Reply To: The Danish Viking Presence in South America, 1000-c.1250

[Geoffrey Brooks]

PART FIVE

North of Highway 5 stands Itaguambypé (‘fortress’), a ridge 2 kms long and 100 metres high. At some time in the distant past the mountain was hollowed out and given a vertical defensive wall of tailored rock and stone. The engineers were undoubtedly the race of pre-Incas from the Altiplano. The design suggests a stockade with the fourth side being the river Aquidaban in a deep valley at the rear. A runic inscription has been found chiselled inside the mountain, however, and so the fortress was probably used later by the Vikings. A path runs along the crest, separated midway by an opening for access into the mountain. At the southern extremity of the path is the ruin of an observation platform giving a pnaoramic view of the coutryside.

At Tacuati not far from the location of old Weibingo, Professor Mahieu excavated the stone foundations and walls of a Nordic temple 28 x 10 metres in dimension discovered below a farmer’s field. Nordic type pottery was found including the neck of a funeral urn.

A major find of 150 grottoes and rock shelters was made by the Paraguayan Ministry of Public Works in the Amambay jungle in 1973. At Cerro Guazú, the world’s largest collection of runic insciptions, numbered in thousands, was found, seventy-one of which had been translated by the time the excavations were concluded. There is also a fine engraved sketch of the god Odin riding the horse Sleipnir.

The South American futhorc is twenty-six characters including Anglo-Saxon, latinized and archaic usages, indicating the length of the Viking presence in the region. Some of the archaic runes were never used in Scandinavia and are local to Northern Germany. Runologist Professor Munk deduced from the Viking runes of the region that the settlers were not pure Danes, but came predominantly from Schleswig-Holstein and the Danelaw in England.

Identifying Danish and German words in the native Quiché-Maya and Quichua languages led the runologists to conclude that an intermediate dialect distinct from classic Norse evolved over the centuries under the influence of the native languages which the Danes were forced to learn for their relationships with the local Indians, who were apparently forbidden to speak the Viking language. This tradition was followed later by the Incas with regard to their own language.

CONCLUSION

There is enough material here to justify in every history book covering the period in question the inclusion of at least the sentence: “It is very possible that Vikings of Danish origin were present in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay before Columbus, and that they arrived by sea from Europe.”

While despite its uncertainties ‘Vinland’ has academic recognition, no mention can ever be made, even to deny it, of Vikings in South America, for which substantial proof exists.

The outcome of my personal enquiries is that the late Professor de Mahieu, an outcaste from the scientific fraternity for having been “a member of the Waffen-SS”, turned into an uncontrollable loose cannon and broadcast what should have been kept for ever secret and hidden, namely any mention of the necropolis.

END