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Of Vikings and Jasper
Analysis of jasper found at the Norse settlement of L' Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland is suggestive of Norse contact with the Beothuk of Newfoundland.
"This area of Notre Dame Bay was as good a candidate as any for that first contact between the Old World and the New World, and that's kind of an exciting thing," said Kevin Smith, deputy director and chief curator of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University.
"According to their own stories that were told in Iceland into the 1200s and 1300s, written down in the sagas there, they were defeated, were turned back, by the fact that the populations — the existing populations — of the First Nations peoples were well organized enough, numerous enough, and proud enough defenders of their own land that the Norse decided that, as good a place as this would be to settle … that this wasn't the place to settle," Smith said.
"If you think about it in terms of European history or world history, this is probably the place where Native American First Nations people won the first big encounter between them and the western world."
"This area of Notre Dame Bay was as good a candidate as any for that first contact between the Old World and the New World, and that's kind of an exciting thing," said Kevin Smith, deputy director and chief curator of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University.
"According to their own stories that were told in Iceland into the 1200s and 1300s, written down in the sagas there, they were defeated, were turned back, by the fact that the populations — the existing populations — of the First Nations peoples were well organized enough, numerous enough, and proud enough defenders of their own land that the Norse decided that, as good a place as this would be to settle … that this wasn't the place to settle," Smith said.
"If you think about it in terms of European history or world history, this is probably the place where Native American First Nations people won the first big encounter between them and the western world."