[Earlier this
month, I traveled to Iceland for the first time, a nation with recently
discovered historical connections to the Americas. So this week I’ll
AmericanStudy the culture at the heart of those ties, leading up to a special
post on a few takeaways from the trip itself!]
On lessons from the
two New World Viking sites discovered to date, and what might be next.
1)
L’Anse aux Meadows:
The first confirmed Viking/Norse site in the Americas was discovered and
excavated in what we might call the old-fashioned way: in 1960, a pair of
married Norwegians, explorer
Helge Ingstad and archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, were led to a group of mysterious
Newfoundland mounds by local resident
George Decker; the Ingstads spent the next eight years carrying out
excavations of the mounds, eventually amassing enough evidence to prove that
the site was definitively of Norse origin. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978,
L’Anse has continued to offer up cultural and historical revelations in the
half-century since its discovery, and remains the center of archaeological exploration
and Canadian
collective memory of the Viking settlers.
2)
Point
Rosee: The second, not-yet-confirmed but quite possible Viking/Norse site
in the Americas was discovered in what we would have to call a very 21st
century way: in 2015, archaeologists
Sarah Parcak and Gregory Mumford (also a romantic couple, one interesting
link between the 1960 and 2015 discoveries) examined infrared
satellite images and high-resolution aerial photographs of a site that
appeared to have once featured buildings; magnetometer readings revealed high
quantities of iron, and subsequent excavations have encountered evidence of
iron smelting at the site (a process likely only used in the region in that
period by Norse settlers). Whether Point Rosee is indeed a second Viking site remains
in some dispute, but no matter what the final verdict, this evolving
conversation indicates how fully both archaeology and our study of historic
cultures have changed over the fifty years since L’Anse.
3)
What’s next: I’m sure that the next fifty years
will feature just as many changes and advances, and that our archaeological and
historical knowledge will be extended and enhanced through all of them. But at
the same time, I would argue that it might be just as important for our
collective memories of these Viking settlers to create historic sites akin to
Plimoth Plantation: not located in the site of the original settlement, but
recreated in a place that can capture its setting and world; not based on
excavations of artifacts or buildings so much as a space in which such
artifacts and buildings can be recreated as accurately as possible; not really
an archaeological site at all, but rather an educational tourist attraction that
can introduce visitors to the histories, stories, and world of this historic
community. If we’re going to teach elementary school students about the Viking
explorers and settlers, as I noted in Monday’s post we are, I’d say it’s time
we had the kind of site where students (and everyone) could themselves explore
and engage with what that community might have experienced and been.
Last
VikingStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other ways you’d analyze the Vikings or Iceland?
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