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On the ninth day, the Orlova anchored off the Gannet Islands (offshore from the town of Cartwright), long enough for a zodiac bird watching tour and then continued south to visit a Viking site at Anse-aux-Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland island. From the sea, the site is reached via the well protected harbour of St-Anthony, the largest town in the Northern Peninsula, that you can examine in the 360 degree moving panorama below. The big building to the right of the wharf is the regional hospital. It might be mentioned here that medical care is free for all Canadians everywhere in the country.
This 180 degree moving panorama shows the shallow bay where some 80 Vikings led by Leif Eiriksson are thought to have landed in their wooden drakkars sometime around year 1000 to build the settlement whose archaeological remains were discovered in 1960.
This remarkable sculpture forming an arch over the pathway from the museum to the archaeological site, symbolises the closing of the circle of mankind's expansion around our planet.
The stable rounded element on the left represents the Inuit who migrated to this area from Siberia some 20 000 years ago and the dynamic element on the right represents the Viking's arrival from Europe one thousand years ago.
The archaeological site was disappointing after all the hype about it. This is all there is to see. The remains of sod houses have been re-interred after excavation so the mounds you see are evidently recent.
I do not doubt the authenticity of the evidence of human habitation found here but I am sceptical about the detailed interpretation of it that our verbose guide presented us.
I was more impressed by this bronze pin that is solid evidence of a Viking presence.
The real site was not much but the modern reconstitution of what Viking life could have been was colourful and interesting.
The structure of these sod houses is said to be based on evidence found in the site. Sod houses have also been found on the coast of Greenland. Here is an example of an 18th century sod housein Sisimiut.
Tourists just love speculative reconstitutions like this interior of a Viking house lit by skylights.
These construction details are admittedly speculative but nonetheless interesting.
So many clinker built Viking boats have been found from Norway to Spain and the Black sea that the authenticity of this reproduction is quite likely.
The Vikings have left evidence of having produced small amounts of iron in charcoal pit furnaces similar to the one in this reconstituted smithy.
The official Viking archaeological site was so popular with tourists that Disneyland like Nortstead was built nearby to satisfy the demand and to boost the local economy.
Norstead has a church with a cross on it (Iceland's rulers had just converted to Christianity in 1000).
Norstead's big sod boathouse shelters "Snorri", a well built replica of the Viking drakkars whose blood red sails and fierce sword wielding "beserkers" terrorised Europe from 800 to 1000 AD.
When the Vikings abandoned their traditional gods, Odin, Tor etc.to adopt Christianity around 1000 AD, they learned to fear death and lost their indomitable warlike character.
Here we are leaving French Bay that shelters St-Anthony from the rough North Atlantic seas, to move south towards our next stop in Bonavista. Many towns and geographical sites have French names because the French were the first Europeans to settle Newfoundland and the Atlantic coast of Canada. The French settlers in Newfoundland escaped the ethnic cleansing wrought by the British on Accadian settlements further south because there were few of them and their lands were of little agricultural value.
