Norse settlement of North America

Norse settlements in Canada

Greenland lacked natural resources like forests and iron ore. The Greenlanders' oral history, recorded in the Saga of the Greenlanders and Saga of Erik the Red, mentions several places to the south or west that could supplement what was available on Greenland, notably Markland, Helluland, and Vinland. There is generally believed to be a historical basis for Norse voyages to these places, despite some fantastical elements in the sagas, such as Great Ireland and the uniped who kills Thorvald Eiriksson in Vinland. In Adam of Bremen's 11th-century chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, he briefly mentions Greenland and islands beyond Norway including one "called Vinland". Icelandic annals record that, in 1347, a ship arrived from Greenland that had drifted off course while sailing to Markland for wood. An Icelandic description of the world written circa 1300 gives the rough order of the lands described in the sagas as Greenland, Helluland, Markland, and Vinland, which the author suspected was part of Africa. In Europe, several medieval works reproduced this general description in cities as far away as Milan, where the Dominican chronicler Galvano Fiamma mentioned terra que dicitur Marckalada 'the land called Markland' west of Greenland circa 1345. Where these places would correspond to in modern-day Canada is still debated.

Greenland colonists used timber for their boats and homes, so they likely made many unrecorded trips south for wood. Microscopic analysis of wood used on Greenland shows that many families relied on driftwood and the sparse local trees, while the larger farms sourced lumber from Europe and North America. The Icelandic archaeologist Lísabet Guðmundsdóttir studied over 8,500 wood remains from five Norse sites in Greenland, and she determined that eight pieces had been clearly imported from North America: one hemlock piece and seven jack pine, which "can be distinguished from Scots pine by the ray tracheids". In total, the study found 26 pieces (0.26% of the total sample of 8,552) that could not be attributed to Greenlandic plants or to driftwood, which was widely used in Norse Greenland and Iceland. This included oak, which may have been imported from either mainland North America or, more likely, from Northern Europe. Dates from the remains indicated that the Norse had been using wood from North America longer than previously thought.

Bog iron was widely used and smelted in forges on Greenland, but because no ores were present near the Eastern or Western Settlements, the iron had to be shipped from Labrador, Newfoundland, Iceland, or Europe. One indicator that iron was being extracted from North America rather than imported from the east was the usage of porous iron and slag blooms. Iron shipped from the east would likely have been products (tools, nails, axes) or iron bars.

Newfoundland

Evidence of the Norse west of Greenland came in the 1960s when the archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad and the author Helge Ingstad excavated what proved to be a Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. They found a bronze, ring-headed pin like those the Norse used to fasten their cloaks inside the cooking pit of one of the larger dwellings. A stone oil lamp and a small spindle whorl, used to maintain the spindle's speed of rotation while spinning fiber, were found inside another building. A fragment of a bone needle was discovered in the firepit of a third dwelling. It may have been used for nålebinding, a needlework technique predating knitting. Much slag, formed as a by-product from the smelting and working of iron, was found on the site along with many iron boat nails or rivets.

The site is different from the colonies in Greenland; it was not a permanent continuous settlement. Archaeologists have found no burials, no farmland, no stables for livestock, and a near absence of soapstone, which was widely used by the Greenlanders for household tools.

Birgitta Wallace noted that the site's location and building types "suggests that seafaring was the most important function of the settlement". The buildings include several large living halls and specialized workshops including one for boat repair and construction. According to historian Eleanor Barraclough, one major purpose of the site was boat repair. The land is bare and open now, but it was forested during the time the Norse were active. The presence of wood and nuts from the Juglans cinerea walnut tree, which grows wild on the continental mainland but not Newfoundland itself, indicates that the site was used as a staging area for further voyages.

Trees at L'Anse aux Meadows were felled by the Norse in 1021. Chunks of wood from the site were dated in 2021 using the 993–994 carbon-14 spike and tree rings. This provided the first certain date for the Norse presence at the site. Although not inhabited for long stretches of time, the site may have been used as late as 1145 AD. When they left, the Norse deliberately abandoned the site, leaving behind no tools and mostly waste.

Greenland had a limited population to found further settlements on the scale of L'Anse aux Meadows. That site alone may have drawn 10 to 20 percent of the total Greenland colonists. The communal living halls could hold from 30 to 160 people. Point Rosee was identified by the archaeologist Sarah Parcak as a possible Norse settlement on the basis of near-infrared satellite images and high-resolution aerial photographs, but excavations in 2015 and 2016 showed no signs of Norse occupation. What appeared from the sky to be a turf wall was determined to be the result of natural processes.

Baffin Island

Baffin Island lies directly west of Norse sites in Greenland, and it is likely the Helluland of Norse oral history. Canadian researchers have studied possible Norse outposts on and around Baffin Island, notably around a structure in Nanook, also known as Tanfield Valley. Moreau Maxwell described a ruined stone and sod building at Nanook as "very difficult to interpret" in the 1960s.

A team led by the archaeologist Patricia Sutherland excavated the structure and found possible Norse artifacts, including whalebone shovels similar to ones from the Greenland colonies, wooden tally sticks, and Old World rat fur. Partially because its stones were cut in a European fashion, Sutherland also suspected the building itself was Norse. Radiocarbon dating could not conclusively identify the site as it had been occupied and abandoned several times.

At Nanook, Sutherland's team found whetstones used to sharpen blades. Metal fragments in the whetstone included bronze, brass, and smelted iron in the medieval European metallurgy style. A stone crucible there had once used very high heat to melt down metal alloys like bronze. While there is no evidence for Indigenous North Americans smelting alloys, the Norse regularly did. Radiocarbon dating placed the crucible broadly between 754 BC and 1367 AD, and Sutherland said, "It may be the earliest evidence of high-temperature nonferrous metalworking in North America to the north of what is now Mexico."

Researchers also suspected yarn from Willows Island and Nunguvik (near Pond Inlet) to be Norse, but later dating found the yarn to be Dorset in origin. Despite early theories that the Norse introduced the practice of spinning thread to the native peoples, a 2018 study demonstrated an Indigenous spinning tradition. The Willows Island yarn dates to between 15 BC and 725 AD, possibly made from Arctic hare or muskox. Unlike European cordage, Dorset yarn was spun at a consistent diameter and was never woven into fabric.

Labrador

Researchers have found evidence for some Norse contact with Labrador, but not for settlements. When Martin Frobisher explored Labrador in the 1570s, the native peoples relayed their oral history of the kablunat ('white men') whose behaviors and customs resembled those of the Norse. The colonists in Greenland regularly used timber for houses and boats, and the most viable logging sites from Greenland were the heavily forested coasts of northern Labrador. Labrador also contained bog iron ore and nearby timber to supply charcoal as fuel for its smelting. An arrowhead excavated from the Sandnæs farmstead in Greenland resembled neither Norse nor Inuit arrows, but it matched the arrows used by the Indigenous Point Revenge culture in southern Labrador.

Additionally, genetic evidence suggests direct contact. Scientists who studied Icelanders' mitochondrial DNA in 2010 concluded that a lineage found there most likely came from an Indigenous eastern Canadian woman brought to Iceland around the year 1000, though an Asian or European origin could not be ruled out.

Norse materials have not been found in Native American archaeological sites in mainland Labrador, which indicates a lack of trading and a low possibility that Norse sites as large as L'Anse aux Meadows will be found beyond Newfoundland. Patrick Plumet led many coastal surveys west of Labrador in Ungava Bay during the 1970s and 1980s that searched for but found no evidence of Norse settlement. On the Avayalik Islands, off the very northern tip of Labrador, Patricia Sutherland found yarn that was distinct from the sinew-based cordage typically used by Indigenous Arctic hunters. Though she initially suspected this to be Norse, further studies showed evidence for the Dorset spinning their own cordage and trading in a network that included the Norse, but not for a Norse settlement on the island.

Vinland sagas

According to the Icelandic sagas—Saga of Erik the Red, plus chapters of the Hauksbók and the Flatey Book—the Norse started to explore lands to the west of Greenland only a few years after the Greenland settlements were established. In the 980s, a merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson left Iceland to meet his father in the Greenland colonies but was blown off course. He became lost in a fog for days, until sighting land to the west. The flat and forested land matched no description of Greenland, so Bjarni sailed north and ultimately did reach the colonies. He was interested only in finding his father's farm but described his findings to Leif Erikson, who explored the area in more detail and started a small settlement fifteen years later.

The sagas describe three areas beyond Greenland: Helluland, "land of the flat stones"; Markland, "the land of forests"; and Vinland, either "the land of wine" or "the land of meadows". Helluland is generally thought to correspond to Baffin Island but may include northern areas of Labrador. Markland is generally thought to be an area in Labrador. Vinland likely includes Newfoundland and possibly other areas around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. There has long been debate about identifying any of the three "lands" to actual, known locations in North America. Vinland in particular has been the topic of widely divergent claims and theories.

In 2019, the archaeologist Birgitta Wallace wrote:

L'Anse aux Meadows cannot be Vinland. Vinland was a land, the same way Iceland and Greenland are lands, countries. But L'Anse aux Meadows is a place described in the sagas as part of Vinland. It is the Straumfjord of Eric's Saga. It is the same kind of settlement, with the same kind of occupants and type of activities, a winter base from where expeditions went south in the summer. Although artifacts and buildings are typically Norse, the layout, location, and artifacts are different from the sites we know elsewhere in the Norse world. Just such a site is described in the sagas: Straumsfjord. A compelling reason why L'Anse aux Meadows has to be the main site in Vinland lies in demography.

Historiography

For centuries, it remained unclear whether the Icelandic sagas represented real voyages by the Norse to North America. Although the idea of Norse voyages to, and a colony in, North America was discussed by the Swiss scholar Paul Henri Mallet in his book Northern Antiquities (English translation 1770), the sagas first gained widespread attention in 1837 when the Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn revived the idea of a Viking presence in North America. North America, by the name Winland, first appeared in written sources in a work by Adam of Bremen from approximately 1075. The most important works about North America and the early Norse activities there, namely the sagas of Icelanders, were recorded in the 13th and 14th centuries. The Norse sites were depicted in the Skálholt Map, made by an Icelandic teacher in 1570 and depicting part of northeastern North America and mentioning Helluland, Markland and Vinland.

Pseudohistory

While there is no physical evidence of Norse settlements in North America except for Greenland and the far east of Canada, other so-called discoveries have been proposed and rejected by scholars. Unsubstantiated claims of Norse colonization are especially common in New England.

Supposed physical evidence has been found to be deliberately falsified or historically baseless, often to promote a political agenda. Literary critic Annette Kolodny criticized attempts to evoke what she termed "plastic vikings". These were fictional characters treated as historical figures, but "depicted variously as heroic warriors and empire builders, barbarous berserker invaders, fighters for freedom, courageous explorers, would-be colonists, seamen and merchants, poets and saga men, glorious ancestors, bloodthirsty pagan pirates, and civilized Christian converts" depending on the speaker or author. Purported runestones have been found in North America, most famously the Kensington Runestone. These are generally considered forgeries or misinterpretations of Native American petroglyphs. Gordon Campbell's book Norse America, published in 2021, presents his thesis that despite the "fleeting and ill-documented" Norse presence, the idea that Vikings "discovered America" quickly seduced Americans of northern European Protestant descent, some of whom went on to deliberately manufacture evidence to support it.

Monuments claimed to be Norse include:

• Stone Tower in Newport, Rhode Island
• Viking Altar Rock
• Spirit Pond runestones
• AVM Runestone
• Hammer of Thor (monument)
• Bourne Stone
• Narragansett Runestone
• Maine penny
• Ulen sword
• Beardmore Relics
• Oklahoma runestones
• The petroglyphs on Dighton Rock, from the Taunton River in Massachusetts

Horsford's Norumbega

The nineteenth-century Harvard chemist Eben Norton Horsford connected the Charles River Basin to places described in the Norse sagas and elsewhere, notably Norumbega. He published several books on the topic and had a range of memorials created in New England to his supposed Viking past, including the bronze Leif Erikson statue in Boston, Massachusetts. His work received little support from mainstream historians and archeologists at the time, and even less today.

Other nineteenth-century writers, such as Horsford's friend Thomas Gold Appleton in A Sheaf of Papers (1875) and George Perkins Marsh in The Goths in New England, also seized upon false notions of Viking expansion to promote white superiority and oppose the Catholic Church. Such misuse of Viking history and imagery reemerged in the twentieth century among some groups promoting white supremacy. The historian Carlo Rotella coined the term "pulp history" to describe Horsford's pseudo-historical writing, comparing its origin and appeal to the pulp fiction histories invented by the pulp author Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age, the setting of the Conan the Barbarian stories.

Kensington Runestone

The Kensington Runestone is a greywacke tablet inscribed with runes and Latin letters. The Swedish immigrant Olof Ohman signed an affidavit stating that he had found the stone in 1898, buried in the ground, tangled in the roots of an aspen tree growing above it. Linguists dismissed the stone as a hoax after it was brought to public attention. Olaus J. Breda (1853–1916), professor of Scandinavian languages and literature in the Scandinavian Department at the University of Minnesota, found the runestone to be a forgery. Breda forwarded copies of the inscription to contemporary Scandinavian linguists and historians, such as Oluf Rygh, Sophus Bugge, Gustav Storm, Magnus Olsen and Adolf Noreen. They "unanimously pronounced the Kensington inscription a fraud and forgery of recent date". The inscription dates itself to 1362, but scholars have found many anachronisms in it, including runes that had not come into widespread use at that time and odd runic numerals. These unusual runes did match the kind of code-writing found to have been used in the 1880s by the Swedish tailor Edward Larsson. For example, both the purported runestone and Larsson used pentadic numerals, but with the place value system from Arabic numerals. Runestones verified to have been carved in the 1300s variously used written dates, Roman numerals, or the reign of a notable monarch.

Residents of the area described the stone itself as unlike those found naturally in the area. In 1899, the Norwegian newspaper Skandinaven quoted a general store owner, E. E. Aaberg: "Moreover I have never seen around here the kind of stone from which this one has been cut off." However, the slab is similar to the bluestone sold in the area by the Minnesota Stone Company, used to pave sidewalks during the 1800s, before concrete became the preferred material. Local residents reported seeing Ohman use a stone about the size and shape of the Kensington Runestone as an anvil. The back of the stone is chipped and gouged in a way consistent with these reports. Modern geological analysis indicates that runes were carved shortly before the stone's "discovery". The runes carved into the stone's calcite coating are noticeably less weathered than twentieth-century inscriptions on marble tombstones in the area. Despite its reputation as a hoax, the stone has been exhibited in museums and at the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Vinland Map

During the mid-1960s, Yale University announced the acquisition of a map purportedly drawn around 1440 that showed Vinland and a legend concerning Norse voyages to the region. However, certain experts doubted the authenticity of the map because of cartographic inconsistencies. For example, medieval maps often depicted Greenland vaguely as a peninsula. On the "Vinland Map", as the Icelandic researcher Gisli Sigurdsson described it, Greenland's northern coast appears "suspiciously similar to what you can see on modern maps". Chemical analysis of the map's ink later shed further doubts on its authenticity as the ink contains a titanium compound first used in 20th century ink. Scientific debate continued until 2021, when researchers found an older Latin inscription beneath the modern ink, and Yale finally acknowledged that the Vinland Map is a forgery.