{"id":20813,"date":"2022-04-08T11:08:42","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T15:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=20813"},"modified":"2022-04-08T11:15:05","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T15:15:05","slug":"episode-568-george-decker-and-the-discovery-of-lanse-aux-meadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=20813","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 568 GEORGE DECKER — AND THE DISCOVERY OF L’ANSE AUX MEADOWS"},"content":{"rendered":"
EPISODE 568    GEORGE DECKER — AND THE DISCOVERY OF L’ANSE AUX MEADOWS<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
alan skeoch<\/div>\n
april 6, 2022<\/div>\n

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DO YOU HAVE PLANS FOR A SUMMER VACATION?<\/div>\n

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IF, after you read this Episode, you decide to visit L\u2019Anse Aux Meadows, be ready for a wind swept, cold, rather hostile experience.<\/div>\n
Wonderful if you have imagination and love discovery.  Terrible, if you expect crowds of people and Tim Horton\u2019s or Starbucks coffee shops.<\/div>\n
And getting there\u2026getting to the northern tip of Newfoundland, is an adventure in itself.  Just remember the comforts of urban life<\/div>\n
will be absent.  If, however, you long for a sense of adventure, then this is a place you must visit at least once in your life.   Not many<\/div>\n
people will believe me and those longing for the soft life will be utterly and completely disappointed.<\/div>\n

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I was lucky enough to have shaken the hand of George Decker.<\/div>\n

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<\/div>\n
George Decker as we met him at L\u2019Anse aux Meadows \u2014 The man who showed Anne Stine Ingsted \u2019some old Indian mounds\u2019 that<\/div>\n
turned out to be the most important historical site in North America.<\/div>\n

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GEORGE DECKER<\/div>\n

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Very few people live on this windswept barren tip of Newfoundland.  Devoid of just about everything.  Hard to believe<\/div>\n
it is the most significant historical site in North America according to UNESCO.  IT was here that we met George Decker, the<\/div>\n
man who directed the Ingsted\u2019s to a few mounds of earth \u201cwhere I think some Indians once lived.\u201d   Not Indians of course.<\/div>\n
This site, L\u2019Anse aux Meadows, was where a Viking open decked sailing ship landed sometime between 950 AD and 1050 AD<\/div>\n
How do we know that?<\/div>\n

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\"The<\/div>\n

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\"imgur.com<\/div>\n
HOW DO WE KNOW VIKINGS LANDED HERE?<\/div>\n

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\"Viking<\/div>\n

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Viking pins that held their clothes in place.  This pin, found in Newfoundland in 1960, was the tiniest proof the Vikings<\/div>\n
landed at L\u2019Anse aux Meadows in1,000 AD.   There were other clues.<\/div>\n

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Several other clues.  Charcoal bits could be Carbon14 dated with accuracy. So around 1,000 AD people had fire pits here.  Why?  To keep<\/div>\n
warm of course but also to smelt iron.  The swamp around the site contained lots of bog iron\u2026. precipitate of iron rich water.  Bog iron<\/div>\n
could be smelted by fire into iron.  Not much iron but enough to repair a wooden ship or enough iron to be pounded into weapons i suppose.<\/div>\n

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When the Ingsted\u2019s carefully excavated the site they found a few other things.  Small things.  So small that most of us would<\/div>\n
ignore them.   And it is these tiny things that conclusively proved this was a place where Vikings lived long long ago.  Almost <\/div>\n
500 years before Christopher Columbus landed in the West Indies<\/div>\n

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Let me just talk about one of these discoveries.  A pice of stone.  Round. with a hole in the centre.  Small\u2026fits comfortably in<\/div>\n
the palm of a human hand with lots of flesh left over.  It is called a spindle whorl.  A key piece used in the making of woollen thread\u2026in the ultimate manufacture<\/div>\n
of cloth.  Or the repairing of cloth.  The stone will twist .. will spin \u2026 if held correctly.  I am not sure how but have been assured<\/div>\n
it is a simple thing to do.  These stones can be traced back to Norway.  Artefacts that could be dated around 1,000 A.D.<\/div>\n

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This spindle whorl had another meaning.  Women used spindle whorls. Not men.  Making and mending cloth was women\u2019s work.<\/div>\n
Think about it.  This spindle whorl meant that women were living on this god forsaken tip of Newfoundland a thousand years<\/div>\n
ago.   The presence of women hinted strongly that this was not just an accidental landing of a Viking ship lost in a North<\/div>\n
Atlantic gale.  This was a settlement.  Women.  The Icelandic stories handed down from generation generation had much<\/div>\n
to say about these women.  One woman in particulars.  One tough women.   If the tales are as accurate as most people<\/div>\n
believe.  For the present I will keep her out of this short Episode.  She is a separate story, perhaps told later.<\/div>\n

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\"Bog\"Bog<\/div>\n

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So this place was once a settlement.  No doubt  Bog iron and spindle whorl and dateable charcoal are facts found in<\/div>\n
the rubble of the mounds.    Then why is this site not well known?    Some people reading this short Episode have likely <\/div>\n
never heard of L\u2019Anse aux Meadows.  Why not?   Because the Vikings did not stay here long.  Several years at most.<\/div>\n
They may have had no intention of living here for long.  Maybe they came to get lumber.  There was no wood in Greenland<\/div>\n
and a thousand years ago the temperature was warmer\u2026trees grew here on the tip of Newfoundland.  Then again the Vikings<\/div>\n
may have hated the isolation of the place.  They could not get along with the anti people\u2026called the \u2019Skraelings\u2019.  Had some<\/div>\n
bloody confrontations.<\/div>\n

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\"Viking<\/div>\n

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\"Soapstone\"Spindle\"Viking<\/div>\n

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How do we know they did not stay long?  No graveyards found on the site.  Very few artifacts.  No deep mounds<\/div>\n
of charcoal.  No domestic animal bones.  Lots of seal bones but no domestic animal bones.  Vikings<\/div>\n
took animals on board their open ships normally.  No evidence of such found yet at the site.  No barn for<\/div>\n
instance.  Just a couple large sod covered structures where people lived.<\/div>\n

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Lots of mystery here.  Why on earth was this empty land called Vinland?  Was this just a real estate<\/div>\n
dodge.  Talk about a place as if it was heaven on earth to sucker somebody into <\/div>\n
buying and settling?  Maybe.  Or maybe grape vines once grew here a thousand years ago<\/div>\n
when Climate Change brought about a glorious heating of lands in the North Atlantic.  The Vikings<\/div>\n
landed here when times were good.   They got the hell out of here before times became bad.<\/div>\n
They did not stay long.  Then they were forgotten for a thousand years.<\/div>\n

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DISCOVERY\u2026A PERSONAL WORD<\/div>\n

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The word \u2018discovery\u2019 is misleading.  Often a discovery is not world shattering<\/div>\n
because it has been present for some time and known about by people who<\/div>\n
never get full credit for the discovery.   Christopher Columbus, for instance, gets credit<\/div>\n
for the discovery of North America.  Columbus may well have been the first European<\/div>\n
to find North America in 1493.   But there were millions of people living in North America<\/div>\n
for centuries before Columbus.   <\/div>\n

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The Viking explorers found North America nearly 500 years before Columbus.  But even<\/div>\n
they were not the first to find Newfoundland.  Others were there long before Eric the Red<\/div>\n
and his kin.  The Vikings called them \u2018Skraelings\u2019.  They were really people of Asian origin<\/div>\n
that followed hairy mammoths across the Bering land bridge in the last Ice Age when<\/div>\n
the Bering Sea was dry land caused by the Ice Age that imprisoned water as solid ice<\/div>\n
on the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps.<\/div>\n

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So discovery is a personal thing.  From birth to death we have so many discoveries in our<\/div>\n
lives.  I fear your discovery of L\u2019Anse Aux Meadows will disappoint most of you.  But for<\/div>\n
those of you who can strip the present to reach deep into the past and are able to look upon the world was a thousand<\/div>\n
years ago, you will be thrilled.  But do not say I did not warn you.<\/div>\n

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This was my view as I looked seaward from L\u2019Anse Aux Meadows in the late 1960;s.   When the Vikings looked seaward the ocean was not nearly as harsh<\/div>\n
as it is today.   At their backs were the skraelings ready to kill them.  Who were the Scraelings?  Likely they were the Beothuk native people of whom<\/div>\n
not a single one survives today.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
alan skeoch<\/div>\n
april 8, 2022<\/div>\n

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NEXT EPISODE\u2026A PICTURE GALLERY OF L\u2019ANSE AUX  MEADOWS AND VICINITY<\/div>\n

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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EPISODE 568    GEORGE DECKER — AND THE DISCOVERY OF L’ANSE AUX MEADOWS alan skeoch april 6, 2022 DO YOU HAVE PLANS FOR A SUMMER VACATION? IF, after you read this Episode, you decide to visit L\u2019Anse Aux Meadows, be ready for a wind swept, cold, rather hostile experience. Wonderful if you have imagination and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}