North Atlantic Travellers

We said goodbye to Jeannie's Sunrise at... sunrise and headed into the Northern Peninsula to St. Anthony's for a morning whale watch.

I'm sometimes leery of close-quarters tours (not because of covid, though I should be) because of the chance some annoying or jerky person/people will ruin the whole thing. The group of 30 or so was thankfully fine although at one point out on the water a guy from Oklahoma and a guy from the UK started discussing everything wrong in US politics. Shut up and take in the experience, you idiots! We talked to an older couple from Belgium who are on a five-week cruise, had just been to Greenland, and were headed to Quebec next. After hitting Newport (we gave them some suggestions) and NYC they are going out west to stay with people they had met somewhere along the way. They handed out their business-sized card with a photo, email, and phone number to everyone they talked with in case anyone wanted to stay in touch. Man, these guys know how to live!

More Newfoundland jigs and reels while we cruised out of the harbor on what was the most beautiful weather day we've had so far. I guess that's the thing here. The views were just incredible as we passed along the coastline and our captain, a St. Anthony native, gave us news we could use about marine life as well as all things Newfoundlandish.

One of the things we've been wondering about the last few days are these fenced in plots that we keep seeing along the sides of the highway. Captain Paul told us that these are family gardens and that the soil is so poor near the coast that the cleared and tilled soil that borders the main roads are the only place to grow anything. People just claim a spot and maintain it- it's all owned by the provincial or municipal government and no one minds.

We also learned that polar bears come off the ice into town at least a few times every winter and that when Paul was a kid he occasionaly had to stay inside with his classmates after the day ended until the bear could be tranquilized and taken back to the ice sheets in the harbor. He also told us a story about a polar bear who went up on a house roof because the drifts were so high and the woman who owned the house opened her door to leave to find the bear staring right at her. He told us to google it because he knew it sounded pretty unbelievable! 

We didn't see any whales today, despite the fact that one local later told us "if they ain't here, they ain't anywhere," but we did find a pod of dolphins who felt sorry for us and swam around and under the boat for a pretty long time.

Even without the whales it was still a fantastic morning, the ocean was calm and a warm breeze was blowing, and the views back to the shore were breathtaking. We really are seeing the best western Newfoundland has to offer!   

After the tour we grabbed some lunch and headed for L'Anse aux Meadows which sits at the very northeastern tip of Newfoundland. and guess what? It's not only another UNESCO heritage site we've visited in Canada, it's the first World Heritage Site that was ever listed.   

This place has been on my bucket list for a very, very long time. I read the Icelandic sagas in high school and was completely hooked on the Vinland Sagas, which tell the story of the Vikings coming to North America where they interacted with Skraeling- a generic term for indigenous people the Norse actually encountered in Greenland and other places they visited. For decades scholars debated the authenticity of the sagas, which were written two centuries after the events they described occurred, and include folklore mixed with oral tradition and history. Some, though, believed that the cartographic references were accurate enough to be used to find the site and suspected it was somewhere in Newfoundland which could be accessed by sea from Greenland by following the coast.

One of these researchers discovered the site in 1960 as he searched the coast when a local resident told him about mounds and depressions that the locals had always assumed were indigenous ruins. We talked to one of the Parks Canada staff at the site who said that as a kid he had played in those holes and then pointed to the 20-something guy behind the ticket counter and said that he was the grandson of George Decker, the man who pointed out the depressions in 1960. So crazy and amazing and connected!

Between then and now the site of the 11th century camp, the earliest known European site and only documented Viking site in North America has been partially excavated and a recreation of some of the sod and wood buildings (based on the archaeology) is next to the actual site. The interpretation is that people used this camp as a base to extract timber to take back to Greenland and that it was never a permanent settlement. Indigenous people used the site before and after the Vikings were there, but probably not at the same time. 

 

The beautiful sunny weather stuck around all day and it was truly incredible for me to finally experience L'Anse aux Meadows! Kind of a thematic day. Searching for but not finding the humpback whales who roam the North Atlantic waters and then learning about searching for and finding the Norse men and women who went back and forth across the same waters.