Norse America by Gordon Campbell

Norse America by Gordon Campbell

Author:Gordon Campbell [Campbell, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192605986
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2021-02-26T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter 7

The Limits of the Norse Presence in North America

It is clear that the Greenland Norse reached Newfoundland, where the site at L’Anse aux Meadows offers abundant evidence of a temporary settlement. In this chapter I shall turn to the Norse presence in what is now the eastern Canadian Arctic, and then consider evidence that has been adduced for the contention that the Norse reached Northern Ontario, Nova Scotia, and the coast of Maine.

In the summer of 1977, Deborah and George Sabo were investigating a Thule culture site on the Okivilialuk peninsula on the south coast of Baffin Island (known in Inuktitut as Qikiqtaaluk), in Nunavut. On the stone-paved floor of a semi-subterranean Thule house they found a small wooden figurine (5.4 cm × 2 cm × 1 cm) that is popularly (but inaccurately and unhelpfully) known as the ‘Viking Doll’ or the ‘Bishop of Baffin’ (now in the Canadian Museum of History) (Fig. 7.1). The surrounding artefacts implied a twelfth- or thirteenth-century date. The figurine has no facial features, but the clothing, which consists of a long tunic and a separate hood, has been carefully carved. The front of the tunic is slit from the waist to the hem, and thin incisions mark the border of a cape resting on the shoulders, and also trace two seams (or rows of decoration) falling from the cape to the waist. On the chest is an incised cross, of which the horizontal element is clear and the vertical element can be discerned under a microscope. The legs give no hint of footgear. The style and workmanship of the figurine is consistent with Inuit carving in the Eastern Arctic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but the clothing is clearly not Inuit. Indeed, it seems to be a representation of European clothing and has marked similarities to examples of male dress excavated at Ikigaat (Norse: Herjolfsnes), in Greenland. The principal difference is that the Herjolfsnes dresses have no slit at the front, but it is possible that the slit represents the gores or insets. The hood on the figurine resembles a style of European hood and capelet worn in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The cross is a surprising feature. Christianity had arrived in Greenland in about 1010, and in the succeeding centuries such a cross could be worn by any male, but it is possible that the person represented in the figurine was a priest. In short, the Okivilialuk figurine seems likely to be the representation by a Thule resident of Baffin Island of a generic Norse Greenlander who sailed across the Davis and Hudson Straits and landed on the south coast of Baffin Island.

Fig. 7.1 Wooden figurine, Canadian Museum of History



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