If I could go back in time,
where would I go? I was born and raised in Canada where our non-native history
goes back almost 400 years if you look at what is now the province of Quebec or
1000 years if you count the Vikings having a settlement in what is now the
province of Newfoundland.
In 2017, I travelled across
Canada to the site of the Viking settlement at L’Anse Aux Meadows on the tip of
Newfoundland’s Great North Peninsula. There I toured through the encampment
which consisted of replicas of the timber and sod buildings constructed by the
Vikings who had sailed from Greenland. I talked with the costumed interpreters
who were sitting around a fire inside one of the buildings cooking their meal. It
felt surreal to be there, to know that my ancestors (I have recently found out
that I have Viking heritage) lived there for a few years. This is the first
known evidence of European settlement in the Americas. From the camp, I walked
along the rugged cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and crossed a large bog
on a boardwalk. Then I toured the museum, looking at the fascinating artifacts that were found during the
excavation. The site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978.
This year I spent 66 days in
Europe and one of the places I visited was the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, just outside Copenhagen,
Denmark. In the museum is a permanent exhibition of parts of five original
Viking ships excavated nearby in 1962. A thousand years ago these ships were
deliberately scuttled (filled with rocks and sunk) in a river to stop the enemy
from invading the city by water. Over the decades since they were found, the
pieces have been preserved and put together on a metal frame to show how the
ships would have looked. Also at the site are replicas of the Viking ships and
I became a Viking for an hour. A group of us sat on the seats and rowed the
ship out of the harbour using the long oars. Once on the open water we hoisted
the mast and set sail. After sailing for a while we headed back to the harbour.
As we neared it I had the honour of pulling on the rope that lowered the mast
and sail and we glided back to our dock.
So if I could go back
in time I would like to be a Viking Shield-Maiden. Women of the time were not called
Vikings because they normally did not take part in warfare. They were called
Norsewomen. However, women fought in a battle in 971AD and Freydis
Eiriksdottir, Leif Erikson’s half-sister is said to have grabbed a sword, and,
bare-breasted, helped scare away an attacking army. These women were called
Shield-Maidens.
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