MDDM Ch. 66 Stig's Tale

[Dave Monroe]

Home May Prove Viking 'Sagas'
Archeology: A UCLA team's apparent finding of a New
World native's Iceland residence supports the tale of
a trip about AD 1000.
By THOMAS H. MAUGH II
TIMES STAFF WRITER

September 16 2002

A UCLA team has apparently found the Iceland home of
Snorri Thorfinnsson, the first person of European
descent born in the New World.

Icelandic sagas from the 13th century tell the story
of how Snorri's parents led the first Scandinavian
group that attempted to settle in Vinland--on the
Canadian coast--about AD 1000.

The attempt failed and the family moved to Iceland,
but Snorri was born while they were in North America.

The "Vinland Sagas," which also tell the story of Leif
Ericson, are the earliest recorded history of the
Scandinavian people, but there has long been a debate
over whether they represent real events or are simply
an allegorical tale meant to deliver a moral message.

The 1960 discovery of Viking settlements at L'Anse aux
Meadows in Newfoundland provided some confirmation of
the sagas. The apparent discovery of Snorri's home
provides more.

"These sagas were written in Iceland, and they must
have been thinking about this site," said UCLA
archeologist John Steinberg, who led the expedition.
"Could this specific story [in the saga] be true? This
site may well hold the answers."

Archeologist Kevin P. Smith of Hunter College in New
York City added: "This is a fairly large, fairly
well-appointed house. It's in the right place, from
the right time. It may well be" Snorri's home.

The sagas tell the story of four Viking voyages to the
New World. The second saga recounts the story of the
pagan Thorfinn Karlsefni, who married the converted
Christian woman Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir. With three
boats containing 60 to 70 people, livestock, seeds and
other supplies, they left for the New World about AD
1000 to establish a colony.

According to the sagas: "Karlsefni's son Snorri was
born [in Vinland] the first autumn and was 3 years old
when they left."

"Conflict with the native population made the
settlement impossible," Smith said, and they returned
to Iceland, where they established a farm called
Glaumbaer. Thorfinn sailed to Norway and sold a
boatload of goods from Vinland, becoming relatively
rich in the process.

Gudrid, described in the sagas as "the most attractive
of women and one to be reckoned with in all her
dealings," made one or more trips between Iceland and
Greenland and eventually traveled to Rome to meet the
pope. She became a nun and returned to Iceland, where
she established a church. "She was probably one of the
most well-traveled women of the period--and all of it
in an open boat," said historian Elisabeth Ward of the
Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History.

The family played a major role in the traveling
Smithsonian exhibit, "Vikings: The North Atlantic
Saga," which recently came to Los Angeles.

Steinberg's continuing project in Iceland is a survey
of 26 farms in five areas of the Skagafjordur fiord
valley in northern Iceland. This region, he said, "is
one of the few documented chiefdoms" that are known.
His ultimate goal is to understand how the chiefdoms,
in which private properties' rights were enforced
without a central government, eventually gave way to
regional rule. His approach is to determine how
settlement patterns changed.

But archeology is difficult in Iceland, an island
about the size of Kentucky. There are virtually no
trees, so buildings were constructed from turf. The
inhabitants also severely abused their environment.
"They put way too many sheep on the land, and all the
soil from the highlands eventually blew onto the
coastal regions," Steinberg said. "As a result, the
archeology is invisible, especially in the most
important areas."

The UCLA team has been surveying the region with
sophisticated equipment that measures the electrical
conductivity and resistance of soil. The turf used in
construction has a much lower conductivity, so
electrical patterns reveal where walls are located.

They found what they believe to be Snorri's home about
150 yards east of the Glaumbaer Folk Museum, just
outside the seaside village of Saudarkrokur. The
museum, which documents 18th century rural Icelandic
life, was once thought to have been built on the site
of Snorri's home.

"We had always assumed that the original house must be
under the standing modern turf house, in the very same
spot and therefore mostly destroyed," said Sigridur
Sigurardottir, the museum's director. "But now we have
found out that it was in our museum hay field all
along, just under the surface."

The building is "a classic German fortress longhouse
like the Great Hall of Beowulf," Steinberg said. It is
95 feet long--about 50% longer than Viking longhouses
in Newfoundland and Trelleborg, Denmark, indicating
prosperity--and about 30 feet wide, with 5-foot-thick
walls. A thick floor of ash and trampled clay was
found at the house's center, about 85 feet long by 5
feet 7 inches wide. Six-foot-wide raised sleeping
benches line both sides of the building.

A thin layer of volcanic ash from the 1104 eruption of
Mt. Hekla covers the remains, indicating that the
structure was abandoned about 1100, when the residents
moved up the hill to what is now the site of the
museum. Excavations in a garbage pit outside the
museum show that the site has since been continuously
occupied, Steinberg said.

The team has found few artifacts at the site, but they
have not excavated much of the building yet. There are
also several smaller outbuildings around the main
structure, which they also have not begun to study.

The team will spend another five years excavating the
site. "What we are hoping for are artifacts from North
America or Rome," Ward said. "One would think she
[Thorbjarnardottir] brought something home with her.
We are keeping our fingers crossed that it survived. "


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-viking16sep16002051.story?null

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