Kirsten A. Seaver

Kirsten A. Seaver (born 1934) is a Norwegian-American historian and novelist, known for her writing about the Norse exploration of North America. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and previously taught at Stanford University, in Stanford, California.

Life and works In the United States, Seaver worked for Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts,as secretary at the university library and consultant on its Scandinavian collections, from 1956 to 1960. She later taught Norwegian at Stanford, from 1975 to 1982. In 1994, she joined the Meta Incognita Project, studying Martin Frobisher's Arctic expeditions and attempt to start a colony in Canada.

Seaver is known for her 2004 book, Maps, Myths, and Men: The Story of the Vinland Map, on the history of the Vinland Map – a map whose authenticity has been debated since its first appearance in 1957 and is now considered a forgery.

She has also published novels in German and Norwegian.

Publications The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America, ca. A.D. 1000–1500 (1996). In Quisling's Shadow: The Memoirs of Vidkun Quisling's First Wife, Alexandra (1999). (co-wrote) Maps, Myths, and Men: The Story of the Vinland Map (2004). The Last Vikings: The Epic Story of the Great Norse Voyagers (2021).

Novels

Gudrids saga (1994) Landet som falt av jorden (1996) Øst i havet ligger Vesterøy (1998) Das Kuckucks Kind (2002) Mørke skyer over Solhellinga (2007)

Selected research Norumbega and Harmonia Mundi in Sixteenth-Century Cartography (1998)