This interesting article provides more information on what is going on up in Canada insofar as the archaeological sites that may be Norse recently discovered on Newfoundland.
The only real difference to an earlier post is the map, but I include the whole article again for those who may not have happened by previously.
As you look at the map, the three landmasses depicted in yellow are Baffin Island, Labrador, and Newfoundland.
The author attributes too much credence to the sagas when he states that Leif Eiriksson called the new land Vinland. Nobody knows what Leif called anyplace that he voyaged to because he left no written record. The name Vinland was coined by a single writer: the sagas that the author refers to were written by a German cleric named Adam of Bremen who is responsible for all the wheat and grape references that are so popular with writers nowadays.
Oh, did I tell you that Adam of Bremen wrote this fiction 200+ years after the facts that he shovels. Make your own determination about his contentions. The sagas make interesting reading for the most part. They are neither accurate or historical, but rather assumptions penned several hundred years after the facts they espouse by people who never visited any of the places they write about. (Ed.)
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by Owen Jarus, Live Science
Contributor | April 18, 2016 08:21am ET
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Map showing location of possible sites, from Live Science |
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Another possible Viking site, located at a place called Point Rosee in southern Newfoundland, was discovered using satellite imagery.
Credit: Image courtesy Point Rosee Project
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Three archaeological sites that
may have been used by Vikings around 1,000 years ago were excavated recently in
Canada. If confirmed, the discoveries would add to the single known Viking
settlement in the New World, located at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip
of Newfoundland. Excavated in the 1960s, that Viking outpost was used
for a short period of time around 1,000 years ago as well.
Sagas from the time of the
Vikings tell tales of their journeys into the New World, mentioning places
named "Helluland" (widely believed to be modern-day Baffin Island),
"Markland" (widely believed to be Labrador) and "Vinland,"
which is a more mysterious location that some archaeologists have argued could
be Newfoundland. [
See Photos
of the Newfound Viking Sites]
Even so, pinpointing actual
Viking remains or other clues of Viking settlements has been difficult, making
the three sites — two in Newfoundland and the other in the Arctic —
intriguing to archaeologists.
Point Rosee
Sarah Parcak, a professor at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham, and her colleagues spotted the
so-called Point Rosee site in southern Newfoundland while scanning
satellite imagery, and announced their discovery a few weeks ago.
The team found what may be a
hearth used to roast bog iron, as well as a structure, of some type, made with
turf. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the site was used sometime between the
ninth and 13th centuries.
These finds, the researchers say,
suggest that Vikings may have used the site, though more dating information and
excavation are needed to confirm that idea, they said. Additionally, even if it
is a Viking site, it's uncertain how long the Vikings lived there.
"I think that all of us
would be in agreement in urging you to relay the preliminary nature of the
findings — the unconfirmed cultural and period affiliations," said team
co-director Gregory Mumford, who is also a professor at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham.
Sop's Arm
Another possible Viking site
turned up after archaeologists investigated a series of peculiar holes in a
small town called Sop's Arm near White Bay, about 120 miles (200 kilometers)
south of L'Anse aux Meadows. Archaeologists say that these
"pitfalls," which have been known to exist near the town, would have
been used to trap large animals, such as caribou.
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The possible bog iron roasting hearth can be seen beside the structure made of turf at Point Rosee.
Credit: 1- Photo courtesy Gregory Mumford
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In 1961, Helge Ingstad, the
archaeologist who would excavate L'Anse aux Meadows, was guided to the pitfalls
by a local man named Watson Budden. Ingstad thought it was likely that the
Vikings had constructed the holes, but he didn't excavate them.
In 2010, archaeologists surveyed
and excavated the pitfalls. They found that the pitfalls form a 269-foot-long
(82 meters) system that lies in an almost straight line, the team wrote in an
article published in the journal Acta Archaeologica in 2012. Each of the pits
is about 23 to 33 feet (7 to 10 m) long and about 5 to 7.5 feet (1.5 to 2.3 m)
deep.
Perhaps the Vikings drove animals
toward the pits, where they would have fallen in and been killed, said Kevin
Mcaleese, a curator of archaeology and ethnology at the Provincial Museum of
Newfoundland and Labrador. The team did find stones inside the pitfalls that
could have injured animals that had fallen inside. However, the archaeologists
didn't find any artifacts and were unable to obtain clear radiocarbon dates for
the pits.
"No Newfoundland and
Labrador aboriginal group or archaeological culture is known in historic times
or in ancient times to have regularly trapped animals with pitfalls,"
Mcaleese said. "I am developing a research plan for the site and area, but
have not yet secured funds."
Kent Budden, nephew of Watson
Budden, collected a number of what he suspects are Norse artifacts from the
Sop's Arm area, including an iron ax and other iron artifacts, as well as a
stone that has what could be a serpent carved into it.
Kent Budden died in 2008, and his
brother Owen Budden showed photographs of the artifacts to Live Science.
(Before he died, Kent Budden also gave a presentation of the collection, which
can now be seen on
YouTube.)
Mcaleese said he is not very
familiar with the collection. "What I have seen does not appear to be
Norse, and my colleagues think similarly," he said.
Nanook
The Vikings also may have
settled, at least for a bit, in Nanook on Baffin Island. Researchers recently
discovered the remains of a building that may have been constructed by the
Vikings and artifacts that may have been used in metalworking. Among the
artifacts was a stone crucible that may "represent the earliest evidence
of high-temperature nonferrous metalworking in the New World north of
Mesoamerica," wrote a team of archaeologists in a paper published in 2014
in the journal Geoarchaeology.
A structure that
may
have been used by the Vikings was in the process of being excavated in
2012, when lead archaeologist Patricia Sutherland was abruptly fired from the
Canadian Museum of Civilization (now called the Canadian Museum of History) and
the excavations were terminated.
Many Canadian archaeologists
condemned Sutherland's abrupt termination and the decision to end the project.
They noted that the Canadian government, which owned the museum and funded her
project, proceeded to pour millions of dollars
into
locating and excavating a ship destroyed in 1847 during the ill-fated
Franklin expedition. This expedition, led by Sir John Franklin, aimed to find a
sea route through the Canadian Arctic between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The expedition ended with the death of Franklin and his crew.
This funding decision led to
accusations that the federal government favored research into British remains
over those of the Vikings. In 2015, a new federal government was elected, but
it remains unknown whether it will fund new research at the Nanook site.
Where is
Vinland?
One of the mysteries that
researchers have been trying to solve is the location of a place that the
Viking sagas call "Vinland" (wine land). Historical texts describe a
place where grapes and timber could be found.
Famed Viking explorer Leif
Ericson is said to have led an expedition to Vinland. The sagas say that
Ericson was so impressed by what he found that he told his crew that,
"from now on, we have two jobs on our hands: On one day, we shall gather
grapes, and on the next, we shall cut grapevines and chop down the trees to
make a cargo for my ship." The stories, as translated by Einar Haugen in
the 1942 book "Voyages to Vinland: The First American Saga," go on to
say that "Leif gave this country a name to suit its resources: He called
it Vinland."
Grapes don't grow as far north as
Newfoundland, leaving some researchers to speculate that Vinland is located
farther south, possibly around New Brunswick, Nova Scotia or Maine. Others
think that Newfoundland is Vinland and that the "grapes" could refer
to wild berries, which are found in abundance in Newfoundland.
So far, no potential Viking sites
have been discovered south of Newfoundland, although a coin, minted in Norway
between A.D. 1065 and 1080, was discovered in Maine in 1957 by an amateur
archaeologist at a Native American site. How the coin arrived at that site is a
mystery.