president of Yale) declared that the figures on the rock were Phoenician. British and French historians started giving the rock attention around that time, and suggested the markings were from Armenians who made their way to America via Siberia. Others proposed the characters were from explorers from Japan, China or other parts of Asia. George Washington even weighed in--in 1789--concluding that they were similar to Native American drawings he was familiar with in Virginia. 
• When Rafn saw drawings made of the rock, he recognized in them exactly the episode described in the Norse sagas - the famous ship of Thorfinn Karlsefne as it first set out for Vinland and came to this shore, where his wife and son were waiting beside their home. A rooster and shield at rest indicate domestic peace, which is broken as suddenly approaching war is indicated. Thorfinn seizes his shield to protect himself against the approaching Skrellings, who violently attack the Scandinavians. They even interpreted some of the runes to mean, “Thorfinn and his 151 companions took possession of this land,” which directly linked the stone to the Vinland sagas - that specifically noted that Thorfinn’s party included 151 people. 
• Was Rafn on to something? Maybe. Maybe not. Almost no one else has been able to replicate the evidence Rafn pointed to of the “151 companions” written on the rock. And in the early 1900s, a new scholar, Edmund Burke Delabarre, spent 33 years studying the rock and located a tiny, written 1511 that had been previously overlooked. This ignited a theory that perhaps the rock was inscribed by Portuguese explorers. With New England being home to the highest density of Portuguese immigrants in the United States, this theory really speaks to the residents of RI and MA, but it’s far from bulletproof as well. Right now, it’s not possible to definitively point to Dighton Rock as evidence of Viking settlement in RI and MA, but it’s also not possible to definitively explain the rock either. 
• In addition to pointing to the rock as evidence, Rafn studies similarities between the Newport Tower and round churches built in Denmark in the late 1100s, which were built of stone--not wood, like many other Scandinavian buildings outside of Greenland (where wood wasn’t highly available) and concludes that the tower couldn’t have been constructed any later than the 12th century. He also compares the Tower to Mellifont Abbey, a very similar looking tower built in Ireland in the 12th century that he suggests was likely used as a baptistery. The two buildings are so similar that he argues the Newport Tower must have been used for the same purpose, and was perhaps built under a Viking bishop traveling south in search of Vinland.  
• Just over 100 years later, this theory was still going strong. In 1942, Philip Answorth Means continued to build on Rafn’s theory in his own book, the Newport Tower. He argued that Benedict Arnold most likely converted an existing structure into a windmill, and pointed to the fireplace, specifically, as evidence. He argues that there would be way too much flammable dust in a mill for anyone to build a fireplace. 
• Admittedly, there aren’t many windmills that look like the Newport Tower, so the comparison to Scandinavian and Irish churches is pretty interesting. But there is one example of a similar windmill, and it might just be enough evidence to support the windmill theory. In Warwickshire England, a windmill was built in 1632 that looks very similar in structure to the Newport Tower. Built of limestone and supported by 6 tall arches, a side by side comparison of the two shows a lot of similarities. When you consider that the Arnold family and other colonists emigrated from England to America around the same time the Chesterton Windmill was built, there is a possibility the impressive structure was replicated in America. But why build such an impressive, labor intensive structure? What would the goal have been? 
• Additionally, much of the evidence in Philip Answorth Means 1942 book was later refuted, including the fireplace theory. It turns out while it seems obvious not to include a fireplace in a windmill, many European windmills did actually include fireplaces, and the design was pretty similar - with the flue venting out a wall rather than the roof. 
• There’s one last piece of evidence, found four years after Mean’s book was published, and it’s pretty interesting, but it’s also controversial. Two professors found what appeared to be a Swedish-Norwegian inscription on the west side of the tower that includes the date 1010. This timing aligns with the Viking theory! That seems like a pretty big deal! Except, it’s been 100 years since the public became fascinated with the Viking theory, and it’s impossible to prove if the marking is real or a hoax. Unfortunately, faking artifacts, of Viking and other origin, wasn’t that uncommon - so this piece of evidence is inconclusive. 
• At the end of the day, despite other highly controversial signs of Vikings in RI and Rafn’s arguments for evidence of Scandinavian influence, the Newport Tower is probably not a Viking ruin. 
• In 1993, Radiocarbon dating tests of the tower’s mortar were performed by a team of researchers from Denmark and Finland, and the testing suggests the tower was probably built in the late 1600s or even perhaps the 1700s. The mortar samples extracted from the tower reveals a 42 percent probability that the mortar dates between 1640 and 1680. Unfortunately, the testing puts the probability of the tower being a Viking structure at a sad 5%. 
• So, likely it wasn’t actually built by Vikings. But there are other theories, and the story is still unfolding - revealing more mysteries. One alternative theory is that the tower was built by the Chinese. In his book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, author Gavin Menzies argues that a huge fleet of ships set sail from China and circumnavigated the world and discovered America. He believes they constructed the tower at Newport, perhaps as a lighthouse. However, his book and theories are considered pseudohistory in the eyes of most historians. 
•  Another theory has been suggested by a Newport local. Jim Egan runs the Newport Tower museum, and has spent the last 10 plus years studying the tower and educating others. Egan spent most of his career as a professional photographer, and in the 1990s he visited the newport tower and heard a theory from University of RI astronomy and physics professor, William Penhallow. This theory suggested that the tower was designed as a time keeping device - like a giant sundial - and that certain astrological alignment would be visible through it on specific days of the year. Egan became interested in the theory, and decided to photograph the alignments. His photos substantiated Penhallow’s claims, and they ignited in him a passion for the history of the tower. 
• Egan theorizes the tower was built in the late 1500s, based on a design by an English mathematician and astronomer named John Dee. Dee persuaded Queen Elizabeth I that she had a right to colonize North America and he chose the site for the first colony - where the tower now stands. The tower was commissioned to be built by Sir Humphry Gilbert and two ships set out for America. It’s thought these men did spend about 9 months in the new world, and Egan believes they were the ones who built the Newport Tower. The colony that was planned for Newport never materialized - When Humphry set out to start the colony, his ships never made it. But the tower still stands. At the time the tower would have been constructed, given this theory, a debate was happening about whether to abandon the Julian calendar for the more accurate Gregorian calendar. Egan believes Dee designed the tower to make a case for the Gregorian calendar. It’s an interesting theory, but it hasn’t gained tons of attention in either the historical community or local community. There’s just something more flashy about Vikings! But if this theory were true, it could mean Newport was the first, or at least one of the earliest, settlements in America--and for Rhode Islanders, that could be as much a point of pride as having Viking roots.  
• No one can definitively say that this theory, or any of the others, is right or wrong. But I did mention that the story is still unfolding. The same radiocarbon testing I mentioned earlier that proves the tower likely isn’t Norse opened up some new possibilities. The dating put the probability that the mortar in the tower dates between 1740 and 1810 and a whopping 58%. So what does that mean? 
• Well, in a Boston.com article dated September 2020, Danish research Jorgen Siemonson told the Newport Historical Society that there is a probability the tower was built around 1750 and may have Masonic roots. So, hello Dan Browne-style conspiracies! Let’s go. 
• Circumstantial evidence points to architect Peter Harrison, who designed an octagonal summer house in the mid-1700s for Abraham Redwood, a wealthy newport merchant. That geometric form, closely associated with the freemasons, might be what we’re seeing in the eight pillars of the Newport Tower - which was only a block away from Redwood’s property. Could the tower have been the site of Masonic rituals? 
• Right now, no one knows. And that’s a little unsatisfying when it comes to wrapping up this podcast, but it’s a really cool place to be if you’re from Rhode Island or Massachusetts. Because the tower still stands, beautifully intact, in Tuoro park in Newport and with a lot of recreation still closed due to the pandemic, you can go check out the park and the tower and come to your own conclusions! 
• If you are local and want to check out either the Newport Tower or Dighton Rock, check out the show notes for more info. 
• Thanks for joining! I’d love to hear your thoughts on the tower, or the rock, or any other weird RI and MA history you’d like to hear about. Leave us a comment or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.