Hurricane Bill has come and gone. It hammered Sydney, NS and the Bonavista Peninsula here in Newfoundland but the only effect it had on us is disrupting the ferry schedule. We couldn't get a reservation until Saturday so we are biding our time in the northernmost reaches of Newfoundland near St. Anthony at the end of the Viking Trail.
We wonder why schools insist on perpetrating the myth of Columbus
“discovering” America? Sure, they
taught us about Leif Erikson and his father, Erik the Red but it was always “In
fourteen hundred and ninety-two….”
Up here at L’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland they know the
real story.
L’Anse was declared a UNESCO World Cultural Site in ’78,
even before the Great Pyramid at Giza received the honor. It’s pretty much agreed that Norsemen,
maybe even Leif himself, arrived here from their base in Greenland around the
end of the first millennium. The
settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows was occupied off and on as an exploration
stepping stone five centuries before Ferdinand and Isabella even knew Columbus.
Careful research of the old Norse sagas led to archeological
excavations that uncovered the remains of buildings, a forge, and artifacts
that present a pretty good picture of life in this inhospitable land. It’s estimated that perhaps ten times
as many people wintered here then as do now! But this isn’t the fabled Vinland – that is most likely in
New Brunswick, the northernmost place where grape vines are found.
