BS: Possible Viking site found, New England

Subject: RE: BS: Possible Viking site found, New England
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 07 Apr 16 - 07:48 AM

Do you have a link for that Keith?

Subject: RE: BS: Possible Viking site found, New England
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 07 Apr 16 - 08:00 AM

Whatever was found may or not be evidence of a Viking presence but, the fact is, something was found and it was found from space. I find that pretty amazing.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: Possible Viking site found, New England
From: Raggytash
Date: 07 Apr 16 - 08:08 AM

Butternuts were mentioned in the programme and it was suggested that they did not grow in the area but came from further south. However I do not recall them as being definitive "proof" of a Viking presence in the area. All in all the programme did not answer any questions.

Subject: RE: BS: Possible Viking site found, New England
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 07 Apr 16 - 09:11 AM

Whatever was found may or not be evidence of a Viking presence but, the fact is, something was found and it was found from space. I find that pretty amazing. - was presumably of meteoric origin -

the "Bog iron" is of metal extraction origin and possibly of Norse / Viking origin.

Was the date if the Butternut mentioned?

Subject: RE: BS: Possible Viking site found, New England
From: Raggytash
Date: 07 Apr 16 - 09:17 AM

Not 100% Les but the inference was they were contemporary to the bog iron.

Subject: RE: BS: Possible Viking site found, New England
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 07 Apr 16 - 11:22 AM

Les,
"Later excavations by Bengt Schoenbak and Birgitta Wallace for Parks Canada revealed more about the purpose of this settlement and the type of activities that took place here. Their work produced further evidence of wood-working and iron-smelting, suggesting that the main activity at the site was repairing damaged vessels or constructing new ones from wood obtained in the nearby forests. Butternuts and worked pieces of butternut wood-a tree that was not native to Newfoundland but was present one thousand years ago in northern Nova Scotia and New Brunswick-were also found. This discovery indicates that the people who lived at L'Anse aux Meadows had traveled further south into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and had brought back nuts and wood native to those southern areas and were sampling the region's resources as described in the sagas. These finds suggest that the L'Anse aux Meadows site was a base-camp or gateway to the rich lands around the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is likely the Vinland of the sagas."
http://naturalhistory.si.edu/vikings/voyage/subset/vinland/archeo.html

Subject: RE: BS: Possible Viking site found, New England
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 07 Apr 16 - 01:16 PM

Thanks for the ref. Keith, all fascinating stuff.

The sagas, written then carried by oral tradition for 200 years don't seem too reliable especially in the hands of "cherry picking" pseudo historians - still the academics should introduce some backbone maybe.

Subject: RE: BS: Possible Viking site found, New England
From: Penny S.
Date: 07 Apr 16 - 02:04 PM

Elsewhere I have seen someone who has been lectured by the rather rude historian - he did not make such remarks inn her presence.

There does seem to be a curious attitude in Iceland (or at least from that historian) and the Faroes since the DNA surveys have been done, leading to a confusion that, in the Faroes, the men are descended from Vikings and the women from the British Isles (Ireland included). Cue stupid joke in the Faroes about the men stopping there because they did not want to go back home to their wives with their newly acquired women. Of course, both men and women are descended from both. I put one of the guides right on the Faroes, but not the sexist male one.

Presumably, the mitochondrial DNA links to Isles sources, and the Y chromosomes to Nordic. So the Celtic monks didn't make any DNA contribution (despite mixed houses and no great opposition to marriage) and Nordic women's mitochondria somehow didn't make much contribution either (which could happen randomly), though some are mentioned by name in the sagas.

Subject: RE: BS: Possible Viking site found, New England
From: Stanron
Date: 07 Apr 16 - 07:06 PM

For those of us in the UK the program is on again right now on BBC1 11.45 pm to 01.15.