The Vikings in Newfoundland

ew periods in the history of mankind can evoke more colourful imagery than the era when the bold and warlike Vikings dominated the maritime regions of Northern Europe and sailed out of Scandinavian ports on voyages of exploration and colonization.

There springs to mind a dramatic picture of the high-prowed "long ships", with sweeping oars supplementing the square woolen sails. Battle shields line the gunwales and behind them are the fierce Viking warriors, clad in garments of leather and fur with horned metal helmets glinting in the sun. Their reputation as savage and reckless warriors terrorized the foreign lands chosen as targets for their expeditions and few victims with stood the ferocity of their forays of conquest. As they developed larger and sturdier ships, the Viking rovers ventured further and further West, to the Shetlands, Orkneys and Faeroe Islands and eventually to Iceland. Once they had reached Iceland and established stable communities there, it was to be only a matter of time before bold spirits among them sought new horizons to the westward.

Eric the Red was the son of Thorvald, who, as an exiled murderer, fled from Norway to Iceland. Eric himself incurred similar punishment and in 982 he fled from Iceland, after telling friends he would look for the land that an earlier voyager had sighted farther westward. He reached an ice-rimmed coast which he explored for several years before returning to Iceland, where he reported finding a good land. With the hope of luring settlers, he named his discovery Greenland. The following year, Eric led an expedition carrying all the basic requirements for serious colonization. The newcomers built houses of stone and turf in the fjords of Greenland's Southwest coast, creating settlements which apparently survived for about 500 years.

When Bjarni Herjulfesson left Iceland, soon after 986, to join his father in Greenland, he was driven far Southwest by bad weather. He sighted unfamiliar coasts but without landing anywhere he turned back out to sea and eventually reached Greenland.

eif Eiriksson, son of Eric the Red, was prompted by Bjarni's findings to organize an expedition. He reached the far North land Bjarni had seen, very probably Baffin Island, and gave it the name Helluland (land of flat stones).

Turning southward, he found low, forested coastline with white sand beaches. This was apparently Labrador, and Leif named it Markland (Woodland). He finally arrived at a third place which tempted the seafarers with good grazing ground, timber and salmon. The Sagas tell us that Leif built large houses there and he "gave the land a name in accordance with the good things they found in it, calling it Vinland." After remaining a year or so he returned to Greenland.

The glowing account of Vinland or "Vineland the Good" encouraged others to mount expeditions to the country which Leif had found. None of them achieved permanent settlement and each group eventually returned to Greenland. The wife of one of the colonists, Thorfinn Karlsefni, brought back with her a small boy named Snorri, the first European born in North America.

Historians who have studied the Viking Sagas have tried to identify the actual locations visited and settled by the adventurous Vikings of long ago. All have long accepted as fact that the Norsemen reached America but the fascinating question has been the exact site of Vinland the Good. The Sagas, partly by allusions to relatively short sailing routes to America, indicated that Vinland was a Northern place. Many scholars, however, have believed that "Vin" referred to wild grapes, indicating that Vinland would be farther south on the Atlantic Coast, somewhere in what is now known as the New England area.

Others were convinced that "Vin" in Vinland had nothing to do with grapes but instead was used in the old Norse sense of "grass" or grazing lands. Thus given wider scope, they favoured a location somewhere along the coast of Newfoundland or Labrador.

ore than a half century ago, the published findings of W.A. Munn, a distinguished Newfoundland historian, presented a very convincing case identifying the general area of Pistolet Bay at the Northern tip of the island of Newfoundland as the site of Vinland the Food. More specifically, he visualized the Vikings landing at what is now known as L'Anse-aux-Meadows and then sailing around Cape Onion into Pistolet Bay to settle on the shores of Milan Arm.

It is extremely interesting to note that his theories placed a Viking settlement within a few scant miles of the spot where, 50 years later, archaeologists unearthed actual evidence of a Norse village. The recent findings were made at L'Anse-aux-Meadows, mentioned in Mr. Munn's account as one of the temporary landing places of the Vikings.

In the spring of 1960, a twentieth century Viking explorer appeared in Newfoundland. Helge Ingstad, a tall, white-haired Norwegian, has spent most of his adult life in scientific research and exploration and has published a number of comprehensive books on the ancient history of Northern and Arctic civilizations. Because of his own nationality, his most abiding dedication was to his long and painstaking research into the mystery of the earliest Greenland colonists and the fate of their various expeditions to the lands in the Western reaches of the North Atlantic.

In common with a number of other scholars, Helge Ingstad interpreted the Icelandic Sagas in such a way as to suggest that "Vinland the Good" was very probably somewhere in Newfoundland or Labrador. His systematic search for evidence had already taken him to Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Nova Scotia.

After preliminary surveys in 1960, Instad returned in 1961 with a fully organized exploration party. By plane and boat, travelling almost 4000 miles, he and his associates carried out a close and intensive study of the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador and their investigations eventually led them to L'Anse-aux-Meadows.

Attracted by faint outlines in the surface contours of the lands, they began careful excavation work under the direction of Mrs. Anne Stein Ingstad, who is a trained archaeologist. They found remains which suggested the walls of very old buildings, seven in all, including a layout resembling a great hall in the Viking style.

Anne Stein Ingstad also discovered a little fireplace lined with slate, a cooking pit and traces of a hearth. At the outer edge of the hearth was found a slate-lined recess measuring about 6.5 by 10 inches. This was identified as an "ember pit" where a few coals were kept alive at night, covered with ashes, ready to start the breakfast fire next morning. Similar ember pits have been excavated at several Greenland farms, including Brattahlid, the homestead of Eric the Red.

n 1962-64, Ingstad organized new expeditions during which excavation and research disclosed further details of the ancient settlement.The big house was found to have measured 70 by 55 feet, with five or six rooms and several fireplaces. In most of the buildings the lower walls consisted of turf; the upper walls and roof were probably of wood.

Several of the houses contained lumps of iron slag and the researchers discovered rich deposits of bog iron, caked on the bottom of the turf turned over by their shovels. Icelandic scientists with the party, led by D. Kristjan Eldjarn, excavated some depressions in the banks of the stream which runs by the site and found hundreds of pieces of slag, together with a large, flat-surfaced stone and traces of a fireplace. Everything points to the conclusion that the stone had served as an anvil in a primitive smithy. To run a smithy required charcoal and the Icelanders found a think layer of charred wood in another pit close to the location of the smithy.

When later tested by the scientific radiocarbon dating method the material in the blacksmith's fireplace gave two readings. One was AD 860 plus or minus 90 years, and the other AD 1060 plus or minus 70 years.

Three years of digging at L'Anse-aux-Meadows brought the major field work to completion but in 1964 further work was done to stabilize the excavations and ruins and repair any winter damage.

hile working under Mrs. Ingstad's direction, Tony Beardsley, a young Canadian helper, dug through the turf to a layer black with scattered charcoal. Here, on August 4, 1964, he found a tiny stone wheel which ranks as one of the great archaeological discoveries in North America.

It is 1.25 inches in width and carved from soapstone. Technically, it is called a spindle whorl and served as a fly wheel on a wool spinning spindle. Many similar implements hace been found at Norse sites in Greenland, Iceland and Norway and it indicates that the settlers at L'Anse-aux-Meadows included women, who attended to household tasks while their husbands sought unsucessfully to carve a permanent settlement in Vinland some 500 years before the voyages of Columbus. After so many years of speculation and controversy among scholars and historiams, the findings at 'Anse-aux-Meadows take on enormous importance.

The leader of the expediton, Helge Ingstad, has carefully avoided making and specific claim relating the site to Leif Eiriksson or any other Viking. It is unlikely that the actual identity of the colonists can ever be fully determined. There is a strong possibility that the Norse voyagers established settlements at other points along the coast of Newfoundland and adjacent territories. The importance of L'Anse-aux-Meadows lies in the fact that it is the only place where actual evidence that withstands scientific scrutiny has been found.