Leif Eiriksson Slept Here

July 23, 2009
Quirpon, Newfoundland
51°35.8N
055°27.8W

The big attraction here was L’Anse aux Meadows, site of a Norse landing over 1000 years ago. They’d left their home and colonized Iceland and Greenland. The search for greener pastures led them to the tip of Newfoundland.

Russ has been reading Tony Horwitz’s A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering The New World. Horwitz makes the point that when the Norse landed in Newfoundland and met up with the locals, the two branches of the human family tree were meeting for the first time since one branch spread to Europe and the other across Asia and over the land bridge to North America. It did not go well.

Norse called the locals Skraeling which translates roughly as “screecher”, “wretch,” “ugly.” They were short and dark and to the tall, blond Norse must have looked alien indeed. And vice versa I’m sure. The first Norse/Skraeling encounter left 8 Skraeling dead and the Norse expedition leader, Thorvald, mortally wounded.

The Norse settled here anyway, began farming and eventually trading with the locals. Things turned sour in the diplomacy/trade department and the site was abandoned. But not before Gudrid gave birth to a boy. His name . . . Snorri. It would be almost 600 years before another child of European descent was born in North America.

We borrowed the ferryman’s car and drove up to L’anse Aux Meadows. It’s a National Park and Parks Canada has done a good job interpreting. Recreated buildings and costumed interpreters give you a sense of how the Norse lived and worked. Norse men and women and their Irish slaves made up the inhabitants.

I spoke with the Chief’s wife, Gudrin, who was embroidering a beautiful cape that she’d woven. Seeing her outside of the interpretive area I asked if her knowledge of weaving and sewing led her to the job or it was something she’d learned once she had the job. Growing up, she said, her Mother never taught her any of the sewing arts because she didn’t know them. Turns out her mother who had to sew clothes, hook rugs, knit scarves and mittens, etc. was determined that none of her girls would need to do such menial work and she never taught them. Two generations removed from needlecraft being a necessity, it’s become a pleasure. The interpreter is now teaching her mother how to knit.

Standing on the beach and looking out at the rocky, shallow Bay it was hard to see why they picked this place. But a thousand years ago the sea level was higher and this would’ve been a good spot for their shallow draft boats.

The Norse wore a lot of tools on their person so they wouldn’t loose them. One item really intrigued me – an earwax spoon. It’s a small wooden spoon used for, you guessed it, removing ear wax. Which begs two questions: Did they have that much more ear wax than we do now? and What did they do with it?