Sagas on the trail to Vinland.

• Author: Alden, Jan
• Position: Newfoundland - Includes related article

The 1960 discovery of a Viking settlement on an isolated Newfoundland bay provoked controversy and changed a way of life

The island of Newfoundland resembles, in silhouette, a clenched fist, index finger extended. The rocky finger, known as Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula, points toward the North Atlantic, toward the great "sea road" across which Viking settlers first came to North America - to a place they would call Vinland.

Discovery in 1960 of a thousand-year-old Viking settlement focused world attention on that fingertip. Subsequent archaeological excavations at L'Anse aux Meadows - the bay of meadows - and simultaneous construction of the peninsula's first highway shattered a near-perfect isolation.

Dubbed the "Viking Trail," Route 430 crawls up and over the weathered spine of the Long Range Mountains into Gros Morne National Park, then turns northeast to follow the rocky shoreline of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. At regular intervals, the route is marked by green signs displaying tiny black Viking ships in full sail against a golden sun.

Completed thirty years ago, the Viking Trail introduced road access to dozens of tiny, treeless fishing villages, or "outports," where footpaths and seaways sufficed for generations. With colorful nineteenth-century names like Flower's Cove and Anchor Point, each outport is a network of extended families, bound by shared ancestors and common traditions.

Near the northern end of the Viking Trail, the road veers abruptly inland and east toward the seaport of St. Anthony on the Atlantic side of the peninsula. Here, glaciated rock outcroppings, stubbled with stunted spruce trees, form small, flat islands among spongy bogs. Pools of standing water reflect a dappled June sky. Caribou graze in the distance. A moose ambles down the center of the roadway then snorts and bolts into a willow thicket.

Hints of human activity hug the highway. A fisherman in knee-high rubber boots slogs up an embankment. Enormous woodpiles, each the winter's work of a family or household, line the pavement. As individual as their owners, some stand carefully, almost artistically, stacked. Others tumble carelessly, lying as they fell from sleds pulled over frozen bogs. And, tucked into barrow pits and embankments, wherever soil and drainage permit, tiny plots of potatoes sprout, ringed by makeshift fences designed to discourage marauding moose.

"Every year," laughs Gene Penney, owner of a St. Anthony snowmobile dealership, "it's a race to see if I get the moose before he gets the garden." He counted fifteen of the insouciant creatures below his cabin last night - potential meat for the freezer.

A giant green igloo - property, warns an officious sign, of the Department of Works, Services, and Transportation - provides an unintended landmark at the turnoff toward L'Anse aux Meadows. Within its enormous greenness, stockpiles of sand and salt await winter roads. Nearby, snowplow stakes, taller than a man, mark the pavement's edge.

The road ascends slightly among rock and trees, then dips into a cove cradling a cluster of wood-frame houses. Smoke drifts from chimneys. The tide is out. Boats, paint peeling, lie upturned on rocky beaches. The road rises and dips again. The scene is replayed, again and again. Walkers and bicyclers, baby strollers and vehicles share the highway. Boys, clutching fishing poles, dash across the road and scramble toward an inlet bobbing with small, aquamarine icebergs.

"Bergy bits," teases an elderly local, clearly unimpressed by any ice mass smaller than a two-story house. "We drag those in with a boat for the tourists!"

The Great Northern Peninsula in the end wears itself out in low headlands, bays, and islands swept clean by the North Atlantic. The road drops over a final rise. Ahead, the dozen or so houses of L'Anse aux Meadows cling to a shallow shoreline. Round Head rises, a dark stone mass, on the east side of a wide meadow sloping almost imperceptibly into Epaves Bay and the sea beyond. To the west, tucked into a...