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SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

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216 Saga-Book of the <strong>Viking</strong> <strong>Society</strong><br />

in print. Eventually J. R. Smallwood (Newfoundland's Premier)<br />

got Ingstad to write a useful factual article, 'The Norse discovery<br />

of Newfoundland' for The Book of Newfoundland III (St John's<br />

1967), 218-24, which appears to have driven some, at least, of<br />

the Newfoundland critics underground.<br />

The Ingstads, husband and wife, broke off their 1966 excavations<br />

to attend the Americanists' conference in Buenos Aires.<br />

There Helge Ingstad gave two general papers on the history of the<br />

Norse Vinland ventures, in which he leaned strongly to the<br />

view that L'Anse aux Meadows was Leif's site (Aetas y Memories<br />

IV, 1968, 89-106). Anne Stine Ingstad's two papers (ibid.,<br />

107-25) gave something more specific. Her paper on Site F, the<br />

large building or "hall", went into reasonably full detail on the<br />

course of excavation and the finds, and made very tentative and<br />

sensible conclusions. Analogies with halls in Greenland and<br />

Iceland were brought forward without dogmatism, Carbon<br />

14 datings cited (with details of the samples taken), while she<br />

frankly admitted that without more artifacts than the soapstone<br />

spindle-whorl found at the end of the 1964 season precise<br />

reference to voyages was very difficult. The discussion of<br />

seven other house-sites followed similar lines more briefly. The<br />

impression left by these papers was that in general the excavations<br />

had been responsibly conducted and that all the indications were<br />

that the site was Norse, though far-reaching conclusions beyond<br />

this were not possible. They gave a clearer view of the<br />

problems than did Helge Ingstad's parallel chapters in Westward<br />

to Vinland. Little has been published so far on the last two<br />

seasons' work, but in Westward to Vinland Ingstad included an<br />

illustration of an important Norse artifact, a bronze pin, found<br />

only in 1968, and also a provisional sketch of the lay-out of all<br />

the sites so far identified or excavated.<br />

The questions whether this was Leif's Vinland and his focal<br />

camp simply cannot be answered, only argued peripherally on<br />

what has come to light.! but that the site is Norse appears so<br />

highly probable that it can be accepted as such, and thus the first<br />

North American (though Canadian, not United States) site of<br />

pre-Columbian activity has been located. The institution of Leif<br />

Erickson Day by the United States on 9 October 1964 owes<br />

something to the Ingstads.<br />

Meantime there have been other sites which have some claim to<br />

1 Matti E. Kaups, 'Shifting Vinland - traditions and myth', Terrae<br />

Incognitae II (1970), 29-60, pours scorn on all attempts to locate Vinland or<br />

identify Leif's site. Her challenge to Ingstad that his site is not Norse is<br />

not based on all the evidence so far available.

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