12/24/2023 0 Comments Auxl meadowsThere is also evidence of caribou, wolf, fox, bear, lynx, marten, a variety of birds and fish, seal, whale and walrus. The presence of butternuts on the site suggests that the Norse inhabitants must have travelled further south in order to obtain them. The artefacts included boat rivets (nails used in Viking boat building), wood chips and around 50 discarded wooded objects, so it seems probable that boats were being repaired here. Another of the huts was used for iron-smelting and there was a pit for making charcoal nearby. One of the sunken-floored buildings may have been a weaving shed, as loomweights were found inside. The smaller buildings included two pit houses (sunken-floored buildings) and a round building of a style which, in Scandinavia, was usually reserved for slaves. The total number of sleeping places available suggests that the buildings could house between 70 and 90 people at one time, whilst the diversity of the buildings suggests social complexity. A third hall was more typical in size and had fewer rooms. Only chieftains had large halls, but at L’Anse Aux Meadows the smaller of the two halls was double the size of Erik the Red’s hall in Iceland. Two of the longhouses were exceptionally large. Analysis suggests that the turf was cut from the immediate area and that the wood used in construction was primarily driftwood, although the area was probably forested at the time. The buildings survived as the remains of turf walls and were dated to approximately 1000. Ingstad and his wife uncovered eight buildings during the excavations, located in three discrete groups, each with its own longhouse. He discovered L’Anse Aux Meadows at Epaves Bay, Newfoundland, about 100m inland. In the 1960s, Helge Ingstad set out to look for the settlement. The Viking sagas record how Leif Erikson sailed from Greenland to a land which they named Vinland.
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