The Handle in Meadows

It Handle-with-Meadows the (its French name as former French was the Handle with the Jellyfishes ) is located at the septentrional point of the island of Newfoundland, in the province of Ground-New-and-Labrador, where the remainders of a village Viking were discovered in 1960 by the Norwegian explorer Dr. Helge Ingstad and his wife Archéologue Anne Stine Ingstad.

Vinland

It is about the only site Viking proven in North America (except for the Greenland). The excavations which were practiced there during several years exposed to it houses, instruments and tools which made it possible to establish the dating of the site. Founded establishment more than 500 years before Christophe Colomb shelters the oldest traces of the European presence in North America. Indicated like site of the world heritage by UNESCO, one thinks that it could be a question of the quasi legendary colony of “Vinland” rested by the explorer Leif Ericsson in the neighborhoods of the An millet. This interpretation is prone to debates.

The climate in Newfoundland was at the time definitely hotter than today. As the saga tells it to us, Leif left Greenland with the research of the country about which Bjarni Herjólfsson had spoken to him. It found a country covered with vines, salmon and at the winters without freezing. It returned to collect there wood which it could report to Greenland where this one was rare.

The establishment of the Handle in Meadows was composed of at least 8 buildings, including a forging mill, a blast furnace and of a sawmill which fed a Shipyard. The saga describes the effort of colonization carried out by Thorfinn Karlsefni, and some 135 men and 15 women, who used the camp of Leif as bases. One found tools of seam and knitting, indices of the presence of women, with the Handle in Meadows

The place seems to have been occupied only a few years (2 or 3 years).

The Handle in Meadows seems to be connected to the legend algonquienne of a Royaume of Saguenay populated by a race of fair men rich in furs and metals, but it is only one conjecture.

Before the arrival of the Vikings, it Handle-with-Meadows would have been inhabited by various cultures among which that called maritime antiquated Culture of 3000 years before J. - C. until the 10th century after J. - C., then by representatives of the Culture Dorset, 6th at the 9th century after J. - C.

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