![[Pasted image 20250201174213.png]] At the northern tip of Newfoundland, there’s a Canadian Provincial Park called [L’Anse aux Meadows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows), built on the site of a [[Vikings|Viking]] settlement. The Norse have an old legend that Viking hero [[Leif Eriksson]] founded a colony in a new land they called Vinland. The discovery of the Norse village in 1960 and its acceptance as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978 established the Newfoundland colony as the oldest known European site in the Americas, and very probably as part of the Vinland settlement of Norse legends. The Canadian ruins date from the appropriate period, around 1000 CE. Artifacts found in the remains of eight buildings include farm implements and blacksmith tools. There is also a spinning room containing a soapstone spindle and stone weights that were probably part of a loom. The presence of these artifacts suggests the settlement probably included women, and possibly even families. The sagas also record that in addition to fighting the natives, the Norse traded with them and that the natives were most interested in milk, which they had never seen before. The presence of the spinning room and of cattle, which were not indigenous to the Americas, strongly suggests the Newfoundland site was a permanent colony rather than merely a seasonal fishing camp. It was probably an extension of the permanent Viking settlements on Greenland that were the home of Leif Erikson’s father, Erik the Red. ----- Next: [[2.2 Vinland]]