Vikings, Victorian Poetry and the Many Theories about the Newport Tower: An Historical Mystery to Mock the Curious Throng

Still called the Old Stone Mill by many locals to this day, the Newport Tower--a famed landmark in Newport, Rhode Island--sits just off the coast of Narragansett Bay in Touro Park.  It rises to a height of twenty-eight feet and is roughly circular in nature, though contrary to popular belief, it is not a true circle.  Located on a hilltop, it was once clearly visible to passing ships far out in Narragansett Bay, though construction in Newport during the twentieth century has since obscured most views of the Tower from out at sea.  It is built on land that was once owned by the family of the first Governor of Rhode Island and his eponymously named great grandson, the famous Revolutionary War traitor, Benedict Arnold.

Traditionally, it has been believed that construction of the Tower occurred sometime during the 1660’s and that it was used as some sort of windmill, examples of which are common in England to this day--hence the name that many locals still use of the Old Stone Mill.  But many others believe that the true origins of the Newport Tower may be much older and mysterious than the seventeenth century governor and his family.

In 1837 Danish linguist and archaeologist Carl Christian Rafn (1795-1864) who was already world renowned as being one of the first scholars in the world to successfully translate the Old Norse sagas, after comparing the stonework and architecture of the Old Stone Mill to other similar buildings in Scandinavia proposed a radical theory that the Newport Tower may have had Viking origins.

During the mid-nineteenth century as researchers began to unearth proof that Viking longboats may have visited Greenland, Newfoundland and maybe even mainland North America, and as scholars began to be able to read and interpret  Icelandic and Norse sagas, a form of Viking mania started to sweep across North America.  Many people, including renowned poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who often lionized Vikings in poetic verse and wrote about supposed Norse relics in New England became convinced that the archaic stonework and unique shape of the Newport Tower were proof that Vikings had visited and maybe even settled on the coast of what was the mainland United States of America at least three or four centuries before the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the New World.

As Jim Egan, curator of The Newport Tower Museum--located just across the street from the famous landmark in Touro Park--stated in a recent interview, “People in the 1800’s loved the Tower.  It was the number one tourist attraction in Rhode Island.” (quoted from roadsideamerica.com/story2608)

Early Victorian America was a place that communicated in literature, specifically poetry, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wasn’t the only bard enamored by the long and supposedly storied history of the Newport Tower.  In 1845 Lydia Sigourney (1791-1865)  who arguably may have been New England’s most famous female poet at the time, known in the press as “the Sweet Singer” of Hartford, wrote a popular ode that detailed the Viking theory behind the ancient origins of the Newport Tower.

Her poem “The Newport Tower” opens and continues (on and on and on some would say!) in many verses of almost melodramatic Shakespearean grandeur.  “The Newport Tower” opens with this verse: “Dark, lonely tower, amid your Eden-isle,/ Which, as a gem, fair Narragansett wears/ Upon her heaving breast, thou lift’st thy head,/ A mystery, and paradox, to mock/ The curious throng.”

Lydia Sigourney

An historical mystery and paradox to mock the curious throng.  By the mid-nineteenth century many Americans fervently believed in the antiquity of the Newport Tower and during the summer season, from all over New England and the northeastern United States, tourists journeyed by the thousands to not only enjoy the seaside but also to gaze upon this uniquely American ancient structure of supposed Viking origin.  In fact, by the turn of the century postcards--the chief vacation souvenirs of the time--renamed this Rhode Island landmark simply the “Ancient Viking Tower” and the craze for discovering Viking artifacts in America lasted well into the twentieth century.  With the expansion of railroads, and later on the automobile, when local businessmen built a hotel in the area in 1925 they chose to name it, not surprisingly, the Hotel Viking.

Hotels, postcards and lofty Victorian poetry aside the question still remains--Is the Newport Tower proof of Viking settlement on mainland North America years before the late fifteenth century?

Not exactly.  The first confirmed mention of what would become known as the “Ancient Viking Tower” actually occurred in 1677 when Benedict Arnold, the first Governor of Rhode Island and owner of the property upon which the tower sits mentioned, “my stone built windmill” in his will.  This would make it definitely appear that the so-called ancient “Viking” tower was, in fact, a windmill and because Arnold seems to take ownership of it in his will it would also appear that he was directly responsible for its construction sometime during the seventeenth century.  But, some still argued even after Arnold’s death, that a mill of some sort had stood on that land even prior to the arrival of the first English settlers there in the 1630’s and many also questioned why if the tower was meant to be used as a windmill did it have clear spots for fireplaces located on its lower level?  These fireplaces are still visible in the ruins of the Newport Tower that survive to this day.

But, as many people have pointed out, fireplaces did exist inside medieval windmills in England like the one depicted in a picture in this article which shows a 17th century windmill from Chesterton, England that is nearly a carbon copy of the surviving remnants of the Newport Tower.  Fireplaces were usually installed in windmills for the warmth of the miller who basically had to live inside the mill itself even during the winter months.

Chesterton England Windmill

Many of the oldest known buildings in Newport, Rhode Island are from the 1640’s and if stone samples of these buildings are compared with the stonework on the Newport Tower the composition of the mortar used to hold the stones together is almost identical in all of the buildings, being a mixture composed of shell, lime sand and gravel.  The similarity between mortars is true between that used on the Newport Tower and that used in the construction of Benedict Arnold and his wife’s own tomb in the 1670-1680’s.

However, aside from Arnold’s mention of his “own windmill” in his will of 1677 all of this other evidence--similarities between buildings in England and the Newport Tower and the composition of the Tower’s mortar--are largely circumstantial and don’t necessarily rule out the possibility of an earlier, even a Viking construction, of the Newport Tower.  It’s no wonder that belief in the Viking theory of origin has persisted, and yet persists, even to the present day.

In about 1942--over a century after archaeologist Carl Rafn first made the claim that the Newport Tower was Viking in origin another well-respected American archaeologist, Philip Ainsworth Means (1892-1944) who even today is still considered to be one the foremost authorities on South America’s Incan civilization, published a work called simply The Newport Tower.  In his well researched and written work Means attempted to be unbiased but he did give a tentative date for the Tower’s construction at around the year 1120--using architectural and historical comparisons--Means argued that the base of the Newport Tower matched identically those of known Old Norse churches found in Scandinavia and he stated that, in his belief, the Newport Tower was most likely a Viking house of worship constructed in the twelfth century though he did acknowledge the need for a thorough archaeological excavation to take place at the site.

So that, a debate which began in the early nineteenth century and helped launch a Victorian Era Viking tourist craze in New England, continued well into the twentieth century at a time long after pre-Colombian Viking visitations to North America in places like Greenland and Nova Scotia by explorers like Leif Ericsson who were immortalized in the Norse Sagas had long since been accepted as fact by many historians and scholars--though most doubted (and still doubt) that Viking explorers ever journeyed as far south as the modern day mainland United States.  

In 1993 carbon dating on the mortar used between the stones of the Newport Tower was conducted by a joint team of Danish and Swedish researchers.  The Danish and Swedish team attempted to access what they considered to be the oldest mortar in the building.  Their carbon dating concluded that the mortar used in the Newport Tower was made sometime between the year 1630 and 1680, which would correlate to the theory that the windmill was constructed by Benedict Arnold on his own property.  However, since carbon dating is only able to test the mortar, and not the stones themselves, it is always possible that the Newport Tower could be much older and that what was dated back in the 1990’s was simply material from a much earlier restoration or repair on the structure that would have occurred periodically for hundreds of years.

In recent years even more theories behind the origin of the Newport Tower have been proposed.  Narrative pseudo-historian Gavin Menzies argued in his best-selling book 1421: The Year China Discovered America published in 2002 that the Tower was irrefutable proof that earlier Chinese explorers under the leadership of Admiral Zheng He had landed in New England during the early 15th century.  He claimed that the Newport Tower was an identical copy of many Chinese lighthouses and observatories that were known to have been built around the time that he hypothesized that Chinese explorers had come to America nearly one-hundred years before Christopher Columbus.

And, even more recently, many influential mainstream historians in Europe have begun to point out that the Newport Tower base which survives has many similarities to Portuguese observatories from the time period and that the Tower itself could initially have been constructed by Portuguese fishermen, or explorers sometime in the sixteenth century, and only later been expanded on and converted into a windmill by Governor Benedict Arnold and his family during the seventeenth century once English settlers arrived in Rhode Island to stay.

Whether it is Viking, Portuguese or even Chinese in origin one thing about the Newport Tower off the coast of Narragansett Bay remains true and is likely to remain true forever--this strange, incongruous stone structure in Rhode Island has been and will always remain a mystery and a paradox that mocks the curious throng.