Vikings and a Crew Change

2200, Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Today is memorable on two fronts. First, a crew change aboard Tazzarin. Second, a visit to the only confirmed Viking settlement in North America, a stunningly memorable site to share with you.

We took the photo above with three of us playfully posed in front of a sculpture commemorating the landing of Vikings here. I am on the far left,. Mory Creighton, who has been my stalwart crew of the past two weeks is in the center. He departs Tazzarin tonight. On the right is my lifelong friend, Charlie Newhall, who will sail north into Labrador and Nunatsiavut with me. The photo immediately below is of the three of us at dinner tonight in St. Anthony.

Read below for the amazing tale of our Viking experience today...and more photos.

Above is a photo of an incredibly detailed recreation of a Viking dwelling and work shop, a sod covered structure, at L'Anse Aux Meadows, about a 35 minute drive from where we are in St Anthony. The tale of this site is one of global significance.

Somewhere around 150,000 years ago, our species, homo sapient, began migrating out of Central Africa. Through millennia peoples moved up into Western and Eastern Europe, the British Islaes, throughout Asia and India. Eventually they moved across the Aleutian land bridge into Alaska; they spread all the way down into South America. Gradually they made their way to the east coast of North America and into present day Labrador and across to Newfoundland by 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.

Then, around 1,000 years ago (500 years before Columbus sailed) Leif Erickson, son of Erik the Red, sailed a Viking longship to Northern Newfoundland. In the 1960s, archeologists finally found artifacts from 25 years of Viking settlement here; we viewed these artifacts today. We saw the foundations of their homes and work shops and forges.

Even more important than Vikings arriving here was that when Leif Erickson came here, he met and traded with the indigenous peoples who had come the other direction around earth. 1,000 years ago, that meeting was our own species encircling our planet and meeting up with itself again. We all started in the same place, originating as one people who had covered our world.

Because of the significance of this event for our shared culture and history, L'Anse Aux Meadows is UNESCO World Heritage Site number 1. The United Nations views it as the most significant cultural event for humankind, I view it as a recognition that we began as one people with a shared quest to explore and discover our world.

In my own small way, this summer voyage aboard Tazzarin is my own quest to explore the world be sea and meet the many peoples of this region.

Below are a couple more photos of the Parks Canada recreation of that 1,000 year old Viking settlement and peat and sod covered buildings where humankind completed the circle of our planet. I will remember this place.

Bill