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Supplement to the Antiijuitates American*. 19
Of these St. Laurence’s or, as it is now called, Oster Lars
Church may perhaps he the most deserving of our atten-
tion here, on account of an inner round building in the
same; but respecting the construction of which I am for
the present unable to give a detailed account for want of
correct drawings1.
“For what use was this Ante-Columbian building
originally intended?” is a question naturally suggested by
the first view of it. That the primary and principal ob-
ject of its being erected was to serve as a watch tower,
is what I cannot admit2, although very possibly it may
have been occasionally used as a station from whence to
keep a look out over the adjacent sea. On the contrary
I am more inclined to believe that it had a sacred desti-
nation, and that it belonged to some monastery or Chri-
stian place of worship of one of the chief parishes in
Vinland. In Greenland there are still to be found ruins
of several round buildings in the vicinity of the churches.
One of this description, the diameter of which is about
26 feet, is situate at the distance of 300 feet to the
eastward of the great church in Igalikko; another of 44
]) Some of the round churches in Great Britain arc deserving
of mention here, such as, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in
Cambridge built about 1122; see Arclncologia Vol. VI p. 173. —
2) Any such watch tower must have been defended by a rampart
raised round about it (vi'gi or virki) consisting of an earthen
mound or of several rows of pallisadcs, the intermediate space
between which was tilled up with stones, clods, or liveturf; but
of such we find no trace. A skidgardr, or wooden paling, would
scarce!}’ have sufficed, although Thorfinn Karlsefnc in the year
1008, when he apprehended an attack of the Skr.-clings (Esqui-
maux), contented himself with raising such a fence about his
house in Vinland (Icvir gera skid gard ramligan um bos sinn,
ok bjuggust urn).
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