On the Viking Trail - Port au Choix and L'Anse aux Meadows

Port au Choix, where we spent the night on our way north, is well known because of the national heritage site here.  The town was incorporated in 1966 and has a rich history and thriving fishery.  There is a modern shrimp processing plant, a large fishing fleet, a Parks Canada Reception Centre, and various tourist-related services.  The population is about 900.  

The following italicized text is info from the Internet about the National Heritage Site here:

The Port au Choix National Historic Site consists of two exceptional pre-contact archaeological sites where the Port au Choix and Point Riche peninsulas jutting into the Strait of Belle Isle are joined by a narrow isthmus.  Constructed from approximately 4,400 BCE to 1,300 BCE, both sites are located on long, flat raised terraces running beside the water. The designation refers to both a Maritime Archaic cemetery in the form of a burial terrace overlooking Back Arm and also the Phillip’s Garden Palaeo-Eskimo habitation site:  a flat grassy place situated on the outer shore of the Point Riche Peninsula where land forms and vegetation indicate the remnants of two early settlements scattered over an area of some two hectares. 

The first people to inhabit Newfoundland, the Maritime Archaic Indian Culture chose Port au Choix as their home.  Their 4500 year old cemetery is located in the centre of town and is regarded as one of North America’s richest archaeological sites.  Three other pre-contact aboriginal cultures also made Port au Choix their home.  They are known as the Groswater and Dorset Paleoeskimos who occupied the Phillip’s Gardens area between 2800-1300 years ago, and the Recent Indians, ancestors of the Beothuk.  

The earliest European presence dates to the 1700s when Port au Choix received its name Portuchoam meaning “the little port”, from Basque fishermen who operated in the area.  Over the millennia, cultures have come and gone but a constant to all has been a dependence on the sea.  The Basques, the French, and the English have fished along these shores for almost five centuries.  Lobster is king along this shore – you’ll see hundreds of pots stacked in many places.

In the morning, before we left, we drove out to Point Riche where there is a lighthouse and the national historic site dedicated to the Dorset Paleoeskimos.  

Talking to someone at the bar last evening, my sister was told that caribou were often on the beach there, including the previous afternoon.  We saw none that morning although there was some “evidence” they had been there!

We continued our drive north to L’Anse aux Meadows, the northernmost point in Newfoundland.  It is here where the UNESCO World Heritage Site is located, the first place to receive such designation in Canada in 1978.  It is also a national historic site.

It was here 1,000 years ago – and 500 years before Columbus, Cabot, and Corte-Real – that Greenlanders and Icelanders led by Leif Erickson founded the first European settlement in North America.  You can explore the site, meet costumed Viking interpreters, and put yourself right in the place where Leif Erickson stood.  L’Anse aux Meadows was, and still is, a tiny fishing village when explorer Helge Ingstad came looking for Vinland in 1960.  George Decker, a local fisherman, showed him what the residents thought was an Indigenous campsite.  It was that, all right, but also an 11th-century Viking settlement.  Over the next few years, Ingstad, his archaeologist wife, Anne Stine Ingstad, and Parks Canada uncovered the remains of several Viking houses, a forge, and other buildings.  A few significant artifacts were found that proved the Vikings were here five centuries before any other Europeans arrived on this continent.

We arrived there about 1:30, paid the $10.25 entry fee, and spent the next hour and a half or so there.  First, we watched a film called Completing the Circle which hypothesized that around 100,000 years ago, mankind whom had originated in Africa gradually migrated north, east, and west to populate the world.  With the arrival of the Norse in Newfoundland, this presumably completed the circle when Europeans met North Americans.  The rest of the film focused on how, under Leif Erikson’s leadership, a group of 60-90 people set up a sturdy encampment of turf-walled buildings that served as an over-wintering base for exploring to the south.  For the next decade or two, successive expeditions travelled to this region that they called Vinland, mainly in search of hardwood lumber.  They reached at least as far south as the east coast of New Brunswick – a land where wild grapes grow – a region they called Vinland.

We wandered into the replica buildings met the aforementioned costumed Viking interpreters, and stood where Leif Erickson stood all those years ago.  It is worth mentioning that, even though it was a very good replica, one of the “Vikings” was wearing a mask given the current Covid situation.  That, as my Grade 10 English teacher would say, would be an anachronism. 

Sorry this is a bit blurry.

After we left, L’Anse aux Meadows (which for some reason the voice on our navigation system kept pronouncing “Land sex meadows”, we drove to St. Anthony where we spent the night.  The Viking Trail continues on to here, where another visitor had quite a different impact.  Dr. Wilfred Grenfell brought modern medicine to northern Newfoundland and the remote communities of coastal Labrador beginning in the 1890s. His work lives on, and his story is told at the Grenfell Historic Properties in St. Anthony.

On the way to St, Anthony, there were lots of opportunities to take photos along this very scenic coastline.  We also stopped at a gift store called Dark Tickle in St. Lunaire-Griquet which had us chatting about the meaning of the word “tickle”.  In Newfoundland, “tickle” means a narrow salt-water strait, as in an entrance to a harbour or between islands or other land masses, often difficult or treacherous to navigate because of narrowness, tides, etc.  It also means a “settlement” adjoining such a passage.  We have seen a number of places with the word “tickle” in their names. We spent a pleasant evening in St. Anthony at the Haven Inn.  The town is one of the largest we have been in for quite a while.  They even have a shopping mall and a very large hospital which likely serves the entire surrounding communities.

The "tickle" at St. Lunaire-Griquet - the entrance to the cove

Next, we start our journey south for the last leg of our visit to this amazing and unique province.