8. Promised Lands: Greenland and Vinland

Foundland, Canada, a finger of land that pokes up into the La Brador Sea, where in the

“company of a husband and wife team, an explorer and an archaeologist, both Norwegian.”

The name's a Helga, an Anstina Ingstad. The name laws or medows is a mishmash of French and English. It means "medows cove" and it is a location of particular interest to the Ingstad. For years they have been subscribers to a theory, one that could turn history on its head. But during the peak of the Viking age, a thousand years ago, Norseman had landed on this

very short.

Solid scientific evidence has thus far proven elusive.

There have been well-publicized hoaxes, an all-manor of artifacts dug up, axe heads and

“such like presented as authentically Viking.”

This will turn out to be native American. Rather than hearing off in a wild goose chase, the Ingstad's prefer methodical detective work. That means following the clues in the old Norse sagas. Despite differing perspectives, these medieval texts remain consistent in one thing.

The descriptions of a land across the ocean, a few days sail from Greenland. One they refer to as a land of vines, Vinland. Today you'd be hard-pushed to equate newfoundland with a place where grapes might grow.

“But in the medieval warm period things were different.”

Most likely it is a reference to the goose breeze and cranberries which would have been abundant back then. Once more, the legends of the local indigenous people seemed to corroborate the Norse accounts. The retails of tall, bearded strangers who came in vessels with sails that gave them

the impression of giant birds. The Ingstad's are convinced that newfoundland is ground zero for archaeological evidence. They have put out an appeal to local farmers. The when-in-one who might have a trace of historic dwellings on their land. One farmer responds with words of unusual depressions in his field.

It seems just another disappointment in the offing, the place is called "Indian camp". But what the Ingstad's find there seems quite out of the ordinary. Firstly, Laws or Meadows seems a perfect match for the location described in the sagas. It's a shallow bay with a small river running into it, thus a clear offshore marker, the rocky out crop of great sacred island.

What's more, the ridges and man's beneath the grass correspond uncannily to the layout of a Norse settlement. About eight buildings in total complete with long house and smithy.

If it's what they think it is, then here, finally, is the proof that around 1,000

AD, half a millennium before Columbus explores from Scandinavia, Vikings, at set foot in the new world. I'm Yendlan from the Norse podcast network. This is RealVikings.A. In a previous episode, we saw how Norwegian Emma Grace, disillusioned with the old country, had struck out across the sea for lands in you. For a brief while, Iceland had become a Norse utopia, a land of the free, a place for pioneers

to start a fresh. Unfortunately, those old world woes, chiefly of the criminal kind, had begun to find their way across the Northerlantic. In 982, a convicted murderer, Eric Tobaldson, is summoned before his local assembly and has sentence pronounced upon him. In Iceland's enlightened society,

Eric, subsequently, is settled to lesser outlory, which is a form of outlory that essentially means

“you have to leave the country for three years.”

Julie Banished, Eric Tobaldson's only option is to put to sea. A giant of a man with a shock of open hair. Tobaldson is known to all as Eric the red. Norse explorers have set great store in sailing west. There is an unswerving faith in discovering new lands if you point your prow towards the setting sun. It seemed Vikings island hopped to Orkney, to Shetland, the fairows, and onto Iceland.

They've been encouraged by the yarns of mariners blown off course, offering tantalizing

glimpses of what might be out there. Around the year 920, an old salt, a man named

“gun beyond Orkney. Return to Iceland with tales of a huge snowy landmass beyond the horizon.”

The one too bleak too in a spittable to sustain a settlement. Eric the red has spent enough time in the north Atlantic to know that should such a land exist. It is its far side, its west coast warmed by the Gulf Stream, which will present more favorable living conditions. I mean, what has he got to lose? Professor David Aesori

he decides to make the most of his outlawy and goes to explore this land to the west

the gunbure in the head found. And so, in 982, with his family and toe, Eric the red set sail. He does not know that the land to which he is headed is an island, let alone at 840,000 square miles

“the world's largest. To him it seems a massive peninsula. But his instincts are correct.”

Rounding its southern tip, he navigates his way up through the Warren of coastal waterways. So, Eric does a good job exploring and moves to the west coast, where he finds these long fjords that go in over a hundred kilometers into the land that offer sheltered lowlands with nice pastridge. Dr William fits you. They were very fortunate to have discovered that if you go around from the east coast of Greenland to the west coast, you get into an entirely different climate zone

and those deep fjords back there turned out to be terrific farm sites for their flocks and their animals and so forth. As if it were a gift from the gods and Eric is still a practitioner of the pagan ways, he lies a land right for exploitation. Eric puts a show with his wife, the odd hill door, his three sons leaf, 12-volt and torsty. Plus an illegitimate daughter from another relationship. Her name is Fradis. The family toveled sons settles in.

They build a farm stand they call Bratahalith on what Eric proudly names Eric's fjord. In his sons will use it as a base to explore. Gradually extending their trips, they will sail as far north as the pack ice will allow, noting the plentiful fish, seals and walrus and occasional polar bear. On one trip, they glimpse in the distance, a group of dark haired strangers clambering over the ice flows. They suppose they may be related to the

Correlians of Finland and Russia. The only other people they know to inhabit such northernly latitudes, they will turn out to be paleo-eskimos, hunter-gatherers. There were dorsalic culture people who were like pre-innowate, people had kind of retreated into the northwest beyond where the north least initially were uncovering them. When his three-year ban expires, Eric will return to Iceland but he will do so only briefly. Mindful of growing discontent back home, he determined

to recruit a fresh set of pioneers and expand his settlement into a full-on colony. A Iceland 2.0 And he will do so with a sales pitch of a brazen real estate salesman. He will give his new territory

And of course occasionally this is held up as a piece of rather in accurate sort of early tourist

“board marketing because when you think of Greenland you think that this vast ice sheet that covers”

much of this very large country but actually it wasn't such a funny name for Eric to give because the parts of Greenland where the north settled which were in the south west were in fact Green for much of the year. Eric the Red returns to Iceland. He's quite a salesman and starts talking about the lands being called Greenland. Greenland because there is lentiful passage for a cattle and sheep. He convinces a large group of people from the western

part of Iceland 2. Sales Greenland to start this colony. In 985 AD, sold on Eric's promise, 25 ship set sale for the new promise land.

“He must have been quite an amazing character in addition to being his nasty Viking”

self. He really had a sense of how to organize people and he sent off with 25 ships. I mean that tells you what's going on in Iceland already. The lands filled up and there are all sorts of people who need new territories. It is still tough going. Life on board of Viking ships in the Atlantic Ocean would have been pretty hard. In fact later text rule records tell us that many of the first ships that went out to Greenland didn't actually make it. They were either

wrecked or they had to turn back. North ships were incredible. The ones that would have crossed the

north Atlantic would have been bigger and sturdier than the ones that we might think of as attacking the monasteries of Britain and Ireland. So they'd have been good for ocean voyages, they'd have been good for transporting whole generations of families together with all their goods and all their livestock. There are no cabins or lower decks, just benches in the open. Sleep is grabbed under blankets made of skin, furs and walls. In rough seas it is not a lot of fun.

One thing that people often ask is how did they go to the Lou and from people who sail in reconstructed north ships they've said well probably over the side you know if it's

“calm enough and maybe you have to hold on to someone else if it was choppy air, we also need to”

think about what sort of clothes they'd have need for the voyage. So course thick wool and garments for insulation, lots of layers and then there's the question of the food it would have had to be dried or salted meat or fish and to drink you'd have had to have rainwater or perhaps bear or sour milk. In fact only 14 of the 25 ships make it but such is life in the world of north seafaring. Thaid was a huge factor in the back of everything that you did and the Viking

religion you know it was very well suited for this kind of unpredictable life you know everything was predetermined. Eric's Fiord will soon be upgraded. Maybe it's the sales pattern again but this burgeoning colony in the west is redubbed confusingly the eastern settlement. It's so successful that an overspill community has established 120 miles to the north. It was urged on the very margins a farmable land they had shorter summers and longer

harsher. Winters but it had its own advantages particularly hunting and mountains they're by full of soapstone for making lamps and bowls and most importantly of all it was very close to what the Norse called the northern hunting grounds where they hunted especially for walrus because walrus everywhere was incredibly valuable. So in further confusion the northern outpost will be called the western settlement. It will be the foundation for the later capital god thab or good hope.

In 1979 it will be renamed in the Inuit language as nuke. Within a few short years there will be up to 5,000 Norse greenlanders maintaining around three to 400 farms. There is a geographical issue here greenland is technically part of the American continent

in which case Eric the Red and Co are already the new world's first European settlers.

the west of Iceland beyond the continental divide that by sex the island is also geographically

“part of North America. But convention and culture orientate greenland like Iceland”

towards Europe. One can perhaps state that no European yet a set foot on the American mainland. In the summer of 1986 an Icelander named Bjani Heihofson is sailing home from Norway looking forward to reuniting with his father. On landing however he hears that bjani senior is just one of the many to have upsticks who have cached in on the greenland bubble. In possession of a solid ocean going ship bjani follows.

Unfortunately an unusual period of calm whether sees him drift aimlessly for days on end. When a thick fog lifts he finds himself offshore from a land teaming with thick pine forests and a macular white beaches. This bjani recognizes is not greenland.

“Excited at the discovery his crew prepares to row ashore but to their eternal regret bjani forbids it.”

He's more interested in picking up a subtly wind and zipping straight back. The land almost certainly is the dense forested coast of today's Labrador Canada. And thus bjani Heihofson by way of obstinacy and a couple of hundred yards denies himself his Neil Armstrong moment. Back in Greenland Eric is now loading it like a quasi king. His farm abruptly it becomes the political center of Greenland.

There is an assembly site that he establishes right next to his farm that Greenlanders meet every year. So right from the beginning Eric the red and his family have a level of political control in Greenland.

“Here bjani Heihofson's tribulations are met less with excitement at the prospect of more land out there”

than incredulity at his lack of adventure. Eric buys bjani ship and plans to show him what any true Viking should have done. Though probably in his 50s by now Eric has a last minute rethink. A fall from his horse on his way to the jetty confirms it. He's too old for this log. Instead he delegates his eldest son leaf to lead the mission and thus some time around the turn of the new millennium, leaf, son of Eric, leaf, erickson, sails into the sunset.

Now the Sarger's described life as promising. They say he was a tall and strong man in very

impressive in appearance. He was a shrewd man and always moderate in his behavior.

Life does appear occasionally in Sarger's other than the two Vinden Sarger's. So for example in the Sarger of King Olaf Trickserson, it's King Olaf of Norway who sends life off to convert Greenland to Christianity. For their king bringing new lands into his realm, Christianizing them into the bargain will be a big boost to his beleaguered reign. To this end, leaf will often be presented in imagery with a huge crucifix round his neck.

Despite his father's defiant paganism, his mother is already a convert. She's had a church built at Bratahlyith. The when it comes to heading west, it seems that

leaf's motivation is practical. But never ending quest for resources,

chiefly in the form of timber. In these early years Greenland was pretty well endowed, but they quickly realized that they're going to have to find more supplies to fix up their boats and build their houses and so forth. So that was definitely something that spurred, you know, life's voyages. That, in a case of what's in the family blood, a good old-fashioned yen for exploration. The notion of Norseman landing in North America often

conjures visions of long boats putting out on an epic 3,000 mile transatlantic journey, an accidental discovery in the manner of Columbus. But it was not like that at all. Then new world is reached according to the pattern laid down long ago, discovery by incremental extension. At its narrowest point, the gap between northern Greenland

is still only 200 odd miles, about the distance from Bergen to Shetland. Small beer for a Viking.

“Heading west leave traverses the Davis Strait, following the trail of puffins and flightless”

orcs, a penguin like bird since extinct. Is fully confident that land will soon be a high. After four days, it is, a strand of boulders and rocks corresponding exactly to the location and terrain of today's "Baffin Island". He names it, "Helloland", "Stone Slabland". Wading ashore towards Leaf Ericsson and his men the claim, according to interpretation

of being the first Europeans to land in North America.

Two days sail further south, leafen his men a light upon the same tree-line shore that bearnied scene. Leaf names it, "Markland" for his land. Two to three days after that,

“leaf pulls his ship and on the left bank of a narrow channel. It is today's Bell Isle Strait,”

the waterway that separates Newfoundland from Lapperdore. The place now occupied by Long's Omeadows. It's a good spot. It has a shallow bay, a river for fresh water,

as much timbres they could ever have dreamed of. There is peat for fuel, edible wild rice.

There is grassland for their animals. And it's easy to find. Identifiable due to a small island in the channel, a handy landmark. It is also strategically placed. Beyond it, the Strait widens out into the vast Gulf of St. Lawrence. It is, as they were found, a land of plenty. Leaf splits his 32 men into two groups. In rotation, one party will build a camp. The other will scout the terrain. One of them, a German by the name of Tricker, gets lost. But he emerges

from the woods later his arms laden with berries, or grapes as the Norse refer to them in a collective term. In the saga of the Greenlanders, they reach a land where the weather was fine and winters are mild and there's salmon and wild grain and grapes. And this is the place that is then named Vinland, which is roughly translated as wine land. So it's a wine land and part of the

“products that are found there are grapes. I think grapes making wine, which could have been an”

important resource for the Vikings. This land also has broad pastureage and has a temperature that allows animals to be kept outside for the winter, which would be remarkable for Scandinavian Sliving, in Greenland and Iceland where animals had to be kept indoors for a good portion of the winter. Vinland will appear not just in the sagas. It will be detailed in the book of the Icelanders, so to the writings of Andreas of Bremen, who records Vinland's name in 1075. Such things inspire

later Mariners, John, Cabot, Martin Frobrischer, and most notably Christopher Columbus. Prior to his own historic voyage, he will spend time sailing the waters around Iceland. Back in Vinland, the fermented berries are used by Leafsman to get warring runk, easing their labours as they knock together some crude wood and turf buildings. The settlement will be called Leafsburther, Leafsburther, suggesting it to be a temporary setup.

But Leaf is a chip of the old block. He soon has ideas about starting up another colony. His party returns to Greenland, laden with timber and berries as salesman samples. Unfortunately, in Leafs absence his father, Eric, has died. Charge now with having to run Greenland himself, Leaf ops to stay put. It was his one and only visit to the new world.

What happens next is still open to conjecture. The Vinland sagas present different versions of events. They're comprised of two volumes entitled, the Greenlander saga and Eric the Red saga,

But both agree that that summer leaf dispatches his brother,

“tow vault, to take over where he left off.”

It's summer in the year 1003, or thereabouts. Some way south of Leafsburther. The thick forest comes right down to the waterline. The air is pure, still. The water is crystal clear. Over the past two years, tow vault has set about developing his brother's camp into a more permanent settlement. Today he and his man have set out on one of their ranging explorations.

Here they have put a shore, examining trees hunting for wildlife.

When, up ahead, further along the beach they spy would appear to be three miles,

the approach with caution.

“What they find are upturned boats made from animal hide,”

commos, and there beside the boats, sleeping in the shade, I'm nine men. Their appearances are unusual, unlike anything they've seen. They are slighter built and dressed in animal skins. They have long dark hair and broad features with narrow eyes. And for the moments snoozing away, they are blissfully unaware of the hulking Norseman looming over them.

Inevitably one of the strangers is disturbed. He lets out a piercing scream. It will give rise to the derogatory nickname the Norse will apply to all indigenous American peoples. Scrailings, screamers, or screechers.

“The scrailings try to scramble away, but tow vault's men have got them surrounded. All”

but one are rounded up. Two Norseman draw swords and set off in hot pursuit of the lonerscapee who's legged it into the woods, but the man knows the terrain and the thick of the forest to use as them. The Norseman creep on. They follow the ground as it rises, not realizing they are now at the top of a giant ridge. The site before them is a wonder to behold, majestic, mind-blowing, thick, lush as pine trees that seem to stretch on forever.

But they see a whisp of smoke rising from a clearing, a settlement, a village, and they sense too that there, deep in the forest, they are not alone. Knowing that the alarm will be raised, they rush back to the beach. They must put to see immediately, get the hell out of there. Sure enough, coming around the headland now is a flotiller of canoes, dozens of them, and their occupants are wielding bows and arrows.

For the Norseman, there is no room on their long boat for the eight scrailings they have captured. On the spot, they are put to the sword. Under a hail of arrows, the Norseman pushed their ship back into the water and sailed away. Out to sea, out of danger, the man relax. The damage seems light. The tow vault has been struck under the armpit that turns out. He hadn't even noticed.

The wound will prove worse than it looks. The arrowhead has gone right in, close to his heart and lungs, with an hour as he will be dead. He is buried ashore in a short Christian ceremony, at a landing referred to as cross-a-ness, the place of the crosses.

It's been an inglorious day. The first deaths of Native Americans at the hands of European settlers.

The first death of a European at the hands of Native Americans. The saga is lumped all these different peoples together and a cool them scrilling art, which is not a very nice name. And their encounters can be quite unpleasant. They can be violent, they're killings. But there is also trade. And so it really mirrors cultural encounters that we see between Europeans and indigenous Americans in the centuries to come.

According to the sagas, the two cultural groups come into contact during the voyages after life. They're probably describing ancestors of the Inu, of Labrador, and the Beotook of Newfoundland. And then possibly Father South, those living in the settlements

The North, after a third winter, returned to Greenland.

Wishing to repatriate his brothers' remains, Torstein puts to see, but he's unable to locate these new lands. When he later dies from illness, his widow, Goodread, Remaris, this time to a wealthy Icelandic merchant. His name is Torfin Kalsephny. And Torfin Kalsephny will prove to be the most significant of the Norse-American pioneers. Embarking in around 1007, Kalsephny and Goodread take three ships in about 160 settlers in

sail to Vinland. They make their base at a place Kalsephny will call Stromfjärd. Where exactly

“Stromfjärd lies no one knows. Is it simply an upgraded leavesbother, or somewhere else entirely?”

What is known is that while there, Goodread gives birth to a baby boy, Snorry.

And in another entry in the Annals of History, Snorry will become the first child of European

Ancestry to be born in the Americas. This may, on the noise of podcast network, real Vikings concludes as the epic excursions of the Norsemen culminate in a monumental showdown. On short history of, will witness the world-changing events of the Spanish Civil War and uncover the real James Bond. On real survival stories, a remarkable tale of escape from a devastating earthquake in China

“and an extraordinary encounter with a humpback whale. And in Sherlock Holmes' short stories,”

where amidst the misty expense of dot-more, for one of Conan Doyle's most beloved works, the Hound of the Baskowills. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. And by the way, a short history of ancient Rome, Noiser's first book is out now in paperback, available in all good bookshops. Carl Seffny's colonists will be notable for a far more convivial relationship

with newfoundland's Biodook people. At least at first, it is a relationship that evolves through butter and trade. The Biotooks are captivated by the Norsemen's colorful clothes,

“particularly anything red, and their weapons made of a hard shiny substance unknown to them.”

The Norsemen whale are amazed that the Biotooks will casually give up someptuous animal first for just a small ration of Goats milk. It will, in its own small way, lead to inadvertent friction. The Native Americans' lactose intolerance and consequent upset stomachs will lead to suspicion that the income is appoisening them. Violence will again raise its ugly head. Causs Effney, as a precaution, has banned any trade in weaponry.

The indigenous people, on the other hand, they were not people who were concerned with private property. Everything was communal and these initial contacts looked like they were, you know, pretty good. But, you know, people started borrowing things from the Norse that they didn't want to have borrowed, and it rapidly, you know, decayed. It is why I'll try to take a Norse sword that a Biotook youth is killed. Soon the colonists are building a stock aid around their

come to ward off indigenous attacks. In one such assault as the story goes, there is salence that's sent packing by the sight of a bull, a settlers abroad with them.

A creature they had never seen the likes of before. It is compounded by the evidently alarming

prospect of freders. The Ericsson's half-sisters swinging her weapon at the enemy, in the manner of an old-fashioned shield maiden. Flagus-edic-storted was one of the children of Eric Derrette. In the saga of the Greenlanders, she's a really dark, like scary figure. Fragus picks up a sword from a dead warrior, and at this point she's very heavily pregnant, and the saga tells us that she turns to face the attackers. She bears one of her breasts, and she slaps it with the sword,

which terrifies the attackers who then run away. After a third winter in North America,

lead a fourth and final attempted securing a foothold in Finland. Unfortunately, she has inherited

“her father's nose for trouble. In an infamous episode, Fragus will stir up a conflict between”

two factions of settlers which were result in the mass murder of one half of the colony. Back in hand, she was slaughtered the woman for personally, or so they say. There could be a reason behind Fragus' bad rep. The story of Vinland will later be rewritten almost like a biblical parable. Fragus is the pagan savage, the convenient scapegoat blame for the colony's demise, and then there are the wild berries, the wine, with its communion relevance, enabling

villain to be promoted as a saintly paradise, a garden of Eden, until the heathen temptress came along.

“Interestingly, an old Norse Vin with a shorter ith sound doesn't mean grape sotoll. It means”

posture. Vinland could have been the land of grass all along. In the long term, the villain

the colony was always doomed. When Carl Seffini was there later on, he departed, and they all said,

"Well, you know, this is a wonderful land, but there's too many screelings that are already occupied, so that was the first time that they ended up with a real social problem in the new lands that they were tried to settle." What's more, any produce Vinland has to offer, trees, fish, seals, deer, fur, can also be found much closer to home, in places like Finland and Russia. The prized war

“receivory, too, used throughout Europe and church ornaments, was soon be rivaled by elephant tusks”

from Africa. Not that interactions with North America do not continue. In 1978, a coin that had been uncovered in a native American site in coastal Maine, 20 years earlier, is determined to be of Norse origin. The main penny, as it is known, had had a whole punched in it, worn as a pendant. So the penny is remarkable because it's dated to 1065 to 1080, which is 78 decades after the Vinland voyage is took place. So it's a very

clear evidence that Vinland Norse were still visiting Labrador and Mark Land and looking for wood and so forth, but not trying any longer to settle, so they traded with the native people and some of those trade goods worked their way for themselves. There's also a very large number of Norse materials that have been found in Inuit sites in the Canadian Arctic as well. Likewise, native American artifacts, harrow heads and such like, have been discovered in Norse

dwellings in Greenland. One Viking Randy there was found buried in his prized possession, a buffalo skin cloak. He can only have originated from America's western plains. It's August the 13th, 1876, we're in Bairroid, Bavaria, at the Fest Spielhaus Opera House. The audience is on ten docks, ready for the premiere of Richard Wagner's New Opus, their ring-desk Nibeluchen, the ring cycle. It's a work that took 26 years to write and at 15 hours

running time needs four whole nights to perform. Mounted on an extraordinary scale, it is a rip-roaring exercise in pagan romanticism, Germanic, Norse. It features Odin, Loki, Freya Valhalla. It has its bombastic showstopper number, the ride of the Valkyries. And it is climaxed on the fourth night, the Gotta Dameron, with a proverbial fat lady singing. The Bucksham picked hailed soprano, Roon Hilder, bedecked in a horn helmet, the very source

of Viking misrepresentation. Wagner is not the first to cash in on this new found veneration of the

Valkyrieshore, folkloreic, is merely riding away. It is an aesthetic being channeled by

unification of Germany. Later, it will be pursued to sinister, cataclysmic extremes in the racial

“politics of the Nazis. It was in 1830 that a modern version of the Vinland Sargas was published”

by a Danish antiquarian, Carl Christian Raffin. This kicked off a rediscovery of the Vikings and Norse culture. It was Raffin who popularized the notion of Norseman arriving in America. This resulted in a flourishing of Norse folkloreic societies in the United States too. And it led to all manner of bogus Viking art of haxping offered up for public consumption. A stone tower in Rhode Island was utilized as a genuine Viking relic, even though it was built

in the mid-1600s. And in 1898, in Kensington, Minnesota, a farmer of Swedish stock caused a sensation when purportedly unearthing a tablet of Norse engravings. It suggested Vikings that arrived in the

“American Midwest via the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes. It was inscribed with a date,”

1362. The Kensington Roonstone as it became known was soon exposed as an elaborate hoax. Much of it is just wishful thinking on the part of the large Scandinavian diaspora in the American Midwest. An attempt to claim a stake in their new nation's identity. No doubt some of it is manipulated to political ends. Although Columbus was very much part of the origin story of European America, actually, he was possibly a little bit too Catholic for the liking of Protestant

American citizens. And so Vikings were somewhat conflated with Anglo-Saxons to imply some sort of ancestral link to sort of modern, white Americans. And of course that very dangerously contributes

“to a racial myth of white Anglo-Saxon colonizers bringing their superior abilities and civilizations.”

The World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 was meant to celebrate the Columbus Quadraniel. It had become an orgy of Viking pageantry, complete with longship sailing across Lake Michigan. In our present day, the Midwest and embrace of its cultural legacy seems more a case of local passion, most famously evident in sport. This is the pride of the of the folks up out there in Minnesota, the Viking football team and this kind of stuff. So there's an awful lot of that

interesting social phenomenon which indicates, you know, the Viking story is not over, you know, it's still being created and still being carried on by Scandinavian descended peoples who are looking towards the history and reveling in it. In 1914, a more scientific quest for proof begins. An amateur historian, William F. Mum, owns in on Newfoundland as a potential location for a north-landing. He's followed by Danish archaeologist, Johann Melgall. He starts more

organized, though ultimately fruitless search there. They, like the ink studs, are inspired not just

by the sagas, but by the resurfacing but chart that had been drawn up in around 1570. There's a map called the Skalholt map, which is a very famous map because it shows this northern promontorium, which is called the promontorium. We land to come and it's exactly where the north Viking site turned out to be. And so using partly this as his guide, the ink stud went and landed at that in that location and you know, as soon as ink studs saw the shape of the

houses you knew exactly that this had to be the long-lost settlement of Finland. At lawns or medows, it's not just the buildings, the ink studs on cover. There are the tell-tale shards of Jasper that the north typically used as fire starters. When the remains of the eight turf structures,

at Lensomenos were first discovered, the typology of the buildings looked Scandinavian.

But took a little while before the community, the Skalholt community accepted it. And really, the overwhelming evidence was the discovery of a bronze ring pin of a Scandinavian Celtic type that became popular in the north Atlantic, which dates the site

Will afford a valuable insight into the life of the people who, as carbon dating confirms,

“had traveled to these shores a thousand years before. And abundance of nails, rivets,”

and the presence of a smithy suggests the site was ultimately used as a shipyard,

somewhere to pull in for repair, or to restock supplies on the way to somewhere else. So archaeologists found the remains of some larger halls, which were probably for living in, and others that were smaller and may have been workshops. There seemed to have been boat repairs and carpentry and textile production in those smaller places. There are also intriguingly plenty of butternut husks. And what's interesting about that is that butternut only graves for the south.

Butternuts do not grow in Newfoundland and only come from the area to the south of the Bay of St. Lawrence. So we know from the archaeology that they would have explored at least as far as places like New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The layer of ash within the site shows that this settlement was in use for around 10 years, and that it was eventually burnt down, perhaps as a farewell ritual by its inhabitants, or more likely on the part of hostiles.

Before the discovery, it was widely believed that these stories could be fancy. After the discovery of Lansomadows, it seems that at least the core of the stories recorded in

“Eric Saga and Greenland and Saga are based on historical events. I think we can”

believe a core historical accuracy in the Saga as a result. In the Saga, Kalsafni also mentions his settlement further south, which he calls Hop. It translates as "title pool," another bay on natural harbor of some sort. One of the main differences is Greenlander Saga, only describes one settlement, and that is

"Lave Sputes." Eric Saga, on the other hand, describes two sites. The first one is thrown

through a stream through the second one is called Hop, and we cannot reach agreement about whether there are three sites, two sites, or one sites in reality. All archaeology has provided us with is one archaeological site. Some suggest Hop may lay down at Cape Cod, Massachusetts,

“perhaps even as far as what is now New York Harbor. We shall never know.”

Ultimately, Vinland was unsustainable because of what was happening in Greenland itself. The Norse Greenlanders were farmers like in the rest of the Norse diaspora. And even in good times, that meant they were locked into a really delicate balance of hunting and farming. If you're there in the summer, it can be really lush and really green, and then when it comes to September, the days grow very short, and a few words freeze, and then the long and very, very harsh winter

is on its way. And that meant for the Norse Greenlanders, if they had a few bad farming years, or a hunting disaster that brought the merchant ships fail to arrive from Norway or Iceland, then life would have got very difficult very quickly. By the late 1200s, the temperature was also falling. The northern hemisphere was entering the little ice age. Life that was already tough was becoming near impossible.

So the problem is that the Norse had their heyday expansion during this medieval warm period.

Then when the downturn came, it was a huge problem. For keeping their animals alive, they would have to carry them out from the buyers and the winter. At the end of the winter, they were too weak to be able to stand on their own feet to feed and so forth. Politically, Norway had also turned inward, racked by civil war. Greenland, its harbors increasingly ice-bound, was a remote outlier. People who were financing the voyages

were no longer willing to take chances, sending boats to Greenland, so things went south really quickly. Disease 2 had found its way across the North Atlantic. There were instances of the plague in Iceland. Though in Greenland, malnutrition was the biggest killer. Mail skeletons on Earth from the last days of the Western settlement reveal an average adult height of just five feet. So much for your

to survive, but the old and the sick were routinely thrown off the cliff tops.

“And we see then that the more marginal Western settlement disappears, maybe in the middle of the”

14th century. Contacts with the east become increasingly sporadic, even more so when the black death hits Norway and then it hits Iceland just after 1400. And by the end of the 15th century, the colony of North Greenland has vanished. It really appears that there was kind of like a full-scale

evacuation of Greenland. The withdrawal had come ominously on the back of further raids by

so-called "scrailings" this time, the two leap people. Four runners of the Inuit were migrated across from Alaska. One of the successes of Viking culture had been its ability to adapt,

“but that was back in the pagan days. The Christianising of Greenland cast the scrailings”

as heathens, not peoples with whom the Norse should interact. The Norse clung to a pastoral farming

method, they never fully embraced the life of the latitudes, like hunting for seagulls or whales.

It all came while up and down, you know, very quickly, partly because, you know, the church began to be taking tides sucking a lot of the wealth out of the Greenland economy as well. With Vinland and Greenland gone, Iceland became the end of the line. The search for evidence of a Viking presence in the Americas goes on.

“There have been purported ruins found etched near Toronto, claims of evidence of Norse copper mining”

near Lake Superior, and many more incidents besides. There are ancient legends of blonde, blue-eyed warriors in Central America, and the Andes of Peru, of long boats sailing up the Amazon. To date, Norse or Meadows is the only Norse site that has ever been uncovered. And it's not for lack of trying. Many archaeologists have wasted field seasons and broken their backs, looking for Scandinavian sites in Canada, including me. It's a bit of a needle in a haystack

to try to find another Scandinavian archaeological site. In North America, I am pretty confident that one will at some point be found, and probably will be found with the use of new technologies. Time will tell. Either way, the site in Newfoundland remains conclusive proof that for a while, the Viking realm had spread not just across Europe, Asia and North Africa. It's spanned their hemispheres. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, the link between civilizations

was complete. In the next episode, back in England, Earthal read the unready attempts to purge Norsemen from Israel. Military intervention sees Viking kings being placed on the Anglo-Saxon throne, and to canoe the Great, England will become part of a vast, sprawling dominion. One that spans cultures and continents. The North Sea Empire. That's next time.

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