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.
