This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Reproduction of Norse sod building at L'Anse aux Meadows.


L’Anse aux Meadows. The Icelandic saga The Tale of the Green-


The Meeting of Two Worlds, sculpture at L'Anse aux Meadows commemorating the first encounter of Europeans and North American indigenous people. By the Bulgarian-born sculptor Luben Boykov, now a resident of Newfoundland, and Swedish national Richard Brixel. Unveiled 2002.


landers (Groenlendina thattr) recounts the voyage with topographic detail that proves out today. Modern historians with solid seafaring experience say these passages were meant to be navigation guides. The Harvard historian and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison notably popularized the solid historical basis of the sagas in his magisterial The European Discovery of America; The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500 – 1600 (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1971). Morison emphasizes Leif ’s description of the furdurstrandir (Wonder Strands). This description matches a 30-mile stretch of sandy beach sloping to a level for- est of black spruce that is a unique feature of the southern Labrador coast. Leif named it Markland and sailed two days south. This leg brought him to the northern tip of present- day Newfoundland, where he founded a small village, now firmly identified as the archaeo- logical site at L’Anse aux Meadows.


40 AMERICAN INDIAN SPRING 2015 Generations of often far-fetched specula-


tion were finally resolved in the 1960s with the location and excavation of L’Anse aux Mead- ows. Initial work by Anne Stine and Helge Ing- stad uncovered foundations of three large halls closely resembling 11th


century turf-covered


Iceland and Greenland structures. In all, the work revealed eight houses, four workshops and an iron forge, with 50 or so iron artifacts in Norse style. The buildings were built at one time as a base camp for Norse operations, and burned when the Norse evacuated. Two subsequent Norse expeditions appar-


ently used this site, and inaugurated a not- very-happy sequence of aboriginal contacts. Leif ’s brother Thorvald returned for two summers from 1004–05. During an explo- ration the second summer, he spotted three canoes on a shore, with three Natives sleep- ing underneath each. His crew killed eight of them, apparently without provocation. The one who escaped returned reinforced by a


WIKICOMMONS


PHOTO COURTESY OF KAI PETAINEN


PHOTO COURTESY OF JAMES AND CHARLEEN SCOTT


PHOTO COURTESY OF KAI PETAINEN


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