Visiting the Vikings at L'Anse aux Meadows...again

 When your ship goes to L'Anse aux Meadows, there's only one thing to do beyond vegetating on board, and that's go to the National Historical Site. We had done this in 2023, but booked the tour again to maybe see something we missed the first time or learn something new.

Our sea day from Qaqortoq was rough like the first two days out of Reykjavik had been, but fortunately the clouds lifted as we approached L'Anse aux Meadows. It was nice and sunny but quite windy, so we weren't 100% sure we would be tendering until the clearance announcement was made.

Serenity in the distance from the tender pier

This time we visited in the opposite order - Norstead, the replica Viking village with historical re-creators demonstrating life in the community, and then the excavation sites and replica buildings based on what was found.

At Norstead, we started off by visiting Snorri, the replica Viking ship that was built in the early 2000s and sailed from Greenland to L'Anse aux Meadows by a crew of nine using only wind power, the way Leif Erikson would have done it 1,000 years ago. It apparently took them about twice as long to get there as it did the Vikings.

The Vikings had actually discovered this area by accident, when one of the ships was blown off course when heading from Iceland to Greenland. Once they arrived there, the men told about this land they had seen, and Leif Erikson led an expedition to investigate it. They called it Vinland, and saw that they could establish a trade network of wood and furs at the permanent settlements back in Greenland. They needed this desperately as Greenland had become overcrowded and there weren't enough natural resources to support the population.

The church and blacksmith's hut were both very important to the community and Norstead includes historically accurate reconstructions. There's even a working blacksmith using the same methods to forge nails for the ship as well as other tools. It was interesting to watch him use the double bellows to build up the fire while he talked about training older children as apprentices so the trade could be carried on seamlessly.

Here are some photos of the church. Everyone depicts the Vikings as particularly merciless and vicious, but that doesn't seem to be the case. There was a strong sense of community and structure, and the Norse Vikings at the time of L'Anse aux Meadows were already Christians.

The last large building at Norstead is a stofa. This is a community gathering spot, or longhouse, where the women would cook, spin yarn from the wool of their local sheep flock, weave and knit. And the handicrafts were being demonstrated as we looked on. The knitters in our on-board group were all very interested in the single needle knitting called Nalbinding which was used in Scandinavia even before Viking times. There are YouTube channels demonstrating it that I'm going to look at...

Spinning the wool into yarn by hand

All of these yarns were dyed with natural products

This batch is steeping in beet juice to get its colour

Strips of weaving done with the little blocks in the
bowl. We saw this last time.

In the kitchen and dining area, the largest room in the stofa.

A carving attached to a column

The leader obviously got the big chair!

An assortment of seeds grown by the 
community or traded for with the local
indigenous population

Here are a few more photos from around Norstead:

From Norstead we took the shuttle (school) bus over to the National Historic Site, about two kilometres away. The community of L'Anse aux Meadows has 13 permanent residents. The closest town with a school and shops is St. Anthony, which is 72 kilometres, a good hour's drive, away.

Some of the local's homes. The whole bay is frozen
over every winter.

From artifacts and other historical research it has been verified that the settlement here was in fact Viking, and related to those in Greenland and Iceland, and that it had been used as a summertime base for a logging industry of sorts, some agriculture, sheep farming and collecting furs. A little farther inland you can find trees that are less affected by the wind and salt from the sea, so they grow taller. The Vikings felled these trees, moved them to the village and from there loaded them on to boats to take back for shipbuilding and other uses in Greenland. The site was used over a thirty-year period, although it was really only inhabited for about ten of those years, when the wood was being moved from the forest to the coast. They only had a relatively short time each year, so it seems that they broke the process up, picking up where they left off on the previous year. They probably didn't have so many people there that they could have enough men to do each job every year.

A sculpture on the boardwalk path
from the visitor centre to the excavations

The excavations in this area were made by Norwegian archaeologists Helge and Ann Ingstad in the 1960s, who were following the writings of Icelandic sagas and trying to find the place that was called 'Vinland'. They were actually led here by a local resident who showed them the 'old Indian camp', as it had been known. And the rest, as they say, is history. They discovered 8 buildings in total. This is how they are marked on the site; and there is information in the Visitor Centre about what was found there and the significance to the community.

A few buildings have been recreated based on the findings and other knowledge of the time. These are very similar to those at Norstead, but only one of them, the stofa, has anyone explaining how the community lived.

One of the more famous photo angles of
the site...the stofa

The interior of one of the outer huts. It may have
been used for storage.

Inside the stofa, or longhouse

Sleeping quarters at one end of the stofa. The beds
were in those little alcoves with the doors....
Claustrophobic!

A great view of the ship as we waited to board the tender. The wind never quite let up, but it was the nicest day we had seen since Reykjavik!

And here are a few photos taken as we sailed away. There were only two or three more ships coming to L'Anse aux Meadows this season. We were glad we had such a lovely day, and hope that the others do as well.

Tomorrow, September 23, we will be in Corner Brook where we're doing a walking tour. Looking forward to seeing something of the town this time.

First Steps on Greenland's Shore - Qaqortoq

 After a fairly comfortable crossing of the North Atlantic toward Greenland, the captain advised that we might get some more motion as the winds changed direction once we turned past the southern tip on our way into Qaqortoq. He wasn't wrong. It did get bumpy, and the skies remained cloudy.

Some intrepid souls, unfortunately not including us, had actually managed to see the Northern Lights. We hold out hope that in the next couple of nights we will be able to get out there around 11 p.m. and see them for ourselves.

Qaqortoq is actually at the end of a fjord that protects it from the worst of the heavy waves, but the wind still caused a lot of choppy conditions. It did help that it was also raining lightly, although it seemed worse than it was because it was coming at us sideways.

We had booked an excursion to see the icebergs by Targa boat, and dutifully took our places in the Stardust Club to wait for our tour call to the tender boat. Around the time we were supposed to be heading out, we were informed that the boat tours, and there were quite a few departures of two different tours, had all been cancelled due to the wind. Bad news, but better than the alternative of not being able to land here at all, which was what we were actually expecting.

Since we were already wearing our multiple layers and waterproof jackets ready for the tour, we headed down to the tender platform with our friend Patty. We all wanted to be able to say we had set foot on Greenland before the weather got bad and the tender service was suspended all together. We had our own private boat - us, the tender staff and some benches they were taking over to the pier for people to use while waiting.

Qaqortoq is the second largest town in all of Greenland with a population of about 3,800 people. Nuuk, the capital, has 22,000 inhabitants and the whole of the island only has 58,000 people living there. As everyone now knows, Greenland is a part of Denmark, and although it has its own local parliament and elections, all national level administration and policies, like education and defense, fall under the Danish government.

 According to a police officer Larry was talking to, it had been lovely weather a couple of days previously....which didn't do us much good. Someone also said that winter would begin in October and our destination lecturer when he started today's lecture about the Canadian Maritimes said that today's forecast in Qaqortoq was for snow!!

proof that we were here!

Larry having a conversation with the
local police officer, who was from Denmark

As it was still raining and very windy, we didn't walk all that far. It is also very hilly in town and Patty's bad knees wouldn't let her go too long. So I left them to chat while I checked out a couple of the closer spots to get some photos.

The bright colours on the houses used to have some meaning - for medical facilities, schools, churches and police, at a time when there were no street names and numbers - but they aren't needed any more, so the colours are just to brighten up the place during the dreary days of fall and winter.

I found a spot to take a photo of the ship. You can
see how dreary the day is from all the lights

This statue is apparently of the godess of
the sea in Greenland lore

Larry and Patty standing in the shelter of a house
to keep out of the wind.

Yes, I was there, too!

We were getting cold and tired of being buffeted around by the wind, so we headed back about 45 minutes after arriving. After dropping our outerwear and changing shoes and socks, we met up again in the Bistro for hot chocolate and coffee.

I had some time to sketch, and also did some knitting at our ad hoc knitting group - a few of us who knit together on world cruises and segments when there is an instructor. This will be a shawl when it is finished.

We also had lunch at Beefbar - more on that in the food post. The captain delayed our departure as it was going to be rocking again last night, so we could get dinner service and the show over before the worst of it started.

Today we are en route to L'Anse aux Meadows. We will be reaching 'Iceberg Alley' in the late afternoon and expect to see some icebergs before we reach our stop. Fingers crossed the winds die down for us in the morning!

North Atlantic Crossing, 2.0

 We were so busy leading up to this cruise that I didn't have time to do a blog post to set it up! The cats knew that something was up and spent lots of time sleeping on, or in, the suitcases while we packed.

One of our scheduled cruises for this year is a north Atlantic crossing from Reykjavik, Iceland to New York City, also on board Crystal Serenity. We flew into Reykjavik a day early, on September 16, and managed to do a couple of things we hadn't been able to on our previous visits in the past 2 years.

Once we arrived at 9:00 a.m. and were driven the 45 minutes from Keflavik to Reykjavik, we dropped our bags at our hotel and decided to take advantage of the surprisingly nice day before the possible afternoon rain showers appeared. We were staying at the Hotel Reykjavik Saga, which was also very central to everything we wanted to see.

We headed toward the Hallgrimskirkje, the main Lutheran Cathedral of the city. It is a huge concrete structure that dominates the landscape, even from 15 km outside of the city as it was built on the highest point of Reykjavik.

I had seen a YouTube video posted by someone who had a day to spend here, and he visited the cathedral and the bell tower. You have to purchase a ticket to ride up the tiny (max 6 persons) elevator to get there, but the view is spectacular.

From the elevator which stops at the level of the clock faces, you can walk up a stairway to get to the bell level, and even stand under them as they chime every 15 minutes. We were up there just before noon and thought it might be just a little too hard on the eardrums to be that close to the 12 loud bongs, so we returned to the lower level and listened from there. I have some video which I will try to post.

I had also noticed on the drive in that there seemed to be some scaffolding on one end of the building, so, just to make sure our scaffolding photo collection was complete, we had to stop for a photo.

Our other stop before heading back to the hotel for a little rest time was for lunch. On the flight they had served us a sandwich snack after takeoff and then a breakfast an hour and a half before landing. The flight was only around 5 hours long, and we were starting to get a little peckish. We went back to Bistro 101 where we had, once again, Icelandic Fish and Chips. Delicious as usual!

We also took a stroll along the bank of the Tjörnin, a lake in the centre of the city near the parliament building and some of the original churches of town. The little island is populated by a huge number of ducks, gulls and white geese that are always up for a treat from tourists.

After some time to recharge, as we hadn't been able to get any real sleep on the plane, we went down to the hotel's lounge where I discovered a local Icelandic liqueur called Eldblóm. It is made from chrysanthemum flowers and local wild botanicals of the west coast. It tastes like a cross between the botanical tartness of Aperol and the smooth sweetness of Elderflower liqueur. I had an Icelandic Spritz, which just replaces the Aperol with Eldblóm.

Dinner was at the Fröken Reykjavik restaurant in our hotel. It is a beautiful restaurant and the food was all excellent. Larry had Flank Steak Frites and I had the Arctic Char. It was an amazing meal, topped off with a local specialty dessert called Ásdarpungar. It is like a deep fried cake donut with a cream cheese dough, covered with caramel drizzle and served with lemon thyme ice cream. Yummy!

On Wednesday morning we walked around the block to our favourite breakfast restaurant, the Laundromat Café, and had a good but not huge breakfast, as we would be heading over to board Crystal Serenity at around 11:30 and were looking forward to having lunch on board.

They even sat us at the same table we've had on 
our last two visits!

Avocado toast, with cream cheese, avocado, spinach
and quinoa along with the egg on sourdough bread.

We made a little detour on our way back to the hotel to see a very interesting looking ship in the inner harbour, and also came across this sculpture of two people looking out, sort of in the direction of the sea, but not quite. Maybe they were meant to be searching the bay where Reykjavik's harbour sits.

This is actually an expedition cruise ship of sorts. It
must be quite new given the weird bow shape there
on the right.

They're looking out over the harbour rather
than the sea.

We had passed this little bakery every time we walked toward the Hallgrimskirkje and had never gone in. I was determined not to do the same, and bought a huge cinnamon bun that we ate at the hotel. Not too sweet and not too sticky. It is definitely on my 'regular and recommended' list for the future.

A 10-minute taxi ride took us to the port where Serenity waited. Apparently she was the last cruise ship of the season, so now they could get on with constructing a proper cruise terminal building. Iceland is becoming more popular for cruise ships, and up to now there had only been a large tent to serve as the terminal. It will be interesting to see how far they get by August of 2026, which is our current next scheduled visit to Reykjavik.

We have two sea days before reaching Qaqortoq, Greenland on Saturday.