WEBVTT

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[music]

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[sil.]

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[music]

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\"From the Northmen, O
Lord, please deliver us\"

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was once a prayer heard
across half the known world.

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A thousand years ago, Vikings
ruled the Northern seas,

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and Scandinavian ships were the
technological marvels of their time.

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The Northmen extracted tribute from their
victims, but they also came to trade and settle.

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Their empire stretched East into
Russia and South to the Mediterranean.

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But in the West, old viking legends
tell us that 500 years before Columbus,

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they were the first Europeans
to explore the new world.

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These legends or sagas
were first copied down

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by Icelandic monks during the Middle Ages.
They tell of a fabled land in the West

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called Vinland the Good. In
this program, we\'ll follow

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the sagas across the North Atlantic. We\'ll explore
these legends and find out how much science

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can be found in the myth. We\'ll also
learn how science is still influenced

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by those legends. The popular
romantic image of the Viking

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has been handed down to us by generations
of storytellers. What the monks preserved

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in their manuscripts became well known
through the literature of the 19th century.

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Today Icelandic filmmakers
continue to recreate the drama

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of the Viking sagas with their boats and
heroic battles. Throughout this program,

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we will use this imagery, which is based
on current archaeological research

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to portray life in the Viking age.
During the eighth century,

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Scandinavians expanded west. They
seized the northern shores of France,

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the Eastern coast of Britain, the Islands
of Scotland, and the coast of Ireland.

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Virtually unchallenged, they reached the
edge of the known world as it was understood

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by the classical geographers of Greece and Rome.
The Viking raiders sailed their long boats

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across the seas to the remote islands of
the North. The Shetlands, the Faeroes,

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Iceland, and finally Greenland where
a fierce warrior named Erik the Red

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founded a colony in the year 986.
In that same year,

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the sagas introduce us to the Adventures
of an ambitious Icelandic merchant

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who was returning home with his ships laden
with goods from distant European shores.

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When Bjarni Herjólfsson returned home to Iceland
from his journeys, he found his family gone.

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They had sailed west to join the new colony
in Greenland. His shipmates asked him

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what he proposed to do, and he replied I shall
steer my ship for Greenland if you are prepared

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to go along with me. So they put out the moment
they were ready and sailed for three days

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before losing sight of land.
Viking captains like Bjarni

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had no maps, but they learned to rely upon the
winds, currents, and animal migration patterns

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as their guide. The Vikings had no
way to judge east, west longitude.

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When they had to sail beyond the site of land,
they tried to maintain a straight parallel course

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to east or west. One way of doing this

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was by keeping the North Star at
the same height above the horizon.

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Bjarni would have received Erik\'s sailing directions
including the height of the pole star above the horizon

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as it was calculated from the
Greenland colony. But at times,

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the Heavens failed them. Then
their following wind died down,

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and North winds and fog overtook them so
they had no idea which way they were going.

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This continued over many days,
but eventually they saw the sun

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and could get their bearings. Lost in the foggy
North Atlantic, they had no idea how far

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west they had traveled. But the North
Star was much lower in the sky.

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So Bjarne would\'ve set his course north
to regain his previous latitude.

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They now hoisted sail and sailed
for a day before sighting land.

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They debated among themselves
what this land could be.

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They could soon see that the land was not mountainous and covered
with forest with low hills there. So they left the land to port.

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Bjarni and his crew probably
saw the part of North America

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that extends far eastward into
the Atlantic. This simple story

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is the first written account of the new
world that still survives. Both the Island

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of Newfoundland and the southern coast
of Labrador have low forested hills

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exactly as described in the sagas.
After this, they sailed for two days

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before sighting another land. They soon drew near
this land and could see that it was flat country.

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The crew talked things over and thought
it was commonsense to put ashore there.

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But this Bjarni would not allow. He gave orders
to hoist sail, and they sailed out to sea

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for three days. Their voyage of
discovery took them north following

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the unknown coast as it grew more desolate.
Bjarni and his crew found themselves

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along the Labrador shore, a barren, rocky
stretch of coast that later explorers

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called the Lamb that God gave to Cain.
And then they saw third land,

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and this land was high, mountainous,
and glaciered. They asked

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whether Bjarni would put ashore there.
But no he said. He had no wish to.

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For to me, this land looks good for
nothing. This last description

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is probably a Northern Labrador with its high
mountains and lack of vegetation. To this day,

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the land is forbidding impractically
uninhabited. The lost Vikings crew

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maintained their northern direction until the pole
star reached the proper height above the horizon.

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Then Bjarni changed course turning
back east along the correct latitude

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for the Greenland colony. They turned
their (inaudible) from the land,

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and this time they sailed for four days and
came to Greenland in the evening of the day.

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Part of the problem,

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a marine archaeology studying people
who live in settled by the sea

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is the sea often rapidly destroys
all traces of their presence.

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Prof. Tom McGovern of Hunter College has
excavated early Viking settlements all across

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the North Atlantic. Even massively built
modern structures like this can be

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tumbled into the sea pretty quickly. And
the fainter traces of earlier settlement

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can be covered up or rotted away
in a very short period of time.

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So as a result, we may never know
where the first landings were.

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One thing we do know
though is that the process

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that brought the Bjarni Herjólfsson
to North America was different

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from Columbus\'s voyages. Columbus\'s voyage
was essentially a short-term event.

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Bjarni\'s voyage was the end of a 200-year

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period of migration settlement. The
story of the Norse expansion to America

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begins on the remote islands
off the coast of Scotland.

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The Norse came by sea to conquer the native people
of the Orkney Islands who were called the Picts.

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Hundreds of years before the Norse
invasion, the Picts were known

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from Roman accounts as wild painted
warriors who defended their island kingdoms

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with unyielding determination.
Some of this defiance

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can still be seen in the tall stone towers
that stretch along the Scottish coast.

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The Picts shared a common bond with other
Celtic peoples in the North Atlantic

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like the Irish and the Scots. They were seafarers. And
many of their villages overlooked the western ocean.

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Some of the stones settlements
were laid out in concentric rings

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around a central tower.

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The origins of their distinctive stone architecture go back thousands
of years to the earliest seafaring cultures of the North Atlantic.

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These 5,000-year-old dwellings were
once inhabited by the megalith builders

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who left many examples of their stone
monuments throughout the northern isles.

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These earlier sea peoples

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developed the same rounded spaces and careful masonry
that distinguished later Pictish architecture.

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[sil.]

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Before the Norse arrived from the east, Christianity
was brought over the sea from Ireland in the West.

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The Island of Birsay,

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a windswept tidal island off the Orkney
coast was an early monastic center

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of the Celtic church.

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Today on the Island of Birsay,
archaeological excavation

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allows us to see the remains of the native stone dwellings
contrasted with the rectangular sod built longhouses

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of the later Norse settlers. What was this

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early contact like? Prof. Anna Ritchie
from the Royal Museum of Edinburgh

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has developed new ideas based on her archaeological
research. Something that\'s always interested me

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is exactly what happened when the
Norsemen first came to Scotland.

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I excavated a site at Birsay
on Mainland Orkney where I got

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Norse houses built on top of
an earlier Pictish settlement.

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And what was interesting and very puzzling
was that in the Norse houses, there weren\'t

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Norwegian artifacts that you\'d expect.
They were native artifacts.

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These were the same pins and
bone combs that you find on

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the earlier Pictish sites. Well, the
traditional view of when the Norsemen arrived

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is of bloodshed and extermination
of the natives. And it seemed to me

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that the only way that you could
explain these native finds

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in Norse houses is the opposite
of that, no extermination,

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but some degree of living side by side.
I think we must

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be justified in assuming that this would
also happen in other areas of life.

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I can\'t believe that the Picts, and the Scots,
and the Irishman didn\'t pass on their knowledge

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of the western sea ways. And what we
don\'t know, of course, is just how

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far field the Irishmen
and the Picts adventured

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that they may have gone much further
than we actually have evidence for.

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And the Norsemen I\'m sure would
make use of that knowledge.

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Celtic legends copied down and beautifully
illustrated manuscripts by the early Christian monks

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depicting adventurers, saints, and mysterious sea
monsters inspired the Norse to press westward

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beyond the Atlantic horizon.
One of the earliest narratives

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about a sea voyage begins here at St.
Brendan\'s Beach on the west coast of Ireland.

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This is an Irish film

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recreating the story of Saint Brendan the
navigator. Brendan was an abbot who probably

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lived in the fifth or sixth century and journeyed across
the Western sea in search of the Isle of the Blessed.

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Brendan set out with a band of monks in
the traditional boats of the region,

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the currach. The currach is a skin boat
used in prehistoric Northern Europe.

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It was a widely shared technology
among northern peoples

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around the globe. And it is still used by
Eskimo peoples of Asia and North America,

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like these Siberians on their way across the
Bering Strait between Asia and America.

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Different cultures may have
different styles. But it is built

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with a wood frame stretched over with animal
hides and sealed with pitch or animal fat.

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The flexibility of its construction
allows it to hold up remarkably well

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in rough northern seas.

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Brendan saga is full of adventures with
mythical beasts and fanciful places.

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Although it is difficult to trace the monk\'s
voyage, there are elements in the narrative,

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which have caught scholar\'s attention. One
chapter describes a mountainous island

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consumed with the fires of hell. This
might refer to a volcanic eruption

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likely to be seen in Iceland. Another
chapter describes crystal columns

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which have been interpreted as icebergs. But icebergs are
a phenomenon found primarily in the western Atlantic.

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Irish adventurers expanding west

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would have marveled at these giant frozen
sculptures carved into strange forms

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by wind and see. What survives in the
way of stories about sea travel,

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uh, from these early times
amongst the Irish and the Picts

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is probably a very small
sample of what once existed.

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And simply because it doesn\'t
survive, we shouldn\'t assume

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that it didn\'t exist. The Norse sagas
seem to pick up where Brendan left off

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with the first Viking arrival in Iceland.
Iceland was the largest

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of all the Norse colonies in the Atlantic and is still
inhabited by the descendants of the original Vikings.

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But many scholars have wondered if the Irish
preceded the Vikings across the North Atlantic.

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And they have called attention to
certain passages in these sagas.

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Before Iceland was settled from Norway, there
were men there whom the Norse called Papar.

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These were Christians and people consider that
they must have been from the British Isles.

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But later they went away because they were not
prepared to live here in company with heathen men.

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They left behind Irish
books, bells, and closures

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from which it could be seen that they
were Westman. Westman were what the Norse

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called the people of the Northern British Isles. And Westman
Island lies just off the southern coast of Iceland.

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In the late 1970s, volcanic
activity began to threaten

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an important archaeological
site and added extra pressure

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to the excavation conducted by Prof.
Margaret (inaudible). What she discovered

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maybe one of the oldest settlements
in Iceland. Perhaps even earlier

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than the first arrivals described in the
sagas. What we know through archaeology

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about the early settlement
in Iceland is that it\'s

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a Norse settlement. Not
an Irish or Celtic one.

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We, we had no remains here that, uh,

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point to that. Not yet anyhow. The
question of who arrived first

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still attracts popular attention. But today scientists
are reluctant to define these early explorers

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as exclusively Irish or exclusively Norse.

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One thing that recent archaeology has certainly
demonstrated is that there was a long-term interaction

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between maritime Celtic peoples
and maritime Scandinavian peoples

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in the British Isles and perhaps elsewhere
that may well have predated the saga record.

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It\'s also good to remember colonization

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is profoundly dangerous business and
a great many voyages as a settlement

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may have ended in failure. So we shouldn\'t necessarily
be surprised if we discover one, two, or a dozen

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failed settlements prior to the
ones recorded in the sagas.

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The legends continue to have a strong
effect on both Popular culture and science.

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Viking longboats are still sailed across
the Atlantic to keep the sagas alive.

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These celebrations commemorate the most
famous saga of all, the story of Erik the Red

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and his family\'s exploration of Vinland.
For a long time,

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it was only the written word and the idea that these
recreated Viking ships could cross the Atlantic

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that kept the belief in
pre-Colombian visitors alive.

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But how much science can be found in the legends?
Dr. Gwyn Jones is the preeminent translator,

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an interpreter of the Viking sagas. It\'s
a little difficult to say precisely

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what a saga is. It is not
quite a historical novel.

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It is closer to history than
Norse historical novels.

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But in just about every saga

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that touches on any event that could be
called historical, you will also see the hand

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of the creative writer.
The result, of course,

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is something entirely remarkable.

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Thorvald and his son Erik the Red
left Norway because of some killings.

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They made their first home in Iceland.
Erik married Thjodhild

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and their son by the name Leif. After more
killings, Erik was outlawed from Iceland.

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He fitted out his ship for sea in Eiríksstaðir.
This fjord is the spot where Erik the Red

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departed on his famous voyage
of discovery. In 1983,

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the Norwegian adventurer Ragnar Thorseth
followed Erik\'s path to Greenland.

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When Erik was ready to leave, he said he meant
to look for that land (inaudible) sighted

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at the time he was Storm
driven west across the ocean.

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His ship Saga Siglar is not
like the dragon war boats

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of Viking legend. This design is based
on examples of deep sea merchant ships

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recovered by archeologists in Scandinavia. It
is the type of craft Erik and his followers

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would\'ve sailed into the Atlantic. Even though
the Viking lord of the sea is mostly lost,

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the modern adventurers were built replicas of
Viking boats and sail them across the Atlantic

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are doing more than just proving that the
Norse could have reached the new world.

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These voyages are a valuable form
of experimental archaeology.

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They teach us about the sophistication
of Norse sailing technology

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and how well adapted it was to the treacherous
conditions of the North Atlantic.

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Erik headed south along the coast to discover
whether the land was habitable in that direction.

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He gave the land a name and called
it Greenland arguing that men

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would be drawn to go there
if the land had a good name.

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It may not have been quite green enough to
deserve its name. But Erik\'s colony thrived.

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There may have been 600 people there
at the time of the Vinland voyages.

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Around the time of Columbus, the
settlement mysteriously vanished.

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Erik\'s saga also contains the first record

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of the dramatic moment when European migration
from the East met Eskimo migration from the West.

00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
Both east and west in the country,
they found the habitations of men,

00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
fragments of boats and stone artifacts from which
it may be seen that the same kind of people

00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
have passed that way as those that inhabited
Vinland whom the Greenlanders called scaling.

00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
Dr. William Fitzhugh who is the
Curator of Arctic anthropology

00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
at the Smithsonian
Institution, for 20 years,

00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
he has been concerned with early transatlantic
contacts looking for both Norse

00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
and Native American remains. These are the kinds of tools
Erik found on the coast of Greenland remains of points,

00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
knives, (inaudible), houses. They
were the first clues that he had

00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
that he was about to meet an entirely new
race of people. some of these people

00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
carve representations of themselves. And here we see
an example of one of these early Dorset Eskimos

00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
wearing a high collared garment, a
predecessor to the Eskimo parka.

00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
The Eskimos were ancestors of the
modern Intuit who originated in Alaska

00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
and migrated in waves across Canada,
eventually reaching Greenland.

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
In the process, they developed a hunting
technology, harpoon heads, special equipment for,

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
uh, hunting the rich marine life
of the Northern Arctic regions.

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
It was one of the Earth\'s cyclical periods
of global warming, which actually brought

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
the Europeans and Native
Americans together.

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
At about the same time, two groups, a maritime
adapted peoples, the Eskimo and the Norse,

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
were moving towards each other across the
circumpolar zone. Both groups were benefiting

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
from change of climate. The medieval warm
period as it\'s now called produce temperatures

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
significantly warmer than today\'s. This
resulted in far less drift tides and probably

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
much better circumstances for human
settlement throughout this whole region.

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
As we wonder how global warming may
affect our own futures, we can learn

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
from the archaeology of the North Atlantic that
changes in climate can cause changes in culture.

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
Global warming has had a profound
impact on northern peoples,

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
uh, earlier than the Viking period. By 4,000 years ago, the
earliest Eskimos developed in Bering Strait and spread

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
east into Canada, eventually to Greenland.
The Indian cultures

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
were spreading north as the forests expanded. In
Europe, the similar kinds of things were happening,

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
the fluorescence of the Bronze Age cultures,
the huge vessels and maritime adaptations,

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
the megaliths that all developed in this time
period, uh, in Western and Northern Europe

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
can be attributed, uh, indirectly or directly to,
uh, this, this warming trend. Now, of course,

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
we don\'t really know how far this went. We
don\'t know how far west into the Atlantic, uh,

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
these Europeans spread. We do know that the Eskimo
peoples got to East Greenland by 4,000 years ago.

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
Uh, we think there might have been some connections
between them. But so far the evidence is,

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
is not in, uh, and we\'ll just have to wait
and see. But certainly for Arctic peoples,

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
the global warming periods that occur every few thousand years
have had a great impact on the development of their cultures,

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
and the spread and movement of peoples. It
was during another period of global warming,

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
perhaps 10,000 years ago that people made their
way north as the glacial ice melted away.

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
Ice ages on the sea are among
the world\'s richest ecosystems.

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
Early hunters followed as the sea mammals
move north with the icy environment.

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
In the rich waters of the far
north, seafaring traditions

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
developed over thousands of years.

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
The first true maritime empire in the North Atlantic may
have been the megalithic culture, sea Peoples who spread

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
their large stone monuments along the island\'s
coast and river valleys of Northern Europe

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
around 6,000 years ago.

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
We tend to forget how very important part the sea
played in their lives. These were not just farmers.

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
Fishing was a very important part of their lives.
And we can tell from the size of the fish bones

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
that we find on their settlements that they were fishing
not just from the shore, but from boats with lines.

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
These seafaring traditions were probably carried into
the Bronze Age. we can still see petroglyphs like these

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
from the coast of Sweden which give us an idea of the
scale of the boats they used. Despite the fact that

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
the fully 4,000 years separate the
megaliths builders from the Norsemen,

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
we should remember that their way of
life was really basically the same.

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
Bjarni\'s adventure may have been nothing more
than a chance contact to cross the ocean

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
that must have happened a number of times over
thousands of years of seafaring in the North Atlantic.

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
These events probably contributed to the
European mythology of magical lands

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:58.000
to the west. The sagas tell us

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
that when Bjarni returned home, there was much
talk of the new land. The sagas also tell us

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
of subsequent voyages of
exploration all apparently

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
led by members of Erik\'s clan: Erik\'s
son Leif, his other son Thorvald,

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
his son-in-law Karlsefni and his
daughter Freydis are all recorded

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
as having led major explorations and journeys
of discovery. But it\'s good to realize

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
that the sagas may very well have
been written specifically to glorify

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
the exploits of Erik and his clan
and that many other voyagers

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
whose names are not recorded may also
made the trip. The sagas give us

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
some detail about the different
expeditions. For example, Leif Ericson

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
is said to have retraced Bjarni\'s voyage
while Karlsefni took the northern route

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
with his wife Gudrid, three
ships, and 160 settlers.

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
They came first to the land that Bjarni found
last. They put off a boat and went to shore.

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
The land impressed them as barren
and useless. At least, said Leif,

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
it has not happened to us as to Bjarni over this
land that we failed to get ourselves a shore.

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
I shall now give the land a name
ansd call it Halluland, Stoneland.

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
After that, they sailed out to
see indicted on another land.

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
This land, said Leif, shall be given a name in
accordance with its nature. And he called it Markland,

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
Woodland. From there they sailed out
to sea with the northeast wind.

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
No one knows how far south Leif
and his crew may have sailed.

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
There are countless bays, inlets, islands
and capes along the North American coast

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
that would satisfy the descriptions
in Leif\'s saga. One possible landfall

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
may have been the Island of Newfoundland.
This is the region called Bellevue

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
at the bottom of Trinity Bay. They
landed where river flowed out of a lake.

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
They brought their boat up and built themselves
camps. Later they decided to winter there

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
and built big houses. There is no lack
of salmon there in river or lake,

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
and salmon bigger than
they had ever seen before.

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
The nature of the land was so choice,
no frost came during the winter.

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
In the spring, they made ready and sailed away. And
report has it that their towboat was filled with grapes.

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
Leif gave the land a name in accordance with the
good things they found in it calling it Vinland,

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
Wineland. Leif\'s Vinland
sounds truly beautiful.

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
It shares a mythical quality with
Brendan\'s Isle of the Blessed,

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
a kind of Northern eaten with all the plants and
animals to make life bountiful for the North settler.

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
Yet its precise location has eluded us.

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
The modern quest for Vinland began only in the last
century when all the sagas were finally published.

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
William Reese is an expert on the early
literature and images of the New World.

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
Prior to the late 17th century,
virtually none of the Norse sagas

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
had been published. They existed only in manuscript
form and often in inaccessible institutions.

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
A group of scholars began to publish them
and they were widely disseminated and print

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
by the end of the 17th Century. For
example, this edition of the Greenland Saga

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
was published in Iceland in 1688 and
contains a charming if somewhat inaccurate

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
wood cut showing Erik the Red in
medieval armor. But it wasn\'t until 1837

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
that this book edited by C. C. Rafn

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
published all of the Vinland voyages in a
single volume. It was disseminated widely

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
by subscription sales both in Europe and
America. And for the moment it came out,

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
public interest in the Vinland voyages
soared. This volume crystallized

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
the search for Vinland.

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
They inspired countless attempts to identify mysterious ruins as the
remains of Vinland. Even though there was no archaeological proof,

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
the search for ancient ruins gained
popular momentum and soon became a quest

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
for pre-Colombian contact with
the sagas forming a bridge

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
between science and myth. They
stirred the human imagination.

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
They made both what I would call
the general cultivated reader

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
and the scholar wanted to know more.
And this is to be said emphatically

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
about the documentary sources, they started

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
the whole thing off. In
Massachusetts, Eben Horsford,

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
a Boston antiquarian used reference book to argue that
Leif wintered along the banks of the Charles River

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
where long before modern development,
wild grapes grew in abundance.

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
In his publication of 1898,

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
he identified early colonial ruins as a Viking wharf
and what was possibly a Native American earthwork

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
as a Viking amphitheater. Perhaps
the most extraordinary stone ruins

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
in New England that came to be associated with
the Sagas is the site now known as Mystery Hill.

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
In the 1930s, William Goodwin,
an insurance man from Hartford

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
became fascinated with this complex of chambers
and walls on a hilltop in New Hampshire.

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
Passages in the sagas about a place called

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
Greater Ireland led him to suspect that these
structures were built not by the Vikings,

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
but by Irish monks driven further
west by the pagan Norse.

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
Ari (inaudible), a well-known Icelander of good
family, was driven off course to Hvítramannaland,

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
which some call White Man\'s
Land or Ireland the Great.

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
It lies west in the ocean near Vinland
the Good. Ari failed to get away

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
and was baptized there.

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
Goodwin was fascinated by their similarity to the early monastic
sites on the coast of Ireland. He spent years excavating,

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
but never found any European artifacts.
Later archaeologists found colonial remains

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
at Mystery Hill. However, underneath the colonial
level, there were Native American artifacts.

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
While not Irish or Norse, the
Mystery Hill\'s structures

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
have yet to reveal their secrets.

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
Will Goetzmann is a writer and
filmmaker who has focused on

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
North Atlantic archaeology.

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
After almost 150 years of searching, the location of Vinland
remained a tantalizing mystery. But then one day in 1960,

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
the Norwegian adventurer Helge
Ingstad made a discovery

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
that would change the history of New World
Archaeology forever. His interpretation

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
of the Vinland sagas led him not
to the forests of New England,

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
but to this treeless windswept
plane in northern Newfoundland.

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
He was not searching for stone ruins or
inscriptions, but rather for low mounds of Earth

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
very much like this one. This is the
collapsed remains of a sod house,

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
something like the kinds of structures that
the Norse would have built in their colony

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
in the New World. But the
thing that convinced Ingstad

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
that L\'Anse aux Meadow would be a good
place to excavate where two stone cairns

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
overlooking the site. These Cairns looked very
much like the kinds of cairns that he\'d seen

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
in his travels in Iceland.
During the 1960s,

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
excavations conducted by Anne Stine
Ingstad proved that 1,000 years ago,

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
exactly the date of the saga voyages, this was
the site of an extensive European village.

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
Here in the reconstructed Viking
halls at L\'Anse aux Meadow

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
we can see traces of the hopes and dreams of
the Greenlanders who first came to America.

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
Dr. Birgitta Wallace of Parks
Canada excavated with the Ingstads.

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
When this site

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
was discovered by the Ingstads in 1960,
you could barely see anything here.

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
Uh, All that was visible
were just faint ridges,

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
and they were less visible than they are
today. Uh, There were eight buildings

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
in all along the site where seven
of which were along this terrace.

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
Uh, three other buildings were large halls,

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
and each hall had a small
workshop next to it.

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
All in all, it foothold
up to about 100 people

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
give or take a lot. 100 people

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
may have been as much as one-sixth of the whole Greenland
colony, which means that a substantial proportion

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
migrated to North America around 1000 AD.

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
I was working for Anne Stine Ingstad one
summer, and it was a cold miserable summer.

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
And we are not finding very much. But I
was digging a trench right outside here.

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
And when we were just frozen stiff

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
came upon this little item,

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
which made us extremely excited.

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
I called over Anne Stine Ingstad and she
said, \"Are you mad?\" And we danced around.

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
What it is? This is a spindle wheel.

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
Not only is it a very typical
late Viking period spindle wheel,

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
but it also told us that women had
been here. This is a reconstruction

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
of one of a large halls. And as
you can see, it\'s very large.

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
It\'s over 90 feet long.
And it\'s built up sod,

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
very thick walls over a timber frame.
And it takes enormous quantities of sod

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
to build one of these buildings.

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
This was the living room in one of
the big halls, and also a bedroom

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
with beds all along here. But you have
to imagine it in the time of a Norse

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
with their nice Fire crackling in the middle
of the floor, people seated along here

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
having their dinner, which had been
cooked right here. When the Norse left,

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
they took everything with them. All that was left
for us to find were things they had dropped,

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
they never found again. Fortunately, one
of them dropped this little bronze pin.

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
It\'s a pin to close a cloak on the
shoulder instead of with the button.

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
It\'s a style of pain that the
Norse learnt about in Ireland.

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
And this is a very
distinct West Norse style

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
that it\'s found only in the
areas of Scotland and Ireland

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
where the Norse settled and in Iceland.

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
The pin confirms the saga accounts
that tell us the colonists were a

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
mixed lot of North Atlantic peoples. They included
Norse aristocrats, German hunters, Celtic sailors,

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
and Irish slaves. Many who
came to L\'Anse aux Meadow

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
brought their families with them.
Children were born. People died

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
and stories of their adventures
were told around fires at night.

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
There are many unusual things about this
site for being a Norse site. And one is

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
the location. Normally, the Norse
did not when they built a farm,

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
they did not build it this close to the water
and a very open exposed area like this.

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
And that I think gave us the first clue

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
that this is not a normal colony.
This is something

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
completely different. And what we have
find out is that it really was a base camp

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
for further exploration south. Thorvald
ordered his men to make their ship ready,

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
and to proceed westward along the coast,
and explore there during the summer.

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
It looked to them a beautiful and
well-wooded land with white sands

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
and a great many islands and shallows.
The next summer,

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
Thorvald headed eastward, and then
further north along the land. He sailed

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
past the long beaches they called the
Wonderstrands and went westward from there.

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
Thorvald\'s northern quest took him into the
large protected bays along the Labrador Coast,

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
like Hamilton Inlet. Here
the land becomes greener

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
and the Vikings would have found large
stands of timber ideal for boat building.

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
The sagas give us some very detailed clues
about the region Thorvald explored.

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
And when they had been on their travels for a long time, there
was a river flowing down off the land from east to west.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
They put into this river mouth and
laid anchor of the southern bank.

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
On the Labrador Coast,
there are very few rivers,

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
which run east to west. The English
River is the most prominent example.

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
It may have been the site of the first battle
between the Vikings and the Native Americans.

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
Thorvald walked to shore with his four
ships company. This is a lovely place,

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
he said, and here I should like to make my
home. Then they saw three mounds on the sand

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
up inside the headland. They walked up to
them and could see three skin boats there,

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
and three skraelings under each. So they
divided forces and laid hands on them all

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
except for one who got away with his canoe.
The other eight, they killed.

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
Sooner came from inside the fewer,
the countless feet of skin boats

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
and attacked them. The Skraelings kept
shooting arrows at them, but then fed away

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
each one as fast as he could. I have a
wound under my arms, said Thorvald.

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
Here\'s the arrow, and it will be the death of me. Carry me to that
headland where I thought I should sort of like to make my home.

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
For there you should bury me and
said crosses at my head and feet.

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
The great thing about the documentary is,
of course, that they tell a human story.

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
You know the names of people,
whether they\'re men,

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
whether they\'re women, whether they\'re happy, whether they\'re
unhappy, whether they are young, whether they\'re old.

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
And you know what happens to them.
And it\'s a curious thing

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
that knowing somebody\'s name makes
a difference. It brings them

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
closer to you. Now this also

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
can perhaps make us believe
a little too closely

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
in what we\'re being told about them that
Leif is this and Karlsefni is that.

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
And we cease to be critical.

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
But what the scientists are giving
us, of course, is an entirely

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
different kind of check. It seemed
like archaeological exploration

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
around English River might actually turn
up the remains of Thorvald\'s grave.

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
And so we hunted around and found that the forest cover is so thick that
there was no way that you could find the remains of a small stone grave.

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
But on the islands off the coast,

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
we found the remains of other settlements
dating to the same period to around 1000 AD,

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
small, uh, hut rings, ten sites and so on.
And in them, we found artifacts

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
of a different sort than we had expected.
Uh, the skraelings have always been

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
thought to be Eskimo peoples because of the descriptions
of their double-bladed paddles and their skin boats.

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
But, in fact, what we found,
uh, in these settlements,

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
uh, were arrow points of a style that indicated to
us that these were Indian people, not Eskimo people.

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
One of the most powerful of the
Viking leaders was Karlsefni.

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
The settlers who followed him south found a
fantastic mixture of mountains, lakes, and streams

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
that more than anything else might
have reminded them of Norway.

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
Karlsefni wished to travel south along the coast and east
of it believing that the land which lay further south

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
was more extensive. They
journeyed a long time till

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
they reached the river, which flowed down
from the land into a lake, and so to the sea.

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
Karlsefni and his men sailed into the
estuary, and called the place Hop,

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
Landlock Bay. There they found
self-sown fields of wheat and vines

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
wherever it was hilly. We know there\'s
at least one other Viking settlement

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
in the New World because the
sagas actually tell us its name.

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
It was called Hop, which means Landlocked Bay. It
was Karlsefni and Gudrid\'s southern settlement.

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
And people have tried for years
to match the saga descriptions

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
up with the geography. There are literally dozens
of places along the shores of Newfoundland

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
and much further south perhaps into New England
that seemed to match the descriptions fairly well.

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
Unfortunately, most of these
places have settlements on them,

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
and like this one, you might find roads, and
houses, and bridges that could obliterate

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
any trace of a Viking longhouse. Then early
one morning when they looked about them,

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
they saw nine skin boats. The
skraelings were small, dark,

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
ill favorite men, and had ugly hair
on their heads. They had big eyes

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
and were broad in the cheeks. For awhile they
remained there astonished and afterwards

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
rode off south past the headland.
One of the problems

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
with the Sagas is that they\'re a
collage of different accounts,

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
and their descriptions of the American Indian peoples were
probably drawn from encounters with Eskimos in the north

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
and Indians in the south. We just
can\'t really separate the two.

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
But we do know that the Norse that
explored south into Newfoundland

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
almost certainly encountered a culture
called the Beothuks. The Beothuk Indian

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
spent their winters camped around interior lakes very
much like this one. And then when the spring came,

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
they migrated along the trails and
streams out towards the ocean.

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
This is White Bay in Newfoundland. And
it\'s one of the very first places

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
that the Norse would have found in their travel
south from L\'Anse aux Meadows. It\'s a huge,

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
wide fjord with vast stands
of timber on both sides.

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
And it was this timber that would have attracted
any Norse explorers searching for least Finland.

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
It may seem strange that somebody would
come thousands of miles in search of wood,

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
but that was exactly what was lacking in both the
Greenland colony and also at L\'Anse aux Meadows.

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
Now as the Norse sailed up this fjord, what
they might have found at the very head

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
was a valley where the
Beothuk Indians had trails

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
that led out from the interior lakes.
In a situation just like this,

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
the Norse might have encountered Native Americans. It was
now they made their acquaintance with the skraelings

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
when a large body of man appeared
out of the forest there.

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
Neither party could understand the other\'s language.
There are a number of saga accounts of Viking battles

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
with the Indians. And most of these battles probably
took place in rich, wooded estuaries like this

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
where the Norse and the Indians would meet
each other. The importance of these battles

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
lies in the fact that they tell us why the Norse
never were able to settle in the New World.

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
They were fierce fighters, but they couldn\'t
conquer the peoples of the Americas.

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
It now seemed plain to Karlsefni and his
men that though the quality of the land

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
was admirable, there would always be fear and
strife dogging them there on account of those

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
who already inhabited it. So they
made ready to leave and sailed north.

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
The American natives may have driven Erik the
Red\'s family from the shores of Vinland,

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
but did later Norse explorers ever return?
There\'s one tantalizing scrap of evidence

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:29.999
from an Icelandic history
that hints of later contact.

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
In the year 1121, a century after
L\'Anse aux Meadow was abandoned,

00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
Henricus, the Bishop of Greenland
sailed for Vinland. Was he coming

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
to convert the skraelings or were there a still
far-flung settlements on American shores?

00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
The sagas are silent about what happened.

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
But in the rare book library at Yale University,
a controversial new clue to the bishop\'s visit

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
has come to light. The Vinland map is a small
thing illustration in the medieval book

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
believed to have been drawn about
50 years before Columbus\'s voyage.

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
It is a map of the world that
shows an island called Vinland

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
in the northwest corner next to Greenland.
Above Vinland in very small Gothic script

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
is a legend that tells
us the Bishop\'s fate.

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
Henricus, Bishop of Greenland and the
neighboring regions arrived in this vast land,

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
remained a summer and winter, and
then returned northeastwards.

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
Did Henricus contact the natives?
This small wooden carving

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
of a Norsemen was founded at an
Eskimo site on Baffin Island.

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
Baffin Island was a rich northern hunting ground. It
may have been a source of highly prized walrus ivory,

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
which the Bishops of Greenland
regularly sent back to Rome.

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.999
The Eskimo image of the Viking with a
cross on his chest has been interpreted

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.999
as a Norse Bishop in
typical European garment.

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
The map may be controversial, and the
Baffin carving is open to interpretation.

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
But much farther south along the
coast of Maine, there\'s one artifact

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
that provides us with indisputable proof
that the Norse visited the New World

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
after the saga voyages. The Goddard
Site was a huge Indian trading station,

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
which controlled traffic up and down the
Atlantic coast. Over 30,000 artifacts

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
have been recovered, including many that
came originally from the far north,

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
like this early Eskimos scraping tool.
Then in the 1970s,

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
excavators unearthed the silver
penny with a cross on one side.

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.999
At first, it went unnoticed. But experts
eventually identified the coin as Norse.

00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.999
And most surprisingly, it
was struck between 1060

00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:54.999
and 1085 AD several decades after
the Erik\'s and family expeditions,

00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:59.999
but early enough to have been
carried by Bishop Henricus.

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.999
This proved that the Norse made more
voyages to the New World. But does it mean

00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.999
that they traveled to Southern Maine? Bruce
Bourque, the Maine state archaeologist

00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:14.999
doesn\'t think so. In the absence of any
other tool, which could conceivably

00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
have originated with the Norse at the Goddard Site
and in the presence of a great many native tools

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
from the far north that were found at the
Goddard site, we suspect that the coin

00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
became part of a very extensive trade network
that we\'re just beginning to learn about.

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
After almost 200 years, only
one confirmed Viking artifact

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
has been found south of L\'Anse aux Meadow. Does
this mean that the search for Vinland is over?

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
We asked archaeologist Robert McGhee from
the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
Well, there\'s, uh, certainly more to find.

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
Uh, just the fact that the Maine penny suggests that
there where people, uh, coming to North America

00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
at sometime after the sagas suggest
that there were expeditions other than

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
the two or three which are mentioned.
Uh, the site at L\'Anse aux Meadow

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
is a nice little European
village settlement site.

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
But it\'s in a very strange place. It\'s not the
obvious place where the Norse would have settled.

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
Uh, That lead you to suspect that there must
have been other settlements somewhere perhaps

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
in the same area, perhaps in other, uh, parts of
the Northeast, uh, that haven\'t been found yet.

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
For years we thought we\'d find
evidence of a Norse in southern areas

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
around Vinland and places like that. But, in fact, in
recent decades, information from the Norse in the New World

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
does not come from the south, but from the Arctic sites
in the north and Hudson Bay and Baffin and Ellesmere.

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
And it\'s here that we find
iron tools, pieces of copper,

00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
other artifacts that suggests that
the Norse were, in fact, trading,

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
uh, with the native people in the areas.
And if we look at some of the sagas,

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
the stories actually that the Eskimo peoples tell, they have
their own kinds of sagas and legends about their interaction

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
with the Norse at least in Greenland. Uh,
sure we have evidence of hostilities

00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
and fighting, kidnapping and so on. But we
also have more peaceful activities recorded,

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
families being formed,
friendly trade relationships

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
that are not so dramatic and hostile. This is a
water colored by the mid-19th century Greenlandic

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
artist Aaron (inaudible).
And he painted a series,

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
uh, illustrating old Eskimo legends
or their dealings with the Norse.

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
And this painting, uh, shows the Eskimos moving
into, uh, what they thought was unoccupied country

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
and discovering at the back of
the fjord a Norse farmhouse.

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
Archaeologist Pat Sutherland, a research associate
at the Canadian Museum of Civilization,

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
has been working on Eskimos sites in the far north.
And her discoveries indicate that this native version

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
of friendlier contact may be accurate.
The Greenlandic Eskimo stories,

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
the traditional stories of the
Greenland Eskimos suggests that,

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
uh, contact between the Norse
and, uh, the aboriginal peoples

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
was one, um, of occasional violence

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
and skirmish, but also one of,
um, more amicable relations.

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
One of the most interesting artifacts that we
found to date in terms of this relationship

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
between the Norse and the tool anyway
is a portion of a bronze balance,

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
um, a trader\'s balance, which was
recovered from Northwestern,

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
um, Ellesmere Island. That\'s
about 79 degrees north.

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
It\'s a long way from the Norse colonies.
This is the type of, uh,

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
complete specimen we\'re talking about here.
The piece itself is, uh,

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
suggestive of a trading relationship.

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
And this specimen here is the one
which originally got me interested

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
into in the Norse problem. Uh, it
was founded about 20 years ago

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
in a little village that I was excavating.
And it\'s a portion of a bronze bowl

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
cast bronze. It would have
been or 30 centimeters across,

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
about a foot across I guess originally.
And we found this

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
and begin to think that was obviously
a piece of Norse bronzeware.

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
We brought it back and had it analyzed.
And it turns out

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
that it wasn\'t Norse. It\'s
Asiatic, either Chinese

00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
or apparently more likely Central Asiatic. And this
sort of material was being imported by the Norse

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
into Scandinavia through the Russian River system at
that time. So it may well have come from Central Asia

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
to the central, uh, Canadian Arctic
through the Russian trading network.

00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
Of course, it could probably just as likely
have come around the, the other way.

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
Uh, it, its origin is just about halfway
around the world from where it was found.

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
And it could have been traded
through the Chinese, Mongolian,

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
Northern Asiatic trade networks
across Bering Strait into Alaska,

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
and then eastward into Arctic Canada.
But this one rather ugly

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
little piece of metal, uh, certainly
demonstrates how in medieval times

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
of things traveled a long way around the world.
The bronze bowl and similar trade artifacts

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
suggest that American peoples
were never entirely isolated

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
from Europe and Asia. But traditional northern
peoples never experienced the division

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
of an old and new world.

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
What kind of world geography did the
Vikings imagine when they first set out?

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
The Scandinavians inherited a far older
World Vision from their Pagan forebears.

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
This image of the world contains elements
that differ with the geography developed

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
in the ancient Mediterranean. For example, nowhere
in the saga is there any sense of surprise

00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.999
that the Vikings found land
and people to the west.

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:04.999
It seems that these elements were
already a part of their world image.

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
What kind of world that they
think they were living in

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.999
and traveling around? Well,
it\'s a confused picture.

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:19.999
But so far as we can tell,
the Viking world picture

00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.999
was one of a round Earth around world

00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
let us say, which was either flat

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
or slightly sausage-shaped. Central to it

00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:39.999
was in the see that would be the Atlantic,

00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.999
the North Atlantic, and
it\'s contiguous waters.

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.999
Surrounding the sea would be

00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:54.999
a land (inaudible). There are (inaudible)
about this that the whole thing

00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:59.999
was enclosed by land. And they
knew from their own experience

00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.999
that this started somewhere
east of the north of Norway

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:09.999
at the Ottoman land and
went over the White Sea

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.999
right round the top of the
frozen world, missed Iceland,

00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:19.999
came to Greenland, and then proceeded
to come down the other side.

00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.999
So they would expect land to be out
that other side in a theoretic way.

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.999
The Vikings believed that the Sámi or
Laplanders, the near mythical people

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
who inhabited the farthest northern reaches of
Europe were capable of crossing to the New World

00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
and were related to the skraelings.
In the Viking world,

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.999
there may never have been a cultural or
geographical separation between the old world

00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.999
and the new. One of the biggest problems
in the history of the New World

00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.999
has been the relationship of its native
peoples with those of, of Europe and Asia.

00:53:55.000 --> 00:53:59.999
And for years, we\'ve wondered really what are
the connections? Are they Transatlantic,

00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.999
Transpacific connections as have
been claimed by some scholars?

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.999
In fact, it seems to be in the North that the major
interaction of peoples across the hemispheres

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.999
has been occurring on a fairly regular basis.
It\'s not the story of incidental voyages

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:19.999
across huge ocean reaches in the
temperate zones or tropical zones.

00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:24.999
But when you move into the northern
part of the, uh, hemisphere,

00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:29.999
the landmasses come close together.
And it\'s only a few 100 miles,

00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:34.999
in some cases, only few tens of
miles across these major divides.

00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:39.999
So the study of contacts, the study of
diffusion of ideas and the movement of peoples

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.999
through the northern part of the hemisphere is something that
really has never been looked at by archeologists in detail.

00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:50.000
[music]