L'Anse aux Meadows 29 July 2009

We left St. Johns at 7.30 and arrived in St. Anthony at 9 a.m. (top of island, just to the left). Our plane then left for Goose Bay (upper left), Labrador, where we would not have been happy to go (but would have gone, had the fog kept us from landing at St. A).

We didn't know it, but the pilot of the plane was the son of Danny Keats, the tour guide who rented us his van and so saved our trip on a rental-car-less and taxi-less day at St. Anthony (a cruise ship was docking and all vehicles had been commandeered). It was very, very gray.

9.20 a.m.
Provincial Air #901 leaves for points north.

This is how the day looked a few minutes later, seen from the passenger seat of the van, headed north to St. Anthony.
9.35 a.m.

St. Anthony: first iceberg. Icebergs are "he's," it seems;
they move in and melt near the coast, shrinking, cracking,
rotating, finally disappearing.
10.10 a.m.

L'ANSE AUX MEADOWS

A short drive brought us to the Viking site (c.1000 AD) discovered by Anne Stine & Helge Ingstad, who excavated it in the 1960s.

11 a.m.

Kevin Young of Parks Canada, the perfect guide with the perfect beard.

That's bog ore in his hand; the Vikings smelted it.

(Right) Kevin is standing in the outline that traces the foundations of one the longhouses. The site was very wet (you can see water behind the crowd's feet), so we were allowed to walk over the site--not the best thing for it.
12 noon

Outlines of buildings.The photo below shows the forge site; above it and to the right are the reconstructed longhouses.

Possible slave quarters (below).

We found some jolly actors in the reconstructed longhouses; I think most people get the benefit of the site from the reconstructions and the well-informed staff inside them.

This worker is making a sail; the cloth would be about 22" wide and it would take 8 of them to make a sail--enough work for several women for an entire year.
It seems very tight and solid from the front (above right), but backlit it seems misleadingly like gauze.

1 p.m.

The storyteller (right)

"heard under helm"!

Surrounding the site:

The modern village of Ship Cove (I think that's the right village) includes an island crammed with noisy gulls
and beautiful lichens on the rocks. Fog covers the hill behind it, except at the far right.

When you look in the other direction, it's almost a black & white world.

We returned to the Viking site at 3.45 to find it much changed in sunlight & much the better for it.
That's the entrance to the left.
The shore in the photos above is just beyond the line of white houses center & right below.

Just to the right of the beach & up a bit is the site of the original settlement.

On to icebergs. We saw this one coming back from lunch at Northern Delight
(recommended: Fish brewis with scrunchins; 3.10 p.m.).

We saw this one at 4.15 near a small wharf where these fishermen were cleaning fish.

The photo below zooms in on small peak between the two men. Dead center is a white dot. We thought it was the moon. It turned out to be the tip (of the tip) of an iceberg on the move, the men assured us. As they would say in St. Anthony, "He's headed this way." It was masked by fog in the photo above.

4.30 p.m.--start of the drive back to St. Anthony to return Danny's van (5.30; after a visit to fogged-in Fishing Point), then the ride to the airport (6.30).

Approaching Blanc-Sablon, Quebec
(8 p.m.). Headed southeast to St. Johns, about an hour away.
8.30 p.m.

arr. St. Johns 9.45 p.m.