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History's Hinge - 'Ain Jalut

[Administration]

Map of Viking Expansion

L'Anse aux Meadows

L'Anse aux Meadows (from the French L'Anse-aux-M�duses or "Jellyfish Cove") is a site on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland, in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, where the remains of a Viking village were discovered in 1960 by the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his archaeologist wife, Anne Stine Ingstad. (Newfoundlanders pronounce the name of the site 'lance ah meadows'.)


The settlement

The only authenticated Viking settlement in North America outside Greenland, it was the site of a multi-year archaeological dig that found dwellings, tools and implements that verified its time frame. The settlement, dating more than five hundred years before Christopher Columbus, contains the earliest European structures in North America. Named a World Heritage site by UNESCO, it is thought by many to be the semi-legendary 'Vinland' settlement of explorer Leif Ericson around AD 1000. The "Skalholt" map (1570) shows the "Promonterium Winlandia" at the northern tip of what can only be a depiction of Newfoundland, exactly where L'Anse aux Meadows is and parallel to England!

The settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows consisted of at least eight buildings, including a forge and smelter, and a lumber yard that supported a shipyard. The largest house measured 28.8 by 15.6 m and consisted of several rooms[2] Sewing and knitting tools found at the site indicate women were present at L'Anse aux Meadows.


Viking colonisation site at L'Anse-aux-Meadows

History

The climate in Newfoundland then was significantly warmer than it is today. As recounted in the sagas, Leifur set forth from Greenland to search for the land Bjarni Herj�lfsson had told him of. He found a land rich with grapes, salmon, and a frost-free winter, and returned to harvest lumber to take back to tree-poor Greenland. L'Anse aux Meadows has been variously identified as: (a) the first camp made, (b) the camp made after fleeing hostile Skr�lings, or (c) a camp not mentioned in the saga.


The saga describes a colonizing attempt led by Thorfinn Karlsefni, with as many as 135 men and 15 women, who used Leifur's camp, perhaps L'Anse aux Meadows, as a base. Among them was Freyd�s Eir�ksd�ttir, half-sister to Leif. While it is not possible to verify that L'Anse aux Meadows is indeed the Vinland of Saga, it is certain that a group of Norse colonists lived here around the year AD 1000.

L'Anse aux Meadows may have been a way station between a colony in Greenland and another settlement in the southern Gulf of Saint Lawrence region, or it may have served as an overwintering station for Norse explorers from Greenland. The site was only used for two or three years. It is conjectured, based on both literary and archaeological evidence, that poor relations with natives doomed the settlement to abandonment. Intergroup conflict over women and unexpected weather have also been suggested as the causes for its abandonment.

The sagas also tell an interesting story: in their wish to build good relationships with the native Indians, the Vikings invited some Indian chieftains to one of their feasts, where milk was also served. The Indians probably suffered from lactose intolerance, as they got sick, and suspected poisoning. Thus, the contact attempt was unsuccessful.

L'Anse aux Meadows may be connected to the Algonquin legend of a Kingdom of Saguenay, said to be populated by a race of blond men rich in furs and metals but this is conjecture.

[Administration]

Ringed pin of bronze
�Parks Canada / G. Vandervloogt

Discovery of the Site and Initial Excavations (1960-1968)

...in 1960 that 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 old 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 sod, laid over a supporting frame. The buildings were of the same kind as those used in Iceland and Greenland just before and after the year 1000. 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 thecooking 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.

From these finds we know not all the Norse settlers had been men. Spindle whorls and knitting needles were tools used by women. A small whetstone, used to sharpen needles and small scissors, was found near the spindle whorl. It would have also been part of a woman's kit. A great deal of slag from smelting and working of iron was also found on the site together with a large number of iron boat nails or rivets. This, more than any other find, led archaeologists to identify the site as Norse.

Brief History

Over the years many different peoples inhabited the L'Anse aux Meadows site and many researchers have contributed to our understanding of this important archaeological site. The following is a brief historical summary of this site.
ca. 6000 B.P.

Native peoples began using this location.
ca. 1000 A.D.

Norse Settlement
1500 to late 1800's

Area is visited by French migratory fishermen and possibly Basque whalers.

[Administration]

The "Vinland Map," possibly the first map showing the New World, is currently housed in Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Download hi-res image of the map,2.5 Mb. (Hi-res image courtesy Yale University Press.)

Scientists Determine Age of New World Map

Scientists from the University of Arizona, the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Smithsonian Institution have used carbon-dating technology to determine the age of a controversial parchment that might be the first-ever map of North America. In a paper to be published in the August 2002 issue of the journal  Radiocarbon , the scientists conclude that the so-called "Vinland Map" parchment dates to approximately 1434 A.D., or nearly 60 years before Christopher Columbus set foot in the West Indies.

"Many scholars have agreed that if the Vinland Map is authentic, it is the first known cartographic representation of North America, and its date would be key in establishing the history of European knowledge of the lands bordering the western Atlantic Ocean," said chemist Garman Harbottle, the lead Brookhaven researcher on the project. "If it is, in fact, a forgery, then the forger was surely one of the most skillful criminals ever to pursue that line of work."

Brookhaven chemist Garman Harbottle explains the process used to date the Vinland Map parchment to the year 1434, nearly 60 years before Columbus set foot in the West Indies.
Play video (RealPlayer required. Get it here.)

[Administration]

Greenlanders' Saga
This inconspicuous tale, hidden among longer sagas with only a decorated � (thorn) to mark its beginning, contains one of the two sagas telling of the Norse discovery of North America. It is only preserved in Flateyjarb�k which dates to the mid-fourteenth century.
Photo: J. �lafsd�ttir   �rni Magn�sson Institute, Iceland

Vinland sagas

The Vinland Sagas are two Icelandic documents, The Saga of the Greenlanders and The Saga of Eric the Red. The Vinland Sagas represent the most complete information we have about the Norse exploration of the Americas. They were not written until at least 200 years after the original voyages and their accounts of them are contradictory, but historians believe they contain substantial evidence of Viking exploration of North America. Their veracity was proved by the discovery and excavation of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada.

The earliest and most complete information we have about Vinland the Good is found in two sagas, Greenlanders' Saga and The Saga of Erik the Red which tell of the Viking discovery of North America. The two accounts were written independently, though both tell of things which took place in the early 11th century that were passed down by word of mouth in Greenland and Iceland until they were written down in the 13th century in Iceland. Both give general descriptions of the native peoples the Vikings met, relative sailing distances, and landscape features which help us determine the location of Vinland. But the two versions are also contradictory in a number of ways, and while they provide much information about the new lands, they do not conclusively resolve the question, "where was Vinland?"

Comparison in Storyline
Greenlanders' Saga describes a voyage made by Bjarni Herjolfsson, the first Norseman to see the shores of North America, and the subsequent voyages of Leif Eriksson, his brother Thorvald, his sister Freydis, and the Icelandic merchant Thorfinn Karlsefni.

 leif.rm (264.08 KB - downloaded 4 times.)
Listen to an excerpt of Leif's story (RealAudio).

It describes hostilities with skraelings, the Norse term for the native peoples they met in the lands visited south and west of Greenland which they called Vinland and Markland. This saga places Erik the Red's family at the center of the Vinland voyages.

The Saga of Erik the Red
Quicktime 1.5Mb

The Saga of Erik the Red tells the Vinland story as a single expedition led by Thorfinn Karsefni, a rich trader from Iceland who married Gudrid, Leif Eriksson's widowed sister-in-law, and traveled with her to Vinland , where they lived for several years. While in Vinland, Gudrid gave birth to Snorri, the first European known to be born in America. In this story, Leif's role is similar to that of Bjarni in The Greenlanders' Saga; he merely sights land, but never sets foot on it. The voyages of Thorvald Eriksson and Freydis Erikssdottir-described as separate voyages in The Greenlanders' Saga-are told here as part of the Karlsefni expedition. This account gives less prominence to the Eriksson family, though in both accounts Leif the Lucky is a heroic, magnanimous figure who converts the Grenlanders to Christianity. Rather, it focuses on Gudrid and Karlsefni, whose descendants include a great line of Icelandic bishops.

 gudrid.rm (505.49 KB - downloaded 5 times.)
Listen to an excerpt of Gudrid's Saga (RealAudio).


Taking the sagas literally, researchers have attempted to identify the lands visited by the Vikings. This is one such theoretical saga-based map of the voyages described in The Saga of Erik the Red.
Map by Marcia Bakry. Research by Gisli Sigurdsson

Saga Voyages
   
Number of Settlements in Vinland
In addition to these differences, the two sagas also describe different places where the Vikings traveled. In Greenlanders' Saga, Leif Eriksson builds several houses and calls the camp Leifsbudir, and all the subsequent voyagers use this same location. In The Saga of Erik the Red, two settlements are mentioned, one in the northern part of Vinland called Straumfjord, and one in a more southerly location called H�p. If there were a number of settlements, then Vinland was a region, not a specific settlement.

Based on the saga evidence alone, one might imagine the Vikings sailed far south along the coast of North America. However, the sagas' unclear and inconsistent descriptions of Vinland geography probably resulted from elabortion and distortion introduced during the two hundred years when they were passed down orally in Greenland and Iceland. For these reasons the sagas are viewed as only one of several sources regarding Norse activities west of Greenland.