It was in May 1965, as his teaching at State University of New York, Buffalo was coming to an end, that Charles Olson read a graduate seminar paper by Andrew Crozier and accepted that the world of H.R. Ellis Davidson's Gods and Myths of Northern Europe was more attuned to the young Englishman's temperament than Greek mythology. According to Ralph Maud's Selected Letters of Charles Olson, 'Thus fixed in Olson's mind as Eddic, Crozier, when he started Wivenhoe Park Review in Essex on returning to England from Buffalo, received from Olson a series of pieces on Northern mythology, beginning with a review of The Vinland Map.' Olson's interest in this had been prompted by an article by Helge Ingstad in National Geographic 126 (November 1964) which announced that 'Vinland Ruins Prove Vikings Found the New World'. In March 1965 Olson wrote a Maximus poem celebrating this find:

And George Decker (when he got there) sd
Anything goes on
at Lancey Meadow
I know - there is
evidence down at
Black Duck Beach.
There was. Norse
persons,
by carbon date
1006 had
come ashore
here Had built
houses, had set up
a peat bog iron
          forge. Were
          living
Lancey Meadow
1006
AD
(Maximus III, 76)
...