Via
the American Historical Association’s blog, I became aware of UVic’s Unsolved Canadian Mysteries website.
Almost immediately, I noticed that they had a microsite asking Where is Vinland?, keeping open the hopes many hold for alternative locations of that fabled site beside the well-established settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in places such as Newport, RI and Dighton, MA, New Brunswick and Cape Cod.
Eben Horsford would be sad to see there’s no acknowledgment of his preferred site, Norumbega (present-day Boston). James W. Curran would protest their overlooking of his preference in the Great Lakes around Sault Ste. Marie. And my own childhood summers spent near the Kensington Runestone makes me wonder why those spots didn’t get a mention, too (why else do you think they called them the “Minnesota Vikings”?). And where’s the Heavener Runestone?
Honestly, if you’re going to bring up the Dighton Rock and the Newport Tower, you might as well let all the wild theories in since you’ve set the bar pretty low in terms of current historical and archaeological scholarship.
Despite that, this a great little site that lightly touches on the written and archaeological sources as well as featuring a number of biographies of people mentioned in the sagas as well as a parallel set of pages on L’Anse Aux Meadows (I have a friend who has contributed a lot to the recreation, there, through his work in historical ironcraft). But I love how, even with this strong archaeological link, people just can’t let go of alternative sites and their beloved Vikings.