Two Unique Places

In 1960 Helge Ingsted came to the village of L’ance aux Meadows and asked if anyone knew of any unusual mounds or turf walls nearby. Community elder George Decker took him to the place the locals knew as the “old Indian camp”. Helge and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine Ingsted, confirmed that this site was a Viking encampment. Something Helge had been searching for for years.

Today this is a Canadian National Historic Site and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is the only known location of Viking inhabitation in North America and the oldest evidence of Europeans in America. The site is dated to sometime between 910 and 1030 CE.

We entered the site through this striking Welcome Center.

The boardwalk led through this sculpture, “The Meeting of Two Worlds”. The plaque was missing, I thought it was some homage to the sea.

And I liked the dragon.

There is not much to look at at the archeological site. The major excavation was done from 1960 to 1968, but work in the area continues today. It may not look like much, but a lot of evidence was uncovered here.

Using the archeological finds as a guide, four of the buildings have been reconstructed near the original site.

This encampment is open to visitors.

The buildings were constructed of sod, which here was mostly peat. There was very little wood used. In fact, wood was the main thing the Vikings were looking for.

The buildings were quite cozy inside. Everything but the metal was found locally.

The buildings combined working…

and sleeping quarters.

Here’s the story I got from the docents and the Welcome Center.

Eric the Red was expelled from Iceland for multiple murders. He took a band of people with him where they established a settlement in Greenland. It was not the most hospitable land, it had no trees.

Bjarni Herjolfsson was a Viking trader who was blown off course by a storm. When he was able to return he told the people in Greenland about land to the west with trees, Labrador.

Leif Eriksson then led expeditions to the west. His groups set up this encampment where they would stay for months, overwintering, making ship repairs, and harvesting trees.

It’s known that some groups brought animals with them. Goats and sheep and according to lore at least one pair of cattle.

The site was used for decades but was never a permanent home.

There were locals out in the boggy areas around the site. Bud had the binoculars and saw they were picking something. A docent told him they were picking these berries, Bakeapples.

We drove over to L’ance aux Meadows and saw a sign for Emily’s Jams and Crafts. We stopped and I bought a jar of Bakeapple jam. So now we’ve eaten something the Vikings might have had.

After lunch and our taste of Bakeapple jam we drove out to a very different, but also unique place, Burnt Cape Ecological Reserve. This may look like barren rock,

but it has more than 300 species of plants, 30 of which are very rare.

We drove very slowly out the two miles of gravel road.

The cliffs were beautiful.

You could look across the Straight of Belle Isle and see Labrador.

But what captivated me were the plants.

What looked like patches of moss…

on closer inspection turned out to be tiny flowering plants.

Some I recognized, they were miniature versions of plants I knew, like these spruce trees. It’s like the whole landscape was bonsai’d.

I even saw some very slender 6 inch Equisetum (horsetails or scouring rushes) in a little patch of bog.

I did recognize golden root from our visit to Port au Choix, though even these were smaller here.

The adaptations to this harsh landscape were extreme. This plant raised itself from the rocky soil less than two inches, yet it is a woody shrub. From what I can find, I think it is a species of willow!

This is a crow berry, and its fruit is the biggest thing about it.

Most of the plants were past their flowering, so very difficult to identify. The resident app on my phone had no chance with these. It kept coming up with natives to Australia and New Zealand!

Whether I could identify them or not, I loved spotting them. Like another site on line I will call these orange lichens.

Things often grew together in clumps like this lichen and flowering plant, no doubt sharing scare resources.

There were some “showy” flowers,

if you were willing to get close enough!

Showy or not,

I was captivated by them all;

even Bud started spotting the little beauties.

He most enjoyed the gorgeous setting, but for me that was just icing on the cake.