Keenly aware of their Norse heritage and aware, too, of the Leif Erikson legend, the Olsens financed and encouraged two archaeologists, Anne and Helge Ingsted. Their mission was simple enough: explore Leif Erikson’s route and find the evidence that Vikings had settled in America.
The Ingsteds hadn’t been the first to search for evidence, most of their predecessors focusing on Erikson’s reference to Vinland and searching farther south where grapes were more likely to grow. The Ingsteds re-interpreted ‘Vin’ as old Norse for meadow and consequently searched farther north. It also seemed logical. Northern Newfoundland is close to Greenland, where the Vikings were already established.
After a painstaking exploration of the coastline, studying sagas, and talking to locals and fishermen, they at last found their evidence. It stood on the northern tip of Newfoundland at a place called L’anse aux Meadows.
There are variations in the Saga accounts. One version has it that Leif Erikson was blown off course on a return trip from Norway to Greenland and discovered America largely by accident. Another account asserts, the whole thing was a planned expedition, that a previous Viking Bjarni Herjolfsson had similarly been blown off course, discovered an unknown coast and returned to Greenland with the story. According to this saga, Lief approached Bjarni, gathered a crew of 35 men and sailed in the direction Bjarni described. They landed, over-wintered and left a small settlement. Lief himself returned to Greenland for more supplies and men but never returned. Others did, including a tough old bird called Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, the widow of Lief’s brother Thorstein Erikson. She married Thorfinn Karlsefni, a powerful warrior, and in the New World gave birth to a son, Snorri Thorfinnsson—the first European child born in America.
Climate change saw both Greenland and Newfoundland become less clement; the Viking settlement, largely constructed of wood and turf, vanished from history until very recently. Arial photography and carbon dating of wood excavated at the site further reinforced the saga accounts.
Climate change, I could have done with some of that just then. It was bitterly, bitterly cold, and just a few steps away was comfort, hot coffee and warmth; what was I doing here, shivering on deck, staring at a few unremarkable bumps on the horizon in search of a few hairy has-beens?
Unworthy thoughts. Hot coffee could wait. We were sailing in the wake of heroes, trying to recapture the thrill of seeing land, now inhospitable and bleak but less so a thousand years ago. It took an imaginative squint, several imaginative squints to see these hazy whale-like lumps as a Viking might have done. New land, and the important question, what lay beyond?
4 comments:
Not sure if I would call it settled if they simply died out in the Americas (or became absorbed by the indigenous population).
Every year there's a news story how the Vikings discovered America first, but if you didn't go back to bring more ships and begin a relationship with a new country, did you really discover anything or did you just die there?
But it gives those of Norwegian descent something to cheer for. It's no mean feat to cross an ocean, and without room service too.
Interesting point: settlement lasting for a short time disqualifying as settlement. Climate change did for Vikings, that and the lack of the Catholic church with a proselytising mission and the ear of kings. There's a book I have called 1100 which argues that the world was fully connected at that date. In it he cites as one particular example the Vikings in America but I've forgotten the exact detail - whether they brought back something from America which ended up on a major trade route, or brought something to America from that same interconnected trade route.
One thing we do agree upon. The poor buggers lacked central heating, cocktails at six and room service
Where would we be without central heating, cocktails at six and room service!
I sure hope schools are using re-written history books in their curriculam. We were taught it was Columbus who discovered the Americas but that has now been proved incorrect. We like watching 'the Curse of Oak Island'. God knows if there is still treasure buried there, but it certainly gives weight to the theory that Templar Knights were on that stretch of coast long before Columbus.
The sea is a treacherous place. Who knows whether people classed as lost at sea were actually washed up and lived the rest of their lives on American soil. But one thing's for sure: No cocktails for them.
Dawn, rest assured, the Viking discoveries have been in history text books for forty years now though no one has been bold enough to champion the claim of St Brendan and his monks in a leather curragh four hundred years earlier 😀
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