L'Anse aux Meadows

L'Anse aux Meadows is a Canadian National Historic Site and a UNESCO World Heritage Site at the northern tip of Newfoundland. Nearly 1000 years ago, Norse explorers created a settlement here.

The site is mostly outlines of eight buildings that were constructed with sod over a wooden frame. There's also a full reconstruction complete with actors in costume. Since the Norse who came here needed to be self sufficient, they brought supplies enough to weave will into cloth and even smelt iron to fix their boats.

The reconstructed building was impressive cozy, though I suspect would have been incredibly acrid with wood burning stove and a dozen men who only bathed weekly (though they apparently did take hygiene seriously and took baths weekly, unlike other Europeans at the time).

One fact I'd never considered was that these Norse travelers would have interacted and traded with the local indigenous people. This meeting would have completed the start of global migration for humans starting 10,000 years ago in Africa and spreading east and west across the globe. While humans crossed from Asia to the Americas on a land bridge, crossing the Atlantic required boat technology to advance enough to travel across the wide expanse of ocean.

Archaeologists suspect that this camp was only used for a span of 20-30 years. The expense of running such a settlement was more than what was returned in resources. And so the camp was abandoned and left as a story in the sagas.Read more