L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site of Canada
History
Discovery of the Site and Initial Excavations (1960–1968)
It was nearly nine centuries later, in 1960 that a Norwegian explorer and
writer, Helge Ingstad, came upon the site at L’Anse aux Meadows. He was
making an intensive search for Norse landing places along the coast from New
England northward. At L’Anse aux Meadows, a local inhabitant, George
Decker, led him to a group of overgrown bumps and ridges that looked as if
they might be building remains. They later proved to be all that was left of
that old colony. For the next eight years, Helge and his wife, archaeologist
Anne Stine Ingstad, led an international team of archaeologists from Norway,
Iceland, Sweden, and the United States in the excavation of the site.
Ringed pin of bronze
© Parks Canada
The Ingstads found that the overgrown ridges were the lower courses of the
walls of eight Norse buildings from the 11th century. The walls
and roofs had been of sod, laid over a supporting frame. The buildings were
of the same kind as those used in Iceland and Greenland just before and after
the year 1000. Long narrow fireplaces in the middle of the floor served for
heating, lighting and cooking.
Among the ruins of the buildings, excavators unearthed the kind of artifacts
found on similar sites in Iceland and Greenland. Inside the cooking pit of
one of the large dwellings lay a bronze, ring-headed pin of the kind Norsemen
used to fasten their cloaks. Inside another building was a stone oil lamp and
a small spindle whorl, once used as the flywheel of a handheld spindle. In
the fire pit of a third dwelling was the fragment of a bone needle believed
to have been used for a form of knitting. There was also a small-decorated
brass fragment that once had been gilded.
From these finds we know not all the Norse settlers had been men. Spindle
whorls and knitting needles were tools used by women. A small whetstone, used
to sharpen needles and small scissors, was found near the spindle whorl. It
would have also been part of a woman’s kit. A great deal of slag from
smelting and working of iron was also found on the site together with a large
number of iron boat nails or rivets. This, more than any other find, led
archaeologists to identify the site as Norse.