On the trail of Vikings: Latest search for Norse in North America

On a meadowy spit of oceanfront land in southwestern Newfoundland, a team of scientists spent part of the summer of 2016 workingto both uncover history and make it, modern explorers trying to track down ancient ones.

"This is not a bad place to spend a couple weeks outside, playing in the dirt. It's special here," said Sarah Parcak, the co-director of the midsummer dig at Point Rosee, in the Codroy Valley, about 50 km north of Channel-Port-aux-Basques.

It's a spot that could easily vie for the the title of most beautiful workplace in the world, but withcliffs that tumbleinto the sea, the only way in is a long hike or anATV ride not designed for the faint of heart, or stomach.

Searching fortheelusiveNorse presence in North America isn't for the faint of heart either.

This is Parcak's second season at Point Rosee. Last June's dig, a cold and rainy affair, turned up enough tempting clues, such as nine kilograms of bog iron that looked to have been roasted in a hearth, to lure her back.

2016 Excavation Work at Point Rosee

8 years ago

Duration 0:45

2016 Excavation Work at Point Rosee

Slag, the waste product from smeltingiron, is the holy grail of Norse archeology in Newfoundland and Labrador. OnlyVikings, not the Aboriginal peoples of their time, had the knowledge base to transform bog iron into nails and other items.

• Potential Viking site found in Newfoundland

In 2016,Parcak, a National Geographic fellow and archeologist based out of the University of Alabama atBirmingham, came accompanied by 13 other specialists whose expertise rangedfrom Norse settlements, to surveying, toancient pollen, all there toextensively sample the 2015 areas and turn up more turf for evidence. Part of the work comes from a grant from the National Geographic Society Expeditions Council.

A good chunk of their days wasspenthunched over, sifting though the dirt inan attemptto confirm a long-held theory that the Viking settlement atL'Anse Aux Meadows, more than 600 kilometres north of Point Rosee,isn't the westernmost landing ofNorsein North America.

Uncovered in the 1960s, L'Anse Aux Meadows on the northernmost tip of Newfoundlandtook years of digging to becomethe only proven Viking site on the continent, and remains so to the present day.

Travelling from L'Anse Aux Meadows

Butmaterial uncovered there points to explorations further south, most convincingly in the form of butternuts,a species not found anywhere north of New Brunswick.

Material from the Viking Sagas tales that blend myth and history also containdescriptions that align with a routedown Newfoundland's west coast.

"For sure, there are other Norse sites out there. L'AnseAux Meadows was not it. I'm confident that, as we continue to refine our methods and our approacheswithin the next couple years with new images, new satellites, Ithink we've got a much better shotof finding it," said Parcak.

A little help from outer space

New images and new technology is exactly how Parcak and her team were lured to the CodroyValley in the first place.

Parcak is a leader and pioneer in the field of space archeology the use of satellite imagery and remote sensing to glimpse what lies beneath seemingly undisturbed soil, a technique she has put to use with much success at other archeological sites.

"With the human eye, there's a lot we can see, but we're restricted to the visible part of the light spectrum,and the great thing about satellites is they record information in the part of the light spectrum we can't see," said Parcak.

That spectrum includes thermal infrared and radar, which Parcak can capture from orbitingsatellites and examine in her university laboratory to reveal human impact upon the earth.

"All of a sudden you see these vibrant colours and signatures showingindividualplant species, orparticularkinds of rocks, that all look the same to us. Andthat'sreally the magic of remote sensing:it allows us tomanipulatethe data, and see things as they actually are."

And Parcak's teamneeds all the technological help itcan get.

Elusive Norse presence

"Looking for the Norse in North America is like looking for a needle in a haystack," said KarenMilek, an archeologist specializing in the Norse, and a member of the 2016 dig.

But with the help of the remote imagesthat haystack has become alot smaller, and that needle alot bigger. Parcak used such images to scour the Labrador coastline and then Newfoundland's western edge,and at Point Rosee, one buriedfeature jumped out to herwhatlooked like a wall, 22 metres by seven metres, the exact same dimensions asalonghouse discovered at L'Anse Aux Meadows.

That, along with a 2014 site survey that pointed to signs of burning, were enough hints of man-made meddling with the landscape to lead to the 2015 dig, which expanded considerably in 2016 with equal parts hope and disappointment.

'This is a difficult site'

While the bog iron collected in 2015 was radiocarbon-dated to 1200 A.D. well within the 1000 to 1400 A.D. timeline the archeologists have sketched out for Newfoundland Norse sites the 22-metre strip that was thought to be a wall hasn't turned outto be as definitive as the archeologists hoped.

Despite interesting strips of sediment not found elsewhere at Point Rosee, suggesting a human hand, it appears too wide to be a wall, and each layer of soil is being carefully sampled to be tested later in a lab.

"This is a difficult site," Parcak admitted.

"Ikeep flipping my hats.I'm a skeptical scientist, but you have to be an optimist to be an archeologist. Imean, it's scraping bits of soil for hours at a time under the hot sun.If you're not an optimist, you're in the wrong field."

Each time the evidence uncovered this summer sways towards moredefinitive Norse territory, it then appears to swing right back into vagueness the archeological equivalent of being lostin the fog, aconundrum no doubt faced by the seafaring Vikings.

"You can't say, 'slam dunk, this is definitively a Norse site.' But Ithink it looks like there was human activity here, and it's going to require a lot more lab testing," said Parcak.

The Norsetendency towards tidiness has proved difficult for the excavators. They rarely left behind large volumes of artefacts, using sod instead of stone to build shelters andrepurposingeach valuable scrap of iron and carting it along their journeys. The spareness of what was found at L'Anse Aux Meadows a spindle whorl, a bronze pinshows that.

No such cultural artefact, not even a nail head, has been found during the 2016 dig.

"If they had stopped for just a very brief while, say a few days, we'd never be able to prove that," said Birgitta Wallace,a renowned Norse archeologist who has done extensive work atL'AnseAux Meadows, participating in some of the original digs in the '60s.

Wallace made the trip from her home in Halifax just to examine whatParcak'steam uncovered, and sawanother stumbling block upon her arrival: the landscape ofPointRoseeitself.

"That's one thing that bothers me most," said Wallace, pointing to thelack of a nearby freshwater sourceand sharp cliffs ending in rocky beaches, an opinion shared byother members of the team.

"It does not look like a logical place for the Norse to settle, because there isn't a good landing site.That was really key. All their settlements had very good landing sites, beaches usually,"said Karen Millek.

Preliminary Thoughts on 2016 Point Rosee Dig

8 years ago

Duration 1:10

Preliminary Thoughts on 2016 Point Rosee Dig

'No doubt' of Vikings ... somewhere

Despite the odds, no one at Point Rosee is shutting the door on its possible Viking connections, or of the chance of a settlementnearby.

"There's absolutely no doubt that the Norse sailed around this coast, and probably stopped in many places," said Wallace.

Parcak said it's been invaluable to have so many Viking experts in the Codroy Valley at once. They were able to compare the landscape to their previous research and descriptions from the Sagas. As the team leader, she's unfazed by any present uncertainty.

"If you're going to undertake this journey, as it were, you have to do it and be a skeptic. That's good science. When we first undertook this project, my hypothesis was that we wouldn't find anything."

In one way, Parcak has already found something: Through Point Rosee, she has created a new way to look for Vikingsvia a combination of space archeology and hands-on excavation.

"Ultimately, I'm most pleased that we've created what Ithink is a sound methodologyto search for Norse sites."

From the bags of bog iron, soil and ash carefully carted from Canada to the university labs in Alabama, a host of experts will spend the next few months analyzing, testing and radiocarbon dating, andParcakis managingto contain her buoyant optimism with a boundless patience.

"It's just the nature of science, and Ithink ultimately we just have to let the science speak for itself."

You can watch RegSherren'sfull story on The National or by clicking the player below.

On the trail of the Vikings

8 years ago

Duration 12:31

Archaeologists are hoping to prove that a second Viking settlement existed in Point Rosee, Newfoundland.