ROM CONNECTS: Beardmore

Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park, Toronto, ON
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Join Douglas Hunter for a lecture on Beardmore: The Viking Hoax that Rewrote History, as part of the ROM CONNECTS event series at the Royal Ontario Museum. The event will take place in the Signy and Cléophée Eaton Theatre on Level 1B of the museum. This talk is the 2018 Edward S. Rogers Lecture in Anthropology.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Inspired by the true story of Viking swords in the ROM's collections, historian Douglas Hunter offers up a real-life museum detective story. In 1936, long before the discovery of the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, the ROM 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.

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.

"A fascinating story about the alleged discovery of a Viking grave near Beardmore, Ontario, in the 1930s, and the ongoing controversy over its authenticity. Douglas Hunter uses the whole story as an entry point into thinking about disciplinary power, about what stories matter, whose voices count, and to whom." Christopher Dummitt, Trent University and author of Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King's Secret Life