Re-Learning History on the Viking Trail

Friday, August 29, 2014
L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
And so it is that we learn in our sixth decade on Earth that Columbus was not the first European to set foot on North American soil after all. The Vikings, of Scandinavian descent, sailed from Greenland and reached the shores of Newfoundland on its northern Peninsula at L'Anse aux Meadows some 500 years before Columbus, and there is evidence that they travelled further south to New Brunswick. I wonder if our schools have updated their history teachings!

We drove up to L'Anse aux Meadows from Norris Point on a beautiful day for the 4 hour coastal ride along the golf of St-Lawrence to the very northern tip of Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula . The Unesco World Heritage site here, which protects the area that was once the first Viking settlement in North america, is set against a truly spectacular backdrop of rocky cove and subarctic tundra just across from the shores of Labrador.

For our return to Norris Point the next day, we chose to drive along the eastern shore of the peninsula for as long as we could which allowed us to see some of the French Shore. We drove down what must have been a logging road once upon a time to a small gem of a seaside village called Conche. We were struck by the numerous small patches of private vegetable gardens planted along the 2-lane highways of the Northern Peninsula.

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