The Viking: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland [Hardcover]

Helge Ingstad (Author), Anne Stine Ingstad (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2001

From 1961 to 1968, Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine Ingstad, both archaeologists and acclaimed Viking scholars, conducted seven expeditions at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. The results of their excavations solved one of the world's greatest mysteries: the location of Vinland and the first European settlement in North America.

The Viking Discovery of America combines a first-hand account of the Ingstads' groundbreaking discovery with a compelling history of Viking explorations. This beautifully illustrated volume describes how the authors worked from old Viking sagas, existing research, and their own hypotheses to piece together the story of a group of Vikings, who, faced with crowded conditions in their settlements in Greenland, decided to expand their horizons, eventually discovering a new territory. Readers will also discover fascinating information about navigation techniques, well-known and obscure Viking explorers, their journeys, and the eventual evacuation of their settlement. Full-color maps and photographs from the expeditions help to bring the text alive.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Helge, born 1899, and his late wife Anne Stine Ingstad, archaeologists extraordinaire, shared a special interest in Viking research. From 1961 to 1968 they conducted a series of intensive archaeological expeditions to L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, solving the mystery of the first European settlement in North America. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Checkmark Books (October 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816047162
• ISBN-13: 978-0816047161
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #571,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For those truly interested in the subject, October 18, 2002

By 

LarryE "whoviating" (MA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Viking: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland (Hardcover)

I would have liked to have given this book 2.5 stars, right in the middle, because I really think it's a so-so book. But since the choice was 2 or 3 and 2 was too low, 3 stars it is.

There is certainly a good deal of history and scholarship shown here, and for those such as myself who have an interest in the subject but lay no claim to expertise, much to be gained.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that some academic scores were being settled. Helge Ingstad, who wrote most of the first parts of the book (with his wife, Anne Stine Ingstad, doing the part about the actual L'Anse aux Meadows dig), spends too much time deriding viewpoints alternate to his own. Since it was his line of reasoning that lead to the discovery of the L'Anse aux Meadows site, it seems that focusing on his own arguments should have been enough.

Apparently, though, it wasn't. A major part of the book consists of summaries and analyses of two sagas telling different stories of the Vikings in Greenland and their exploration of North America. One, Erik's Saga, is a ripping good yarn that apparently had been the version favored by scholars. Ingstad makes a convincing argument that the other, The Groenlendinga Saga, is more historically reliable. But he does it at such length (about 1/3 the book) and in such language that the argument comes across as personal as much as academic, as a means of taking pokes at those on the other side of the issue. For example, The Groenlendinga Saga is a "plain, straightforward narrative" of "generally authentic nature," while Erik's Saga is by turns "improbable," "fiction" influenced by fables, "cannot be correct," "more than a little suspect," "incredible," and so on and so on.

The description of the actual dig had a different problem: It was too much "we found this and then under this thick a layer we found this and then we found...." I truly wished for a greater context, more explanation of why a find was significant beyond the fact of proving Viking habitation. A number of times she refers to the depth of a strata though which they dug to find something. Was that significant? How? Why? What does it mean?

The thing is, the book appears to be intended for a general (non-expert) audience. But at times I felt I had either walked into the middle of a scholarly debate or was reading a simplified field report. The result is, it's neither fish nor fowl, which is why I wanted to give it 2.5 stars.

Oh, one final complaint: The quality of photographic reproduction in the book is by and large awful. It gives every indication of being taken from computer printouts of digital photographs, with all the attendant loss of fine detail.

I'd say if you're really interested in the subject, give it a whirl. If your interest is more casual, skip it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Discovering THE Norse site yet found in America, July 23, 2006

By 

Lee Madland (Missoula, MT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Viking: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland (Hardcover)

This account of Norse explorations in America by Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad, focuses on the ruins they found and excavated, left by Norse settlers near the present village of L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, somewhere around 1000 AD according to carbon dating. Helge Ingstad, a Norwegian, wrote most of the text of this well illustrated 199-page large-format book. His archeologist wife, in charge of the actual diggings, wrote the chapter on their meticulous uncovering of the ruins of eight turf buildings during the course of seven seasons from 1961 to 1968, the largest of which, House F, contained six main rooms separated by turf walls. Much smaller but of key importance was House J, a working "smithy" in which local bog iron was smelted. The three houses A, B, and C, closely clustered together, have since been restored to original condition to form the core of a Canadian national historic park established in 1977 and open to visitors, complete with "re-enactors" dressed in Old Norse costumes. The site's second-largest house, A, is a longhouse about 75 feet in length with four rooms. Much of the described detail of the actual digs will probably be lost on many general readers, but this chapter does convey a sense of the incredibly slow and painstaking efforts involved in any important archeological dig.

No doubt of greater interest to the non-archeologically inclined will be Helge Ingstad's chapters on the background of the Norse Vinland ventures in the region, including an illuminating analysis of the two pertinent sagas. Of these, the one long believed to be the more authentic ("Erik the Red's Saga"), presumably because of its more sophisticated literary style, many now consider factually the less reliable. Its Icelandic compositor in likely about 1260 seems to have had a copy of the less polished but more sober, matter-of-fact and much more nautically aware "Greenlanders' Saga" in front of him, composed probably at least 60 years earlier and likely by a Greenlander. The redactors of "Erik's Saga" are now thought by many, including Ingstad, to have modified the story to reflect more credit on Thorfinn Karlsefni of a distinguished Icelandic family, while greatly reducing Leif Eriksson's role to that of an accidental discoverer storm-blown clear across the ocean from Norway (against the prevailing westerly winds of these latitudes, I might add as a geographer.) In his assessment of the two sagas Helge Ingstad is basically in agreement with those of Carl Sauer and Erik Wahlgren, though both have strongly disagreed with his contention that the Newfoundland structures are the ruins of Leif Eriksson's houses. The site might have been an outpost occupied for a few years at this strategic location by a group of Norse unrecorded by any extant saga, about four-fifths of the saga material having in any case been irretrievably lost. (See my reviews of the Sauer and Wahlgren books by clicking on the above link).

Be that as it may, this Newfoundland site the Ingstads uncovered has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Norse did in fact reach North America a thousand years ago, which had been doubted in many quarters prior to that discovery. For that alone they deserve all the enormous credit they have received. And in this lucidly written final work they describe many aspects of Norse exploration and activities in the region with original and illuminating insights.

One reviewer has criticized Ingstad's analysis of the origins of the two Vinland sagas as too derisive of other views and too long. He may have a point, but...? For instance, Ingstad's discussion of the question of whether the Greenlanders' Saga derives directly from a Greenlandic written source preserved in Iceland -- and whether Erik's Saga might be a major Icelandic rewriting of it -- may strike the uninitiated as a self-serving nitpick. But this issue is key to resolving the differences between the two sagas and may go a long way toward explaining the confusion so evident in the descriptions of Erik's Saga regarding such matters as Karlsefni's search for Vinland. Greenlanders were obviously much closer to the events. Carl Sauer in "Northern Mists" (see my review) had also come to a similar conclusion: "The Greenlanders' Saga has continuity, clarity, and for the most part credible description." "[It] in my opinion is the more credible as to sensible course and sequence of voyages and matter-of-fact description of event and place."

By the way, the people we are dealing with were not "Vikings" as the title proclaims, nor does Ingstad use the word in the text except briefly and correctly as a European historical antecedent, never as applied to Iceland, Greenland or Vinland; but it seems we're stuck with it; publishers love the term in titles as it catches the public eye and helps with sales.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must" for Viking history buffs, March 18, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Viking Discovery of America : The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland (Hardcover)

In The Viking Discovery Of America, Helge and Anne Ingstad relate the fascinating and informative story of the excavation of a Norse settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland and what this archaeological survey mean for our understanding of Viking explorations of the Western Hemisphere. With a meticulous scholarship, the Ingstads united the Viking sagas of discovery with engaging details about shipbuilding, navigation, culture, and lifestyle. The Viking Discovery Of America combines scholarly detective work with ground breaking archaeological confirmations to overturn centuries of historical assumptions and documenting Viking contact with the New World centuries before Christopher Columbus. The Viking Discovery Of America is an enthusiastically recommended addition to academic and community library collections, as well as a "must" for Viking history buffs and New World archaeology students.