Author Richard White: Medieval explorers may have visited New England

The evidence is fading from years of the elements pounding upon it, but even stone can’t hold the image of a medieval knight forever — an image that suggests there might have been Europeans exploring America 96 years before Christopher Columbus.

In 1954, the late Frank Glynn uncovered the figure, whose arms have been identified as belonging to the Gunn clan incised on a slab of glacier rock along the side of the road in Westford, Mass.

Known as the Westford knight, the image is one of the clues and scholarly research author Richard White, of East Lyme, explores in his nonfiction book, “These Stones Bear Witness.”

“Many scientists and archeologists are convinced it is 600 years old,” said Elizabeth Lane, who has been on a mission to protect the knight from the elements for years.

Lane volunteers at the Westford Public Library and has read White’s manuscript, and is passionate about the subject because she was raised on the British Isles, where Viking burial grounds were part of her childhood landscape.