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Evidence of Norse in Arctic Canada Archaeologists working on Baffin Island believe they’ve found a Norse outpost.
Patricia Sutherland
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team of researchers has uncovered evidence of what they believe is a Norse shore station while excavating the ruins of an ancient structure on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Patricia Sutherland, who is directing the project, has been investigating the question of interaction between early Europeans and aboriginal occupants of the region for some time. “I’ve been looking at four sites, three on Baffin Island and one in northern Labrador since 1999, when I identified cordage at the Museum of Civilization that was directly comparable to cordage from Norse Greenland,” said Sutherland, an adjunct professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. This cordage, previously excavated by another researcher from one of the sites and stored at the museum, began a 13-year pursuit for other evidence of the Norse in the Canadian Arctic. The Norse, popularly known as the Vikings, visited North America centuries before the arrival of Christopher Columbus, yet only one site in the Americas, the 1,000-year-old L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, has been confirmed as a Norse outpost. In the 50 years following the discovery of this base camp, researchers and amateur historians have scoured North America’s east coast searching for evidence of the Norse, meeting with little success until recently.
american archaeology
Researchers excavate at Cape Tanfield, one of the sites investigated by Patricia Sutherland.
Other artifacts in addition to cordage recovered from the sites include notched wooden objects similar to tally sticks used by the Norse for recording trade transactions, and distinctive barshaped whetstones used for sharpening metal tools.Traces of metals including the copper alloy bronze, known to have been produced and used by the Norse, have been found on the surfaces of the stones. Over the course of her project Sutherland has examined a large number of artifacts stored at the Canadian Museum of Civilization and The Rooms Museum in Newfoundland, comparing them with medieval Norse artifacts in museums in Denmark, Greenland, Iceland, Britain, and Russia. “I certainly believe that we have
the evidence,” said Sutherland. “There is very little doubt the architecture is European, based on the remnants of a rock-lined floor drain and the size and composition of the walls, which are comparable to Norse structures. And the whetstones, in particular, are very convincing.” University of Waterloo archaeologist Robert Park recently challenged the dating of the Baffin Island artifacts and Sutherland’s interpretations of the evidence, arguing that the most plausible explanation for the Norse-like artifacts and architecture is that these were developed independently of any Norse influence by northern Canada’s ancient indigenous inhabitants. —Tamara Stewart
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