Atlantic Canada “Come in from Away”The Viking Trail – NewfoundlandBy Richard Pennick“The Rock” is what Newfies call their island home! Humor, charm, history and romance are the spirit of Newfoundland. Stark, wild almost primeval beauty is the land! So we dropped through the clouds to Deer Lake airport and were soon enveloped in the granite and verdant beauty of Gros Morne National Park. Sheer rock faces rising from fjord to clouds, picturesque valleys and tumbling waterfalls. In a crimson sunset, standing on the dock of a picture postcard fishing village, we stared at ice floes drifting in the harbour on that warm spring evening. We ate Halibut and chips, asked questions and wondered if their accents were for real. There’s a hint of the Irish, and a twinkling in the eye which made us doubt more than one of their answers.
We stopped along the way to photograph the icebergs - yes icebergs - and visit wildlife sanctuaries, a lighthouse at Lobster Cove Head with a little museum featuring the inevitable James Cook exhibit followed by another lobster meal. In due course, we rounded the northern tip of the peninsula and came to L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site – intriguing! In the early years of the 11th century, the first Europeans to set foot in North America arrived on the shores of modern day L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. These Scandinavians, collectively known as the Norse, had traveled west from their colonies in Iceland and Greenland. They had not come to raid, but to cut timber, hunt and explore the unknown wilderness they called Vinland. Nine centuries later, in 1960, 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 which 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 in the excavation of the site. 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. 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. Many of the artifacts found on this site form an important part of the displays in the Visitor Reception Centre. In addition to these, artifacts from other Norse sites from Scandinavia are on display and provide insight to their fascinating culture. The remains of the eight Norse buildings, restored as they were when discovered by Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad, and 3 full scale replicas of these buildings are just a short walk from the visitor centre.
At our last lunch stop the harbor is a jumble of mangled ice floes - still for the moment - until the wind changes to push them back out to sea, returning the dark water again to the fishermen, until next year. Air access to Atlantic Canada is through Toronto or Boston to Halifax. For more information on Canada and Atlantic Canada with links to the areas mentioned in this story go to: http://www.canadatourism.com/ctx/app/ and including: Nova Scotia Tourism: http://www.gov.ns.ca/tourism.htm Halifax Tourism: http://www.halifaxinfo.com/ The Cabot Trail: http://explore.gov.ns.ca/scenic_travelways/cape_breton/cabot.asp Tourism Newfoundland: http://www.gov.nf.ca/tourism/ L’Anse aux Meadows: http://parkscanada.pch.gc.ca/parks/newfoundland/anse_meadows/anse_meadowse.htm Images courtesy of Cape Breton Tourism -Updated 6-23-99- |
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From the charm of Rocky Harbor with the Gulf of St. Lawrence on our left and Tuckamore shrub stretching to the Long Range Mountains on our right, we headed up the Viking Trail. We must have seen fifty Moose that day - they slowed our progress - ambling imperiously over the highway. At stops we saw tall, spare Arctic Hare, with enormous furry feet which spread their weight on fluffy snow. Wild Mink, Bald Eagles and almost too many sea birds - Atlantic puffins, storm petrals, common mures, and northern gannets.
We drove on round the peninsula towards St. Anthony and our journeys end. The horizon was dotted with icebergs. Canada’s North Atlantic Labrador current delivers one of nature's great wonders - gigantic 15,000- year-old icebergs. These beautiful blue crystalline mammoths can be spotted from miles away. To mariners the world over, the waters off the east coast of Newfoundland are known as "Iceberg Alley".