L'Anse aux Meadows

Mantra stayed tied to the Government Wharf in St. Anthony today because the wind and sea conditions were not favorable for a departure to Greenland. We rented a car from the local dealership. I walked to pick it up, admiring the abundance of colorful wildflowers along the road.

Orange, yellow, white and pink flowers

Clover and other flowers

View of the harbor from the road

Woodland forget-me-nots

After a stop at the large local hardware (practically Lowe's or Home Depot size), we drove north to L'Anse aux Meadows, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and part of Parks Canada, which has free admission to all its locations this summer. It was an unusual and glorious sunny day, and we only needed a couple layers of tops (mainly because of the cold wind). 

L'Anse aux Meadows is famous as the oldest site where artifacts found during archeological digs prove that Norse voyagers from Greenland set up camp here around 1000 A.D. These artifacts are the oldest evidence of European presence in the Americas. Another interesting aspect of L'Anse aux Meadows is that it is considered the place where the descendants of the human migration from Africa to the northwest through Europe and the descendants of the people who traveled to the east through Asia and the Americas first met. 

In 1960, a Norwegian explorer and writer, Helge Ingstad, came upon the site at L’Anse aux Meadows. He was making an intensive search for Norse landing places along the coast from New England northward. At L’Anse aux Meadows, a local inhabitant, George Decker, led him to a group of overgrown bumps and ridges that looked as if they might be building remains. They later proved to be all that was left of that colony.

For the next eight years, Helge and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, led an international team of archaeologists from Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and the United States in the excavation of the site. The Ingstads found that the overgrown ridges were the lower courses of the walls of eight Norse buildings from the 11th century. The walls and roofs had been of peat turf, laid over a supporting wood frame. Long narrow fireplaces in the middle of the floor served for heating, lighting and cooking. 

Among the ruins of the buildings, excavators unearthed the kind of artifacts found on similar sites in Iceland and Greenland. Inside the cooking pit of one of the large dwellings lay a bronze, ring-headed pin of the kind Norsemen used to fasten their cloaks. Inside another building was a stone oil lamp and a small spindle whorl, once used as the flywheel of a handheld spindle. In the fire pit of a third dwelling was the fragment of a bone needle believed to have been used for a form of knitting. There was also a small-decorated brass fragment that once had been gilded. 

Situated at the tip of the Great Northern Peninsula of the island of Newfoundland, this exceptional archaeological site consists of eight timber-framed turf structures built in the same style as those found in Norse Greenland and Iceland from the same period. The buildings include three dwellings, one forge and four workshops, on a narrow terrace overlooking a peat bog and small brook near the shore of Epaves Bay in the Straight of Belle Isle.

Brook by the Norse encampment

Ridges indicating walls of the peat covered buildings

The Ingstads and others were able to connect the remains of the buildings and the few artifacts with the Icelandic sagas. The Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders, both thought to have been written around 1200 based on oral history, contain detailed, but sometimes conflicting accounts of the voyages to Vinland (usually interpreted as coastal North America). These sagas are generally regarded as works of literature, rather than purely historical accounts, with scholars debating their factual accuracy. The artifacts and remains of buildings correspond with the stories told in the Vinland Sagas, which document the voyages of Leif Erikson and other Norse explorers who ventured westward across the Atlantic Ocean from Iceland and Greenland to find and explore new territory, and particularly to find a source of lumber, as Greenland has no trees and therefore no source of wood for constructing buildings and boats or for heat. It is speculated that L'Anse aux Meadows was established as a work camp by Leif Erikson, but the artifacts found there cannot prove that he was the man. 

Interestingly, the Norse did not set up the site as a permanent settlement. Rather, it was a self-supporting work camp, the main purpose of which was to fell trees and make lumber to be transported back to Greenland. It is believed that the captain and crew of a ship stayed at L'Anse aux Meadows until they were able to fill the ship with wood, from one to three years. Travel from and to Greenland was limited to the short summer season of about four months when voyaging was possible. After about ten years, L'Anse aux Meadows was abandoned. It is believed that the last ship's crew and captain packed all their valuable items which they had brought from Greenland or made locally, burned their buildings so that others could not use them, and departed forever. The fact that there are so few artifacts discovered during the archeological digs leads to this conclusion. 

There are three instances where the sagas relate contact with the native people and that trade took place. Conflict is not specifically cited, but it could be that relationships turned bad. It could also be true that the return on investment was not favorable. 

It seems amazing that so much of this camp is still discernible to the naked eye through the rectangular array of ridges and indentations in the boggy soil. Parks Canada has created a reconstruction of one of the large buildings and its outbuildings, and the rooms contain not only items that would have been in these buildings but re-enactors who were able to tell us about daily life. A single long building would have included private quarters for the captain and his wife and the navigator and his wife, a large room with a central fire pit where 25-30 men would have worked and slept together, often choking on the smoke from the fires. Another room would have been a place for doing woodwork and other tasks, while the farthest room would have been the women's workroom. The women at the camp would have been not only the wives of the captain and the navigator but there servants. Together, these women worked together to card, spin and weave wool, sew and do other domestic chores. They would have made the cloth for new sails and sail repairs, with the sails all being made of woven wool. 

Re-creation of a Norse large hall

Communal room

Room and sleeping closets for the captain and navigator

Section of inner wall made with rough hewn wood 

Woman sewing in the common room

Man, having turned a bowl, finishing it with a hand tool

Norse loom, with stones to tension the wool strands

Woman showing how to use a handheld spindle

After a tour with a park ranger and our exploration of the reconstructed buildings and conversations with the re-enactors, we left the historical part of L'Anse aux Meadows to hike on the Birchy Nuddick Trail, walking over craggy low hills, along a beach with large boulders and black sand, and across boggy land on well-constructed boardwalks. Islands off the coast punctuate the ocean water. The subarctic maritime climate (cool to cold and wet) of the area supports small, dense forests of short balsam firs and spruces. Extensive barrens are covered with reindeer moss and lichen that thrive in the windy, harsh conditions. At this time of year, wildflowers are blooming and berries are ripening in the coastal heathlands, and we delighted in noticing the variety of colorful species low to the ground. At the end of the trail, we came to Skin Pond, so named because seal skins were soaked in there to soften them before processing.

Enis and Peter by the beach

Clear water and islands offshore

Irises by a spring

Crowberries and lichen

Barrens

Purple pitcher plant, a carnivorous species

Yellow water lilies and sheep laurel at Skin Pond

Cloudberries

It was just after 4 p.m. when we got back to the car, and we had to hurry to get back to St. Anthony before 5:00, when we had to return the vehicle. I drove slightly over the speed limit. We made it to Foodland at 4:45 and stocked up on last provisions. I dropped Peter and Enis and all our groceries and hardware purchases on the wharf and quickly drove to the dealership, only a couple minutes late.

While JibSea and Next Chapter left early this morning, we were glad we spent the day here and spent the time to visit L'Anse aux Meadows. It's quite possible we will never be here again.

Peter is now working on making pockets that can be attached by the rudder bearings to hold he few dozen disposable hand warmers we have so that they can keep the rudder from seizing up in this cold water. We have noticed that the wheel movement has become progressively more stiff as we have traveled north. This is a jerry-rigged solution.

Enis has made attempt number two to install plastic sheeting to the back of the pilot house to provide protection from the cold and wind, using the tape with stronger adhesive, the spring-loaded curtain rod, the lighter weight plastic and the clamps we purchased at the hardware.

Are we ready to depart for Greenland tomorrow morning? I think we are as ready as we ever are going to be.