L'Anse aux Meadows: the Viking legacy on Canada's shores
Located at the northern end of the island of Newfoundland, the site is home to the remains of an 11th century Viking settlement discovered in the second half of the 20th century. The site consisted of at least eight buildings; among which are houses, a forge, a sawmill to supply a shipyard and three warehouses. It is believed to have been a temporary boat repair facility, as there were no finds of burials, agriculture, or animal pens.
In 1960, the Norwegian researcher Helge Ingstad and his wife, the archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, in search of traces of the settlement of the Scandinavian navigator Leif Erickson in the lands known as Vinland according to the Nordic sagas of the 13th century, found some elevations covered of grass.
Initially identified as an aboriginal construction, after a series of excavations and studies they concluded that it was the remains of a settlement of European origin. They were convinced that they had located Leifsbúðir or Straumfjörð, two settlements in the mythical region of Vinland; chronicles of European settlements in the American continent that are part of the Icelandic literary tradition.
The archaeological site of L'Anse aux Meadows, of modest dimensions, is of extraordinary relevance as it is the only confirmed pre-Columbian European settlement in North America outside the island of Greenland.
Norse statues installed above L'Anse aux Meadows historical site.
The constructions were extremely similar to the type of houses in Iceland, a great Viking enclave, also documenting a hundred common and everyday objects of typically Nordic manufacture, among which were a stone oil lamp, a sharpening stone, a pin bronze, a bone knitting needle and part of a shaft, as well as various sewing utensils, indicating the presence of women in the settlement. The shops were identified as an iron smithy containing a forge and iron slag, a carpentry shop which generated wood debris, and a specialist boat repair area containing spent rivets.
This discovery would prove that, 500 years before the Genoese admiral Christopher Columbus reached the American continent, various Nordic and Scandinavian navigators had already left their tracks here. Already in the year 1000 AD, Leif Eriksoon and his Viking party left the Greenland colony heading west across Baffin Bay to sail south along the coast, until in the green meadows of L'Anse aux Meadows they would establish the head of his Vinland. Although according to many experts, Vinland was further south along the coast surrounding the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
The site was declared, in 1978, a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, because it proves a first presence of Europeans in the American continent. Its incalculable historical value has made it a great tourist attraction and historical heritage of the utmost importance both for Canadians and Americans, who claim their Nordic ancestry, as well as for Nordics and Scandinavians, who take pride in the feat of their ancestors.
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