L'ANSE AUX MEADOWS NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

It is the only place where the remains of a Viking settlement have been found, considered to be the first European settlement in North America. According to legend, a ship bound for Greenland was swept away by a storm and sighted an unknown coastline. Having known these facts, the son of Erik the Red, Leif Eriksson (970-1025 approximately), would have organized an expedition and approached a region rich in wood, in pastures and in salmon which he named Vinland because he had found wild vine there. It was only in 1960 that Norwegian explorers and archaeologists Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine discovered the remains of a Viking camp at L'Anse aux Meadows, which they named Leif's camp and which was erected around the year 1000. It consisted of eight buildings and was used as a base camp by the Norwegian Vikings for their expeditions to the coasts of Labrador, Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence which were part of Vinland. L'Anse aux Meadows was therefore a camp established at the northern end of Vinland.

The Aboriginals lived there for 5,000 years, no doubt because of the abundance of riches from the sea and the proximity of Labrador.

The importance of this site, classified by UNESCO in 1978, lies in the fact that it is the first and only one to date to support the thesis that Europeans discovered America nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus did. Other sites in North America supporting this thesis of the Viking Vinland are still being studied, such as the Tanfield Valley site in Nunavut, Avayalik Island in Labrador or more recently the remains of a supposed Viking village at Pointe Rosée discovered in 2016 a few kilometers north of Channel-Port-aux-Basques (Newfoundland).

The visitor center presents a model of the site at the time of the Vikings, a collection of objects found on site and an interesting audiovisual document on the history of the excavations, which constitute a very good introduction to the visit of the archaeological site. There is also a reconstruction of a Scandinavian camp, hiking trails and a souvenir store. Discovery activities are offered by guides-animators dressed as Vikings, including evenings by the fire with old folk tales or the historical reconstruction of the Viking camp, which we gladly take part in. An incredible site!