The Vikings in North America
I started my writing career as a travel writer,
researching and writing seven travel books about the attractions, sites, and
history along the backroads of Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon, and
Alaska. While working on them I realized what a beautiful country I live in. Since
then I have switched to writing fiction but I still love to travel. 2017 was
Canada’s 150th birthday and to celebrate it my husband and I
travelled in a motorhome from our home on Vancouver Island on the Pacific Ocean
to Newfoundland on the Atlantic Ocean. The round trip took us nine weeks and we
were only able to see about half of the sites and attractions along the roads.
I have
decided to write about the scenery, attractions, and history of my country.
This post is about the Vikings who had a settlement in the present province of
Newfoundland more than one thousand years ago.
After a
seven hour ferry ride from Cape Breton we landed at Port aux Basque,
Newfoundland, and headed north along Highway 1 to Corner Brook where we spent
the night. In the morning we carried onto Deer Lake where we turned on Highway
430. We drove through Gros Morne National Park and along the Gulf of St.
Lawrence. We were pleasantly surprised at the number of picturesque small fishing
villages we passed through on our way north. Eventually we turned onto a
smaller highway and reached the national historic site of L’Anse aux Meadows on
the tip of the Western Peninsula of Newfoundland overlooking the Atlantic
Ocean.
It has
been long thought that the first European to step on the soil of North America
was Christopher Columbus. Excavations done at this site in the 1960’s recovered
artifacts like jewellery, a stone oil lamp, a bone knitting needle, and tools that
were compared to ones used at Viking settlements in Greenland and Iceland
around the year 1000 and have been carbon dated to between the years 990 and
1050.
From the parking lot I walked to the
interpretive centre where I looked at the displays of what the settlement would
have looked like during its occupation. There are replicas of the longships that
the Vikings sailed in, artifacts unearthed during the excavations, write-ups
about the Vikings, tools that were found, and maps showing the route the Vikings
used to get to Newfoundland or Vinland, as they are thought to have named it. The
Scandinavians of the medieval period were known as Norse and they were farmers
and traders. When they began raiding other countries they became known as
Vikings, the Norse word for raiders.
There has
been a lot of interest in the Vikings recently with televisions shows and
documentaries about them and their raiding which began in the 790s and lasted
until around 1050. With their longboats and advanced sailing and navigational
skills the Viking men and women travelled from Scandinavia south through Europe
to Africa, the Middle East, and Asia and west to North America.
I left
the centre and followed a long, wooden boardwalk through grass and small bushes
to the actual site. There I found a post fence around a yard with large mounds covered
in grass. When the Vikings landed here there were forests from which they were
able to get material for their boat building and house building. The remains of
eight buildings were found in the 1960s and they are believed to have been made
of a wooden frame and covered with sod.
They have been identified are a long house, an iron smithy, a carpentry
shop, and smaller buildings that may have been for lower-status crewmembers or
even slaves or for storage. There are three replicas of those sod buildings
with their thick walls on the site. One is a long house which is equipped with
clothes, beds and bedding, household utensils, tools, a fire pit and has a
couple dressed in period clothing cooking a meal. The Vikings hunted caribou,
bear, and smaller animals plus whale, walrus, and birds for food as well as
fished.
I
wandered through the rooms divided by hand carved wooden plank walls. Light
came from the fire and holes in the ceiling which are partially covered with upside
down wooden boxes to keep the rain out.
One of
the other buildings is the smithy complete with anvil, forge, bellows and
various tools. I wandered the rest of the site and saw the outlines of other
buildings that have not been reconstructed. It is estimated that between 30 and
160 people lived there over the years.
The
Vikings arrived in Newfoundland from Iceland via Greenland. According to
historical records the site was inhabited by the brothers and sister of Leif
Ericson plus a series of explorers. It is believed the settlement was there for
seven or eight years before being abandoned. This is the only confirmed Viking
site in North America and is the farthest west that Europeans sailed before
Columbus.
After
viewing the buildings I followed a trail along the rocky shoreline and then
turned inland to walk on a boardwalk over a bog back to the parking lot.
One of
the best things is that not only does the interpretive centre have the history
of the Vikings, but there is also extensive displays showing the history of the
aboriginal people who inhabited the area over thousands of years before any
European arrived.
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