the Vikings and their culture. The excavation of other ships and artifacts led to a higher consciousness about the Viking past in Norway. For example, the only complete Viking helmet, the Gjermundbu helmet, ever to be found was also excavated in Buskerud, Norway. Denmark Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn was noted for his early advocacy of the theory that the Vikings had explored North America centuries before Christopher Columbus's and John Cabot's voyages. Rafn published much of his work in 1837 in the Antiquitates Americanæ, considered the first scholarly exposition of the Old Norse exploration period. Sweden The term Viking was popularized with positive connotations by Erik Gustaf Geijer at the beginning of the 19th century. His poem The Viking (Vikingen) appeared in the first issue of the Swedish periodical, Iduna. The word Viking was taken to refer to romanticized, heroic, idealized Norse seafarers and warriors. This renewed interest of the Romanticism of a historic past had political implications. The Geatish Society, of which Geijer was a member, popularized this ideal to a great extent. Another author who had great influence on the perception of the Vikings was Esaias Tegnér, another member of the Geatish Society who wrote a modern version of Frithiof's Saga, which became widely popular in the Nordic countries, England, the United States, and Germany. Germany The German composer Richard Wagner is said to have strong influences of the Nordic mythology in his musical pieces. His Nordic influences further enhanced the Romanticism of the Viking era during that time. Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring cycle, is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Germanic mythology—particularly from the later Norse mythology—notably the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Volsunga Saga, and the epic poem Nibelungenlied. Britain English authors from the 16th century had been aware of the Viking impact on the countryside, though the numerous placenames of Danes Camp is better explained as a modification of dene, or hollow. Following the 17th-century first flowering of Anglo-Saxon studies, there was a similar wave of enthusiasm for Northern culture in Britain, identifying as Viking remains Iron Age hill forts and even Stonehenge and exemplified by the antiquarian interests of George Hickes, who published a Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus et archæologicus in 1703–05. In the 1780s, Denmark offered to cede Iceland to Britain in exchange for Crab Island (now Vieques,