Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (6:40)

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough Eric subsequently is settled to lesser outlawry, which is a form of outlawry that essentially means you have to leave the country for three years.

Ian Glenn (6:54)

Duly banished, Erik Tovaldsen's only option is to Put to sea, a giant of a man with a shock of auburn hair. Tovaldsen is known to all as Erik 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's seen Vikings island hop to Orkney, to Shetland, the Faroes, and on to 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 Gunn, Bjorn Ulfsson, returned to Iceland with tales of a huge snowy landmass beyond the horizon, though one too bleak, too inhospitable 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 Davide Zori.

Professor Davide Zori (8:14)

He decides to make the most of his outlawry and goes to explore this land to the west that Gunnbjorn had found.

Ian Glenn (8:25)

And so, in 982, with his family in tow, 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.

Professor Davide Zori (8:56)

So Eric does a good job exploring and moves to the west coast, where he finds these long fjords that go in over 100 km into the land that offer sheltered lowlands with nice pasturage.

Ian Glenn (9:11)

Dr. William Fitzhugh.

Historian/Commentator (9:14)

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,

Ian Glenn (9:38)

As if it were a gift from the gods. And Eric is still a practitioner of the pagan ways. Here lies a land ripe for exploitation. Eric puts ashore with his wife, Theod Hildur, his three sons, Leif, Thorvald and Thorstein, plus an illegitimate daughter from another relationship. Her name is Freydis. The family Tovaldsson settles in. They build a farmstead they call Bratta Helith on what Eric proudly names Eric's fjord. He and 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 waarers, an occasional polar bear. On one trip they glimpse in the distance a group of dark haired strangers clambering over the ice floes. They suppose they may be related to the Karelians 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.

Historian/Commentator (10:56)

There were Dorset culture people who are like pre Inuit people had kind of retreated into the northwest beyond where the Norse at least initially were encountering them.

Ian Glenn (11:13)

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 determines to recruit a fresh set of pioneers and expand his settlement into a full on colony, an Iceland 2.0. And he will do so with the sales pitch of a brazen real estate salesman. He will give his new territory a catchier, a sexier sell. And so has launched a brand new Viking domain, Greenland.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (11:50)

And of course occasionally this is held up as a piece of rather inaccurate sort of early tourist board marketing because when you think of Greenland, you think of 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 Norse settled which were in the south west were in fact green for much of the year.

Professor Davide Zori (12:17)

Eric the red returns to Iceland, he's quite a salesman and starts talking about the lands being called Greenland Greenland because there is plentiful pasturage for cattle and sheep. He convinces a large group of people from the western part of Iceland to sail to Greenland to start this colony.

Ian Glenn (12:45)

In 985 AD sold on Eric's promise, 25 ships set sail for the new promised land.

Historian/Commentator (12:55)

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. And already the land's filled up and there are all sorts of people who need new territories.

Ian Glenn (13:16)

It is still tough going Life on

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (13:19)

board a Viking ship in the Atlantic Ocean would have been pretty hard. In fact, later textual 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. Norse ships were incredible. The ones that would have crossed the North Atlantic would have been bigger and sturdier than the ones that were or 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.

Ian Glenn (13:54)

There are no cabins or lower decks, just benches in the open. Sleep is grabbed under blankets made of skin, furs and wools. In rough seas, it is not a lot of fun.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (14:07)

One thing that people often ask is, how did they go to the loo? And from people who sail in reconstructed Norse 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 choppier, we also need to think about what sort of clothes they'd have needed for the voyage. So coarse, thick woolen 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 beer or sour milk.

Ian Glenn (14:43)

In fact, only 14 of the 25 ships make it. But such is life in the world of Norse seafaring.

Historian/Commentator (14:53)

Fate was a huge factor in the back of everything that you did. And the Viking religion, you know, was very well suited for this kind of unpredictable life. You know, everything was predetermined.

Ian Glenn (15:10)

Eric's fjord will soon be upgraded. Maybe it's the sales patter again, but this burgeoning colony in the west is redubbed, confusingly, the Eastern Settlement. It's so successful that an overspill community is established 120 miles to the north.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (15:29)

It was perched on the very margins of farmable land. It had shorter summers and longer, harsher winters. But it had its own advantages, particularly hunting and mountains nearby 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 ivory was incredibly valuable.

Ian Glenn (16:02)

Sowing further confusion, the northern outpost will be called the Western Settlement. It will be the foundation for the later capital, Gotthab, or good hope. In 1979, it will be renamed in the Inuit language as Nuuk. Within a few short years, there will be up to 5,000 Norse Greenlanders maintaining around 3 to 400 farms. There is a geographical issue here. Greenland is technically part of the American continent, in which case, Erik the Red and Coe are already the New World's first European settlers, the first two to have encountered its indigenous peoples, in fact, splitting hairs. The west of Iceland, beyond the continental divide that bisects 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 has set foot on the American mainland. In the summer of 986, an Icelander named Bjarne Herjofsson is sailing home from Norway, looking forward to reuniting with his father. On landing, however, he hears that Bjarni Sr. Is just one of the many to have upped sticks to have cashed in on the Greenland bubble. In possession of a solid ocean going ship, Bjarni follows. Unfortunately, an unusual period of calm weather sees him drift aimlessly for days on end. When a thick fog lifts, he finds himself offshore from a land teeming with thick pine forests and immaculate white beaches. This, Bjarni recognizes, is not Greenland. Excited at the discovery, his crew prepares to row ashore. But to their eternal regret, Bjarni forbids it. He's more interested in picking up a southerly wind and zipping straight back. The land almost certainly is the dense forested coast of today's Labrador Canada. And thus Bjarne Herjofsson, by way of obstinacy and a couple of hundred yards, denies himself his Neil Armstrong moment. Back in Greenland, Eric is now lording it like a quasi king.

Professor Davide Zori (18:49)

His farm at Brattali 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.

Ian Glenn (19:10)

Here, Bjarne Herjolfsson's tribulations are met less with excitement at the prospect of more land out there than incredulity at his lack of adventure. Eric buys Bjarne's 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 lark. Instead, he delegates his eldest son Leif to lead the mission. And thus, sometime around the turn of the new millennium, Leif, son of Erik. Leif Erikson sails into the sunset.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (19:54)

Now, the sagas describe Leif as promising. They say he was a tall and strong, strong man and very impressive in appearance. He was a shrewd man and always moderate in his behavior. Leif does appear occasionally in sagas other than the two Vinland sagas. So, for example, in the saga of King Olaf Tryggvason, it's King Olaf of Norway who sends Leif off to convert Greenland to Christianity.

Ian Glenn (20:20)

For the king bringing new lands into his realm, Christianizing them into the bargain will be a big boost to his beleaguered reign. To this end, Leif will oft 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 Brattahilith, though. When it comes to heading west, it seems that Leif's motivation is practical. That never ending quest for resources, chiefly in the form of timber.

Historian/Commentator (20:55)

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, Leif's voyages.

Ian Glenn (21:11)

That and a case of what's in the family blood. A good old fashioned yen for exploration. The notion of Norsemen landing in North America often conjures visions of longboats 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. Their 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 and Canada's Ellesmere island is just 16 miles further south. Clear of the ice, the crossing is still only 200 odd miles about the distance from Bergen to Shetland. Small beer for a Viking. Heading west, Leif traverses the Davis Strait, following the trail of puffins and flightless orcs. A penguin like bird since extinct, he is fully confident that land will soon be ahoy. 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 Hellaland Stone Slabland. Wading ashore fords Leif Eriksson and his men. The claim, according to interpretation, of being the first Europeans to land in North America. Two days sail further south, Leif and his men alight upon the same tree lined shore that Bjarni had seen. Leif names it Markland Forest Land. Two to three days after that, Leif pulls his ship and on the left bank of a narrow channel it is today's Belle Isle Strait, the waterway that separates Newfoundland from Labrador. The place now occupied by l' Ans aux Meadows. It's a good spot. It has a shallow bay, a river for fresh water, as much timber as 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 will find, a land of plenty. Leif 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

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (24:22)

in the saga of the Greenlanders. They reach a land where the weather was very 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 wineland.

Professor Davide Zori (24:39)

So it's a wineland, and part of the products that are found there are grapes, and grapes making wine, which would have been an important resource for the Vikings. This land also has broad pasturage and has a temperature that allows animals to be kept outside for the winter, which would be remarkable for Scandinavians living in Greenland and Iceland, where animals had to be kept indoors for a good portion of the winter.

Ian Glenn (25:11)

Vinland will appear not just in the sagas, it will be detailed in the Book of the Icelanders. So too the writings of Andreas of Bremen, who records Vinland's name in 1075. Such things inspire later mariners, John Cabot, Martin Frobisher, 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 Leif's men to get roaring drunk, easing their labours as they knock together some crude wood and turf buildings. The settlement will be called Leifsburther, Leif's Booth, suggesting it to be a temporary setup. But Leif is a chip off the old block. He soon has ideas about starting up another colony. His party returns to Greenland laden with timber and berries as salesman's samples. Unfortunately, in Leif's absence, his father Eric has died. Charged now with having to run Greenland himself, Leif opts 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 differing versions of events. They are comprised of two volumes entitled the Greenlanders Saga and Erik the Red's Saga. And they suffer, as do all Norse histories, by being written well after the event. But both agree that that summer Leif dispatches his brother Tovald to take over where he left off. It's summer in the year 1000, 3 or thereabouts, some way south of Leif's Bertha. The thick forest comes right down to the waterline. The air is pure still. The water's crystal clear. Over the past two years, Tovalt has set about developing his brother's camp into a more permanent settlement. Today, he and his men have set out on one of their ranging explorations. Here they have put ashore, examining trees, hunting for wildlife, when up ahead, further along the beach, they spy what appear to be three mounds. They approach with caution. What they find are upturned boats made from animal hide. Canoes. And there, beside the boats, sleeping in the shade, are nine men. Their appearance is unusual, unlike anything they've seen. They are slighter, built and dressed in animal skins. They have long dark hair and broad face with narrow eyes, and for the moment, 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. Skraelings, screamers or screechers. The Skraelings try to scramble away, but Thorvald's men have got them surrounded. All but one are rounded up. Two Norsemen draw swords and set off in hot pursuit of the lone escapee who's legged it into the woods. But the man knows the terrain. In the thick of the forest, he loses them. The Norsemen creep on. They follow the ground as it rises, not realizing they are now at the top of a giant ridge. The sight before them is a wonder to behold. Majestic, mind blowing thick, luscious pine trees that seem to stretch on forever. But they see a wisp of smoke rising from a clearing. A settlement, a village. And they sense two 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 sea immediately, get the hell out of there. Sure enough, coming round the headland now is a flotilla of canoes, dozens of them, and their occupants are wielding bows and arrows. For the Norsemen, there is no room on their longboat for the eight scrape they have captured on the spot. They are put to the sword. Under a hail of arrows, the Norsemen push their ship back into the water and sail away. Out to sea, out of danger. The men relax. The damage seems light. The toe vault has been struck under the armpit. It 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. Within hours, he will be dead. He's buried ashore in a short Christian ceremony at a landing referred to as Crosserness, 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 hand of Native Americans.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (31:12)

The sagas lump all these different peoples together and call them Skralingar, which is not a very nice name. And their encounters can be quite unpleasant. They can be violent, there are 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 Leif. They're probably describing ancestors of the Innu of Labrador and the Beothuk of Newfoundland, and then possibly further south, those living in the settlements around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And so that would be tribes such as the Iroquois and the Algonquin.

Ian Glenn (32:03)

The Norse, after a third winter, returned to Greenland, wishing to repatriate his brother's remains. Thorstein puts to sea, but he's unable to locate these new lands. When he later dies from illness. His widow, Gudrid, remarries, this time to a wealthy Icelandic merchant. His name is Thorfinn Karlsefni. And Thorfinn Karlsefni will prove to be the most significant of the Norse American pioneers. Embarking in around 1007, Karlsefni and Gudrid take three ships and about 160 settlers and sail to Vinland. They make their base at a place Karlsefni will call Stromfjord. Where exactly Stromfjord lies, no one knows. Is it simply an upgraded Leifsbuther or somewhere else entirely? What is known is that while there, Gudrid gives birth to a baby boy, Snorri. And in another entry in the annals of history, Snorri will become the first child of European ancestry to be born in the Americas.

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Professor Davide Zori (35:29)

Today,

Ian Glenn (35:32)

Karlsefni's colonists will be notable for a far more convivial relationship with Newfoundland's Beothuk people. At least at first. It is a relationship that evolves through barter and trade. The Beothuks are captivated by the Norsemen's colourful clothes, particularly anything red, and their weapons made of a hard, shiny substance unknown to them. The Norse, meanwhile, are amazed that the Beotuks will casually give up sumptuous animal furs for just a small ration of goat's 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 Incomers are poisoning them. Violence will again raise its ugly head. Kar Sefni, as a precaution, has banned any trade in weaponry.

Historian/Commentator (36:30)

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.

Ian Glenn (36:52)

It is while trying to take a Norse sword that a Beothuk youth is killed. Soon the colonists are building a stockade around their camp to ward off indigenous attacks. In one such assault, as the story goes, their assailants are sent packing by the sight of a bull. The settlers have brought with them a creature they had never seen the likes of before. It is compounded by the evidently alarming prospect of Freydis, the Ericson's half sister, swinging her weapon at the enemy in the manner of an old fashioned shield maiden.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (37:30)

Freydis Ericksdottir was one of the children of Eric the Red in the saga of the Greenlanders. She's a really dark, like, scary figure. Freydis picks up a sword from a dead warrior and at this point she's very heavily pregnant. Lusaka tells us that she turns to face the attackers, she bares one of her breasts and she slaps it with the sword, which terrifies the attackers, who then run away.

Ian Glenn (38:01)

After a third winter in North America, Karlsefni's colony, just like Tovald's, is disbanded. It is Freydis herself who will lead a fourth and final attempt at securing a foothold in Vinland. Unfortunately, she has inherited her father's nose for trouble. In an infamous episode, Freydis will stir up a conflict between two factions of settlers, which will result in the mass murder of one half of the colony. Axe in hand, she will slaughter the wurminfolk personally, or so they say. There could be a reason behind Freydis bad rep. The story of Vinland will later be rewritten, almost like a biblical parable. Freydis is the pagan savage, the convenient scapegoat blamed for the colony's demise. And then there are the wild berries, the wine with its communion relevance, enabling Vinland 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 I sound doesn't mean grapes at all. It means pasture. Vinland could have been the land of grass all along. In the long term, the Vinland colony was always doomed.

Historian/Commentator (39:34)

When Karlsefoni was there later on he departed and they all said, well, you know, this is a wonderful land, but there's too many Skraelings that's already occupied. So that was the first time that they ended up with a real social problem. In the new lands that they were trying to settle.

Ian Glenn (39:53)

What's more, any produce Finland has to offer, trees, fish, seals, deer fur can also be found much closer to home in places like Finland and Russia. The prized wall reciprory, too, used throughout Europe in church ornaments, will soon be rivalled 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 hole punched in it, worn as a pendant.

Historian/Commentator (40:39)

So the penny is remarkable because it's dated to 1065 to 1080, which is seven, eight decades after the Vinland voyages took place. So it's a very clear evidence that the in the Norse were still, you know, visiting Labrador and Markland 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, you know, worked their way further south. And there's also a very large number of Norse materials that have been found in Inuit sites in the Canadian Arctic as well.

Ian Glenn (41:20)

Likewise, Native American artifacts, arrowheads and such like have been discovered in Norse dwellings in Greenland. One Viking grandee there was found buried in his prized possession, a buffalo skin cloak. It can only have originated from America's western plains. It's August 13, 1876. We're in Bayreuth, Bavaria, at the Festspielhaus Opera House. The audience is on tenterhooks, ready for the premiere of Richard Wagner's new opus, Der Ring des Nieberlugen, 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 Gotha Dammerung, with the proverbial fat lady singing. The buxom pig tailed soprano, Brunhilde bedecked in a horned helmet, the very source of Viking misrepresentation. Wagner is not the first to cash in on this newfound veneration of the Volkish, or folkloric, is merely riding a wave. It is an aesthetic being channeled by nationalistic movements in Scandinavia, one that has been especially evident during the recent 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 Sagas was published by a Danish antiquarian, Carl Christian Raffen. This kicked off a rediscovery of the Vikings and Norse culture. It was Raffen who popularized the notion of Norsemen arriving in America. This resulted in a flourishing of Norse folkloric societies in the United States, too. And it led to all manner of bogus Viking artifacts being offered up for public consumption. The Stone Tower in Rhode island was eulogized 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 had arrived in the American Midwest via the St. Lawrence river and Great Lakes. It was inscribed with a date, 1362. The Kensington Runestone, 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.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (44:55)

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.

Ian Glenn (45:27)

The World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 was meant to celebrate the Columbus quadrennial. It had become an orgy of Viking pageantry, complete with longships sailing across Lake Michigan. In our present day, the Midwestern embrace of its cultural legacy seems more a case of local passion, most famously evident in sport.

Historian/Commentator (45:55)

This is the pride 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 phenomena which indicates, you know, the Viking story is not over. You know, it's still being created and still being carried on by Scandinavian descendant peoples who are looking towards this history and reveling in it.

Ian Glenn (46:23)

In 1914, a more scientific quest for proof begins. An amateur historian, William F. Munn, hones in on Newfoundland as a potential location for a Norse landing. He's followed by a Danish archaeologist, Johan Melgore. He starts a more organized, though ultimately fruitless, search there. They, like the Ingstads, are inspired not just by the sagas but by the resurfacing of a chart that had been drawn up in around 1570, there is

Historian/Commentator (46:58)

a map called the Skalholt Map, which is a very famous map because it shows this northern promontorium, which is called the Promontorium Winlandica. And it's exactly where the Norse Viking site turned out to be. And so, using partly this as his guide, Ingstad went and landed in that location. And, you know, as soon as Ingstad saw the shape of the houses, he knew exactly that this had to be the long lost settlement of Finland

Ian Glenn (47:32)

at l' ornes aux Meadows. It's not just the buildings the Ingstats uncover. There are the telltale shards of Jasper that the Norse typically used as fire starters.

Professor Davide Zori (47:45)

When the remains of the eight turf structures at Lansa Meadows were first discovered, the typology of the buildings looked Scandinavian. It took a little while before the community, the scholarly 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, or which dates the site to this 10th, 11th century period.

Ian Glenn (48:17)

The full excavation, led by Anne Ingstad, will take eight years. It 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. An abundance of nails, rivets, and the presence of a smithy suggest the site was ultimately used as a shipyard somewhere to pull in for repair or to restock supplies on the way to somewhere else.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (48:46)

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.

Ian Glenn (49:02)

There are also, intriguingly, plenty of butternut husks.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (49:08)

And what's interesting about that is that butternut only grows further south.

Professor Davide Zori (49:13)

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.

Ian Glenn (49:31)

The layer of ash within the site shows that the 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.

Professor Davide Zori (49:46)

Before the discovery, it was widely believed that these stories could be fancy. After the discovery of Lansome Meadows, it seems that at least the core of the stories recorded in Eric's saga and Greenlander's saga are based on historical events. I think we can believe a core Historical accuracy in the sagas as a result.

Ian Glenn (50:15)

In the sagas, Karlsefni also mentions a settlement further south, which he calls Hop. It translates as tidal pool, another bay or natural harbor of some sort.

Professor Davide Zori (50:28)

One of the main differences is Greenlander saga only describes one settlement, and that is Leif's Booths. Eric's saga, on the other hand, describes two sites. The first one is Thrumfjord Streamfjord. The second one is called Hoek. And we cannot reach agreement about whether there are three sites, two sites, or one site. In reality, all archaeology has provided us with is one archaeological site.

Ian Glenn (50:56)

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.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (51:17)

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 the fjords 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, or the merchant ships failed to arrive from Norway or Iceland, then life would have got very difficult very quickly.

Ian Glenn (51:58)

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 and impossible.

Historian/Commentator (52:10)

So the problem is that the Norse, you know, had their. Their heyday, expansion during this Medieval Warm Period. Then when, when the downturn came, it was a huge problem for keeping their animals alive. They would have to carry them out, you know, from the buyers in 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.

Ian Glenn (52:34)

Politically, Norway had also turned inward, wracked by civil war. Greenland, its harbors increasingly icebound, was a remote outlier.

Historian/Commentator (52:46)

People who were financing the voyages were no longer willing to take chances sending boats to Greenland. So, you know, things went south really quickly.

Ian Glenn (52:57)

Disease, too, had found its way across the North Atlantic. There were instances of the plague in Iceland, though. In Greenland, malnutrition was the biggest killer. Male skeletons unearthed from the last days of the Western settlement reveal an average adult height of just five feet. So much for your strapping Viking. Half of all adult males did not make it to 30 years of age. Such was the desperation to survive that the old and the sick were routinely thrown off the cliff tops.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (53:31)

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 Norman Norse Greenland has vanished.

Historian/Commentator (53:55)

So it really appears that there was kind of like a, you know, a full scale evacuation of Greenland.

Ian Glenn (54:03)

The withdrawal had come ominously on the back of further raids by so called Skraelings, this time the Thule people, forerunners of the Inuit, who had 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 Christianizing of Greenland cast the Skraelings 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 seals or whales.

Historian/Commentator (54:45)

It all came walloping down, you know, very quickly, partly because, you know, the. The church began to be taking tithes, sucking a lot of the. The wealth out of the Greenland economy as well.

Ian Glenn (54:59)

With Finland and Greenland gone, Iceland became the end of.

Hayden (55:13)

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan.

Dr. Eleanor Barraclough (55:15)

Fellas.

Hayden (55:16)

I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

Stephen (55:21)

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

Hayden (55:25)

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

Stephen (55:34)

That's right.

Ian Glenn (55:34)

Hey.

Stephen (55:34)

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

Hayden (55:39)

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

Stephen (55:46)

News flash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.

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Brooke Devard (56:09)

It's Mom.

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Jack Myers or Tim Spengler (56:15)

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Depop Advertiser (56:24)

Welcome to Get Real, the show for the reality TV obsessed and stands of the Hulu verse. Find it wherever you get your podcast and stream new episodes Thursdays on Hulu

Brooke Devard (56:34)

and Hulu on Disney.

Ian Glenn (56:41)

The search for evidence of a Viking presence in the Americas goes on. There have been purported runes found etched near Toronto, claims of evidence of Norse copper mining near Lake Superior, and many more incidents besides. There are ancient legends of blond blue eyed warriors in Central America, in the Andes of Peru, of long boats sailing up the Amazon. To date, Lonzo Meadows is the only Norse site that has ever been uncovered,

Professor Davide Zori (57:13)

and it's not for lack of trying. Many archaeologists have wasted field seasons and broken their backs looking for Scandinavian sites in in Canada, including me. And 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.

Ian Glenn (57:42)

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 spanned their hemispheres from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The link between civilizations was complete. In the next episode. Back in England, Aethelred the Unready attempts to purge Norsemen from his realm. Military interventions sees Viking kings being placed on the Anglo Saxon throne. Under Canute 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. You can listen to the next two episodes of Real Vikings right now without waiting and with out ads by joining Noiser Plus, Click the banner at the top of the feed or head to noiser.com subscriptions to find out more.

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Stephen (59:39)

what makes a leader worth following?

Jack Myers or Tim Spengler (59:41)

What should you really care about in your job? As technology is changing so quickly, is

Stephen (59:46)

it just gonna be about machines talking to other machines? I mean, should you quit your job and start something on your own, what would that take?

Jack Myers or Tim Spengler (59:52)

What does success and risk look like when we're all at the starting gate together?

Stephen (59:57)

These are the questions we answer each

Ian Glenn (59:58)

week on Lead Human with Jack Myers and Tim Spengler.

Jack Myers or Tim Spengler (60:01)

Join us each week and subscribe at your favorite podcast platform and YouTube.

Ian Glenn (60:07)

We'll tell stories, we'll hear from some

Stephen (60:09)

of the best, and we'll try to figure this out.