BOOK LENDS MORE CREDENCE TO EARLIEST MAP OF AMERICAS.

Byline: John Noble Wilford The New York Times

No map in the hands of a puzzled traveler in a strange land was ever examined as closely as the Vinland Map.

Scientists and scholars have scrutinized its ink and parchment, its faint lines of known and imagined coasts and its Latin inscriptions, to see whether this is a clever forgery or the genuine article, a map drawn about 1440 and containing the earliest cartographic representation of any part of the Americas.

And still, after more than 35 years, they cannot be sure and perhaps never will be. The first detailed chemical test, completed in 1974, indicated that the ink might be a 20th century product, which seemed to brand the map a modern forgery. But a more recent test and further research appear to tip the balance toward authenticity.

At least the editors of the Yale University Press think so. Today, on the strength of the evidence, the press is publishing a new, expanded edition of "The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation," the book that created a sensation when the first edition appeared in 1965. At the time, Yale called the map "the most exciting cartographic discovery of the century."

In an introduction to the new edition, Dr. Wilcomb E. Washburn, director of American studies at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., said that while the dispute may never be resolved, it "can now be said to have reached a new stage." Those who have been charging forgery, he said, "must now assume a defensive role and respond to those previously on the defensive."

Washburn was less circumspect in an interview. "I think the evidence is clearly on the side of authenticity," he said.

John G. Ryden, director of the Yale press, said the decision to reissue the book was influenced by the strong challenge to forgery claims and a thorough examination of all recent findings conducted by Dr. George D. Painter, a retired scholar at the British Museum who is the last survivor of the team that produced the original edition.

Painter wrote in an essay for the new edition that scientific and cartographic evidence re-established the map and accompanying manuscript as a "major and authentic message from the middle ages." The map was found bound with a text called the Tartar Relation describing Friar John de Plano Carpini's mission to the Mongols in the 13th century.

At a symposium held Saturday at Yale University in New Haven in conjunction with the book's publication, the object of controversy made a brief appearance under armed guard. Valued by insurers at $25 million and normally locked away in a library vault, the Vinland Map rested on a lectern, covered by a protective layer of plastic. It is no bigger than two open pages of a moderately large book. in the book being published, it is reproduced at actual size. The ink, presumably black when first applied, has mostly faded to lines of pale yellowish-brown.

On the far left side of the map is a large island in the Atlantic Ocean, the reason for the map's renown. The island occupies approximately the position of Newfoundland and is labeled "Vinlanda Insula."

Since the material found with the map was prepared about 50 years before the 1492 voyage of Columbus, some scholars believe the map was drawn by an unknown European cartographer from records or oral traditions left by Norse explorers.