Around the turn of the 19th century, Canadian historian W.A. Munn pored over medieval Icelandic manuscripts, reports by the 10th century AD Vikings. Two of them, "the Greenlander Saga" and "Eirik's Saga" reported on the explorations of Thorvald Arvaldson, Eirik the Red, and Leif Eiriksson, three generations of a rather cranky family of Norse mariners. According to the manuscripts, Thorvald fled a murder charge in Norway and eventually settled in Iceland; his son Eirik fled Iceland under a similar charge and settled Greenland; and Eirik's son Leif (the Lucky) took the family westward still, and circa AD 998 he colonized a land he called "Vinland."
Leif's colony remained at Vinland for between three and ten years, before they were chased away by constant attacks from the earlier residents, called Skraelings by the Norse. Munn believed that the most likely site for the colony was on the island of Newfoundland, stating that "Vinland" did not refer to grapes, but rather to grass or grazing land. (Whether "Vin" referred to grapes or pasture is still somewhat hotly debated).
L'Anse aux Meadows and Archaeology
In the early 1960s, archaeologists Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine Ingstad undertook a close survey of the coastlines of Newfoundland and Labrador. Ingstad, a Norse investigator, had spent the majority of his career studying Northern and Arctic civilizations, and was following up on research into the Viking explorations of the 10th and 11th centuries. In 1961, the survey paid off, and the Ingstads discovered an undisputably Viking settlement near Epave Bay and named the site "L'Anse aux Meadows," or Meadow Cove.
Found at the site were evidence of three timber-and-sod longhouses and five smaller buildings, a possible charcoal kiln and the remains of a small iron smithy. Eleventh century Norse artifacts recovered from l'Anse aux Meadows numbered in the hundreds, and included a soapstone spindle whorl and a bronze-ringed pin process, as well as other iron, bronze, stone, and bone items.
L'Anse aux Meadows Today
L'Anse aux Meadows is now owned by Parks Canada, who carried on excavations at the site during the mid-1970s. The site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978; and Parks Canada has reconstructed some of the sod buildings and maintains the site as a "living history" museum, complete with costumed interpreters, as shown in the photograph.
Sources
A great source of information about L'Anse aux Meadows is the Canadian Parks website, in French and English. Excavators Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad have published several books on the subject, the latest of which is listed below.
Ingstad, Anne Stine. 2001. The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland . Facts on File.
Kaplan, Susan A. and Jim M. Woollett. 2000 Challenges and Choices: Exploring the Interplay of Climate, History, and Culture on Canada's Labrador Coast. Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research 32:351-359.
McGhee, Robert 1984 Contact between native North Americans and the medieval Norse: A review of the evidence. American Antiquity 49(1):4-26.
