Disney-comics digest #419.

Don Rosa 72260.2635 at compuserve.com
Wed Aug 31 05:36:06 CEST 1994


MATTIAS:
	If I go/come to Scandanavia for the nearly two weeks that I was
asked, Ann would come during the first week, then go home early, before
Stockholm. 2 weeks is too long for me to leave her alone, and it's too
long for her to be away from work or leave our home unattended. It's too
much time for me to be off work also, but I might figure out some sort
of creative (?) ways to earn some cash to make up for the lost work
which I can't easilly afford.
	But let's see if Egmont-Sweden ever gets back in touch with me.
I only talked to them that one time and haven't heard from them since.
Say, you would do me a favor if you mentioned to Stefan that I'm
wondering if I'm still invited to Sweden, and that he might mention to
someone at the office that it would be great if I had a hint that it was
still on.

THORE:
	Right -- it was Leif, Eric the Red's SON, not Eric. I always get
confused... and I blame Barks! Since I grew up with Olaf the Blue having
discovered America, it always causes me to think that the true guy was
Eric the Red. But Eric probably never got past Greenland, eh?
	But the Irish monk you're thinking about is Brendan who amatuer
historians like to imagine sailed to America in the 5th century AD. I'm
very familiar with all the nutball theories about early crossers of the
Atlantic, and this is one of them. There's absolutely no evidence
whatsoever -- but a folktale about Brendan tells nonsensical tall tales
of lands to the west which are infinitely more likely to simply be tall
tales. However, in my "Golden Helmet" sequel, Brendan is treated as an
actual early voyager to America -- I tell tall tales too.

DWIGHT:
	Yes, we should apologize to people for all this non-Disney talk
of Columbus, et. al. However, to me it's very MUCH Disney since it's the
subject of my current Duck story -- therefore, I'm easilly coerced into
discussing it.
	Aside from Leif Erickson and Brendan, there was also the Welsh
Prince Madoc who supposedly discovered America and set up colonies on
the Mississippi in 1170, one of them right here in Louisville! And the
Chinese monk Hui-Shen who wrote of sailing to a New World in the east
in 459 AD, and visiting a huge city which wacky historians have decided
was the pre-Aztec, pre-Mayan, city of Teotihuacan. Then there are other
wack-o theories about Mediterranean ships being blown across the sea,
most popular of which is that the Phoenician explorer Prince Hanno rowed
to America in 425 BC; there's actually some evidence of this in a stone
with Punic writing found on Cape Cod in the 1600's by a native (which
would seem to make it unlikely to be a hoax?). Also, you mention the
Portuguese -- they actually DO claim, officially, that their explorers
had discovered Florida and the Indies 20 years before Columbus, but that
they kept it a secret since they would have been unable to prevent
Spain's invading their new discovery. 
	Anyway, with my usual overkill, I make use of ALL of these
stories in my new Duck adventure. And people who find all these tales
of Europeans "discovering" land where natives had already lived for
12,000 years will probably like my ending.




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