The likeliest reason for this interspecies togetherness was the harsh
climate. Observes Berglund: "The temperature today gets as cold as -50[degrees]C
[-58 degrees F]." Bones recovered from trash middens in the house indicate that
the occupants dined mostly on wild caribou and seals, which were plentiful along
the coast. (The domesticated animals were apparently raised for their wool and
milk, not meat.) Scientists recovered more than 3,000 artifacts in the ruins,
including a wooden loom, children's toys and combs. Along with hair, body lice
and animal parasites, these items will be invaluable in determining what each
room was used for. Researchers also found bones and other remnants from meals,
and even a mummified goat. That means, says Berglund, "we'll even be able to
tell whether there was enough food and whether the people and animals were
healthy."
As Greenland's overlord, Erik the Red took a cut of virtually everyone's
profits from the export of furs and ivory. Material success apparently did not
keep Erik and his family content, though; they undoubtedly heard of a voyage by
a captain named Bjarni Herjolfsson, who had been blown off course while en route
to Greenland from Iceland. After drifting for many days, Bjarni spotted a
forested land. But instead of investigating this unknown territory, he turned
back and reached Greenland.
Intrigued by this tale, Erik's eldest son Leif, sometime between 997 and
1003, decided to sail westward to find the new land. First, say the sagas, the
crew came to a forbidding land of rocks and glaciers. Then they sailed on to a
wooded bay, where they dropped anchor for a while. Eventually they continued
south to a place he called Vinland ("wineland," probably for the wild grapes
that grew there). Leif and his party made camp for the winter, then sailed home.
Members of his family returned in later years, but Leif never did. Erik died
shortly after his son returned, and Leif took over the Greenland colony. Though
he retained ownership of the Norse base in North America and received a share of
the riches that were brought back, he stopped exploring.
This much had long been known from the Icelandic sagas, but until 1960 there
was no proof of Leif's American sojourns. In retrospect, it is astonishing that
the evidence took so long to be found. That year Norwegian explorer Helge
Ingstad and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, went to Newfoundland to
explore a place identified on an Icelandic map from the 1670s as "Promontorium
Winlandiae," near the small fishing village of L'Anse aux Meadows, in the
province's northern reaches. They were certain that it marked the location of an
ancient Norse settlement.
Finding the settlement turned out to be absurdly easy. When the Ingstads
asked the locals if there were any odd ruins in the area, they were taken to a
place known as "the Indian camp." They immediately recognized the grass-covered
ridges as Viking-era ruins like those in Iceland and Greenland.
During the next seven years, the Ingstads and an international team of
archaeologists exposed the foundations of eight separate buildings. Sitting on a
narrow terrace between two bogs, the buildings had sod walls and peaked sod
roofs laid over a (now decayed) wooden frame; they were evidently meant to be
used year-round. The team also unearthed a Celtic-style bronze pin with a
ring-shaped head similar to ones the Norse used to fasten their cloaks, a
soapstone spindle whorl, a bit of bone needle, a small whetstone for sharpening
scissors and needles, lumps of worked iron and iron boat nails. (All these items
helped win over detractors, since the artifacts were clearly not native to
America.)
Further excavations in the mid-1970s under the auspices of Parks Canada, the
site's custodian, made it plain that this was most likely the place where Leif
set up camp. Among the artifacts turned up: loom weights, another spindle whorl,
a bone needle, jasper fire starters, pollen, seeds, butternuts and, most
important, about 2,000 scraps of worked wood that were subsequently radiocarbon
dated to between 980 and 1020--just when Leif visited Vinland.
The configuration of the ruined buildings, the paucity of artifacts and
garbage compared with those found at other sites, and the absence of a cemetery,
stables and holding pens for animals have convinced Birgitta Linderoth Wallace,
the site's official archaeologist, that L'Anse aux Meadows wasn't a permanent
settlement and was used for perhaps less than 10 years.
