Today is Columbus Day, but forget that shit and take a minute (or two) to learn about L’anse aux Meadows. Located at the northernmost tip of Newfoundland in Canada, this World Heritage Site is the only known Viking settlement to be found in North America. Estimated to have been established around 1000 AD, 500 years before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, it is definite proof of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic Norse exploration and contact with the Americas. The eight simple buildings made of sod and wood, either homes or workshops for iron making and boat repair, might possibly be Leif Ericson’s Vinland, a place immortalized in Viking sagas as a distant outpost. Vinland was not a specific place but a larger area. L’anse aux Meadows most likely served as an exploration base and winter camp for southward expeditions in Greater Vinland. No one knows if it was bad weather, lack of food, or attacks by native peoples that led the Norse inhabitants to abandon this village, but it’s a shame they did. Canada, and possibly the United States, could be full of tall, hot Scandinavian men. That sounds pretty cool. (Actually there are over a million Canadians of Scandinavian descent, but 4% of the population is, like, nothing when it totally could be 99%!!!)*
*This post is not condoning the genocide of the native people in the slightest. My apologies to littleangrytiger or anyone else who took it the wrong way. That wasn’t my intention. I can’t help it if I like to shop at IKEA and eat Swedish meatballs.
