St. John’s, Newfoundland, then home

     The morning of August 13 found us docked at St. John’s, the capital and largest city (about 100,000) of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.  It is also the easternmost city in North America (not counting Greenland). While it was incorporated only in the 1920’s, Europeans have been living here since the 16th Century. The name may have come from the Feast of St. John the Baptist, which was reputedly the day in 1497 that John Cabot became the first European to set foot here. While it was first claimed by the English in the late 16th Century the town was subsequently attacked several times and briefly held by the Dutch and the French.  The last battle of the French & Indian War was fought here.

     Well, it had been a long trip & we were both still under the weather so we decided to just walk around town for a few hours & then spend some time relaxing on the ship. It was a very gray & sometimes drizzly day but St. John’s is a city of very colorful buildings that kept it from being too gloomy.

     In addition to spending time in some of the shops on the first couple of streets from the harbor we passed the massive grey stone St. John’s Courthouse, built in 1904.

     Further down the street we came upon the National War Memorial. Dedicated on July 1, 1924 by British World War I Field Marshal Douglas Haig plaques have since been added on its side commemorating Newfoundlanders who died in World War II, the Korean War & Afghanistan.  Since Newfoundland did not become part of Canada until after World War II, the “National” in its title refers to the old Dominiion of Newfoundland rather than Canada. Around the memorial were wreaths dedicated mostly to regiments, perhaps because the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I was only a few days before we visited. The monument was located on a plaza with a broad stairway that was ringed by old metal lights topped by white glass globes.

     We walked further up the very steep hill. St. John’s is sometimes compared to San Francisco partly because of the steepness of its streets & its colorful houses..

      Up the hill we visited two churches named (as the city was) for St. John the Baptist.  At the very top is the Catholic Basilica-Cathedral of St. John the Baptist., considered the mother church of Roman Catholicism in Newfoundland. It was built in the middle of the 19th Century. Imposing on the outside with two prominent bell towers, at the time of its completion it was the largest church in North America. On a balcony is a pipe organ with more than 4,000 pipes. Beneath the altar is a sculpture of “The Dead Christ.”

     Since the Basilica is on the top of the hill its front steps give a fine view of the city’s large harbor, which is well protected from the sea.

     We walked down the hill to the other cathedral named for St. John, this one Anglican. While it lacks the dramatic stature of the Catholic cathedral on the outside we thought the inside of this one had more warmth and interest.  Begun in the middle of the 19th Century and completed in 1885, the church was badly damaged in the Great Fire of 1892. Rebuilding was completed in 1905, although it still lacks the spire it was originally designed to have.  The congregation is currently raising funds to build one. The church says that this parish, founded in 1699, is the oldest Anglican parish in North America. This church also has an impressive pipe organ with four banks of pipes, two of which appear to have been added on.

          We were getting tired by now, with all the up and down walking, so we finished our shopping and headed back to the ship.  Throughout the day we passed a number of nice flowers (not wildflowers, this is a city), along with a very unusual utility box & more colorful buildings.

    The ship left St. John’s at about 3:00. We were told that as we sailed past Signal Hill we would be saluted by musket fire. We were, but I could not see the shooting even though I scoured the top of the hill.  It must have been coming from somewhere else, maybe the hill on the other side of the ship. Anyway, Signal Hill is where the fortifications defending the harbor stood for several hundred years. The last battle of the French and Indian War in 1762 was the Battle of Signal Hill.  Its name stems from a signal flag mast that was used to signal the town when a ship was coming.  The Cabot Tower was built there at the end of the 19th Century to commemorate the 400th anniversary of John Cabot’s initial visit and also Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. On December 12, 1901 Marconi received the first transatlantic wireless transmission on this hill, sent from Cornwall in the United Kingdom.

     We sailed out of the harbor, past some birds on a cliff and some rocky waterfront cliffs.  The next day we were in Bar Harbor, Maine.  But we were still feeling poorly and we had been there before and weren’t very interested in seeing it again. Besides, it was a very gray day, it was a tender port and we had to pack and prepare to disembark in Boston the next morning.  So we took a pass on Bar Harbor & spent a relaxing day on the Veendam. Disembarking in Boston the next morning, August 16, we retrieved our car from the motel where it had spent the trip & drove home. It was a long drive, but we were very happy to be in our own be again after a long and rewarding trip.

September 12, 2014 | Categories: Voyage of the Vikings | Leave a comment

St. Anthony, Newfoundland

     We anchored in the bay at St. Anthony on the morning of August 12.  It was chilly and gray. We were anchored a good way from the town in this large harbor, with the red & white lighthouse at the entrance to the rocky bay the most interesting sight nearby.

     We tendered into town but didn’t stay there. St. Anthony is a small town (fewer than 2,500) with little to see, so we signed up for an excursion to the real reason for coming here, L’Anse aux Meadows. This is an archaeological site of a 1,000 year old Norse village, the first (and only, so far) actual proof that the Vikings reached North America 500 years before Columbus.

     The Icelandic Sagas tell of Leif Eriksson (whose statue we saw in Reykjavik) leading a group on a voyage to the west of his home in Greenland to a spot he called Vinland. The Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red (Erik was Leif’s father and the leader of the first Viking settlement in Greenland) are both pretty short and make good reading for anyone interested in this stuff. The Sagas indicate that the settlement lasted only a few years & was abandoned because of internal fighting among the Vikings and conflict with the locals, who the Norse called Skraelings.

     But the Sagas are not real history in the modern sense and the idea that another European had reached America before Columbus was dismissed by most people.  A Norwegian named Helge Instad read the Sagas, however, and concluded that Vinland was real and was probably located in Newfoundland.  He went to northern Newfoundland and began asking around about any mounds in the area. One of the locals told him about some mounds thought to have been Indian remains.  Instad and his wife, Anne Stine Instad, excavated the mounds in 1960 and found remains that turned out to be a Viking settlement. Anne led excavations there from 1961 to 1968, and proved that the settlement was Norse by finding a bronze Viking cloak pin among the ruins. As a result, today it is accepted that L’Anse aux Meadows was an 11th Century Viking settlement and that Columbus was not the first European to reach the Americas.

     We boarded our bus and headed out with our knowledgeable and very engaging guide Chris. This is a remote area with no modern tour busses so we made the trip in school busses, which were less than comfortable.

     The archaeological site, now a Canadian national park, has a reconstruction of how the village most likely would have looked.  But about a mile away is a redundant reconstruction run as a private business, sort of a Disney-like “Vikingland” (although a lot smaller & without the rides & concessions). For reasons that are beyond me (unless they involve monetary incentives) we went first to the private site where we spent too much time on an entirely unnecessary visit. The time would have been better spent in the visitor center at the national park where we had insufficient time to review all the exhibits. Both of these sites, however, are located on a lovely bay that shows why the Vikings would have found it a good place to settle.

     We drove the mile or so to the national park and walked to the visitor’s center. There was Viking themed artwork along the path, including busts of the Instads. In the visitor’s center we saw a film then had a little bit of time to look at the exhibits & the gift shop. From the porch of the visitor’s center was a great view of the whole area around where the Vikings settled.

     Walking down the boardwalk path to the site we first came to a two part sculpture called Meeting of Two Worlds. It is a rather abstract representation of the first encounter between Europeans on one side with Americans on the other.

     After each year’s excavations the site was buried again to protect the remains from the elements. Today all you can really see of the actual remains is a series of grassy mounds outlining the foundations of the original Viking buildings. Each has been identified but I can’t identify which buildings are in most of these pictures. The first one is where iron was smelted and worked (it’s obvious since it’s labeled) but apparently only enough iron for a few hundred nails was produced here.  The multi-roomed structures were Viking longhouses, which generally housed several people and had connected outhouses for animals and work. Three longhouses have been recovered on the site.  There are also a few smaller one-room huts, probably housing slaves or crew of low status, although one had weights suggesting it might have been a weaving workshop for women.

     We visited the reconstruction of what the Viking buildings probably looked like. There were a couple of tents near the shore that looked like they might have been for storage. The other buildings had turf roofs over wooden walls with turf outside of them that made the building look like a hill from a distance. The exposed walls were covered with piled up peat rectangles which we were told would have an insulation value in modern terms of about R-100.  I imagine that kind of insulation would be pretty welcome during the winter this far north. There were costumed people demonstrating the crafts that would have been practiced here by the Norse. When the Norse lived here this area was thickly wooded so that wood was plentiful for building.  You will recall from earlier episodes that the opposite was true in Greenland, where trees are pretty much nonexistent. The Sagas say that Leif loaded his ships with wood each time he returned to Greenland, which must have been a very valuable cargo to sell there.

    There were a lot of what looked like wildflowers in this area, although since these are carefully reconstructed sites who knows whether they were planted here initially.

     Current thought is that this site was more of a way station for exploration further south than a village intended as a permanent settlement. But in any event, the Vikings only used this site for a few years & burned it when they left, presumably to deny its use to others. But its historical importance is not diminished by its relatively short duration.

     So the Vikings left this spot and we did too, driving back to St. Anthony in time to permit just a quick look around. It seems to be a nice town with nice people.  On the road to the Viking site we passed several very large piles of cut wood, some with vehicles parked nearby.  Chris told us that no one ever steals wood from someone else’s cache and that they often leave the keys in their vehicles. But if anyone is in need of wood (or other supplies) they only have to ask and people are glad to share. There are Just a few modest buildings in the harbor area. Chris informed us ruefully that there isn’t even a place in town where you can sit down and have a beer! Perhaps the largest building in the area is the hospital, just up the hill from the harbor, which has a 360 degree ceramic mural by a well known Canadian artist named Jordi Bonet who was born in Spain. When we were returning from the hospital Chris was heading back to his car & he crossed the street to offer us a personal driving tour of the town, gratis.  It was getting late, so we gratefully declined, but you see what I mean about the friendly folks here.

September 11, 2014 | Categories: Voyage of the Vikings | Leave a comment

Qaqortoc, Greenland

     I woke up in what seemed the middle of the night but was actually about 5:00 AM on August 10.  I decided to peek out from between the curtains to see how bad the fog looked. It had been consistently bad the previous evening and the fog horn was blowing well into the night. To my surprise there was no fog at all.  Instead there was a beautiful Greenlandic sunrise in progress.

     We anchored outside of the small harbor at Qaqortoc about three hours later. With a population a little over 3,000 this is the largest town in southern Greenland.  People have inhabited this island for some 4,000 years but Qaqortoq was founded in the late 18th century by the Danes who called it Julianehaab after their queen. It is not far from the spot where Erik the Red established the first Norse settlement in the 10th century. As best I can tell, the town’s name seems to be pronounced “kay-ker-TAWK.”  I think it is the first time I have ever seen a word with 3 q’s and no u’s.

     We had already explored an Inuit town in Greenland (Nanortalik) and since there are no roads out of Qaqortok there were no land excursions available. So we signed up for a boat tour arranged by a fellow passenger that was to take us to the Twin Glacier on the mainland of Greenland where it is possible to approach close enough to actually touch a piece of the Greenland ice sheet. Yesterday we cruised through Prins Christian Sund & saw icebergs from the ship’s decks above; today we would be right down in the water with them. So we tendered into the harbor where we found our tour guide and the two boats for our trip.

     The man who was originally supposed to be our guide was out of town leading a group hunting reindeer with crossbows (really), so his wife Metta acted as our guide. She approached me as we emerged from the tender looking lost & asked if we were the group going to the ice cap. She was wearing a sort of snugli in which was her infant son Olaf. Quite the undertaking, we thought, in those conditions. Metta is originally from Denmark.  She told us that when Olaf was on the way she was told that she could only stay in Qaqortoq to give birth if there was no chance of any complications.  Because they were not able to rule that out she had to spend her last few weeks in Nuuk where apparently there is a better equipped hospital. That’s a pretty good indication of how isolated this town is, only accessible from other towns by helicopter and, in summer, by boat. Metta told us that she and her husband are planning to move to a much smaller village which will benefit his hunting business.

     There were about 20 passengers in our boat, which was the larger and faster of the two. There were seats inside with good windows but you could also walk outside to see things better. As we made our way out of town and around toward the passage leading toward the glacier we passed large icebergs and mountain views in the early morning sun.

     Now came one of the highlights of the day, if not of the whole cruise.  The Inuit men running the boat spotted a whale spouting near the shore & turned the boat that way to get us a closer look.  Usually when you see a whale in the ocean you only see a little of its back and maybe its tail as it dives (you have seen my pathetic pictures of this), but this humpback whale was rolling around on the surface blowing its spout for quite a while. It seemed almost like he was performing for us. Then with a flip of his tail he dived under the water and was gone. Spectacular!

     As we headed on toward the glacier the water became more and more crowded with icebergs in all shapes & sizes. Here is also a picture of the other boat in our expedition, which was somewhat smaller than ours. As you can see, there was a lot of skill involved in maneuvering the boats through the floating ice.

     finally we reached the Twin Glacier.  As its name implies there used to be two glaciers here but only one is left. In fact, Metta told us that (I think I have this right) over the last 20 or 30 years the ice has retreated a couple of miles!  We were glad to see it before its completely gone. We pulled up at a floating dock beside a huge stone outcrop from the glacier where a makeshift stairs had been built.  Stepping onto the floating dock from the boat was tricky because it was not entirely stable & you had to walk along the edge of the boat before reaching the jumping off point. And the  steep steps were not an entirely easy climb. Mary decided to wait at the top of the stairs because her knees were hurting & the terrain over the rocks was quite rough. But yours truly pushed ahead. Across from the dock was a waterfall at the base of a cliff & you could see the ice cap from there over the rocks.

We walked across the very uneven rocks, climbing here & descending there. We had hoped to be able to walk all the way up to the edge of the glacier where you could get up close & personal with the ice, but because the ship was leaving early (4:00) there wasn’t time to go the whole way.  If only the ship had been leaving at 5:00 instead we would have had time to do that! So that was disappointing, but the view was great & we really got pretty close to the glacier.

    There were several varieties of small wildflowers that were somehow eking out a living in this barren & cold rock. Life is very resilient!

Time was up way too quickly & we were herded back to the boat. From the rock we could see the distant entrance to the bay where, Metta told us, the front of the glacier was 2 or 3 decades ago.

     So we began the long boat trip back to Qaqortoc.  It was now early afternoon & the ice seemed to be a lot thicker than it had been earlier so the boat had to go very slowly.  It was good to be careful since the last thing we wanted was a Titanic moment, but we were starting to get a little anxious about making the last tender to Veendam at 3:30.  I doubt that they would have departed leaving 30 passengers in Qaqortoc, but they are not obliged to wait for a private excursion that is late returning & this remote spot would be a particularly bad place to be stranded.

     But eventually the water cleared enough for our boat to pick up speed & we made it back to Qaqortoc in plenty of time. And guess what we saw along the way? Right, more icebergs! As I have mentioned before the floating ice comes in all shapes & sizes, from as big as an apartment building to small enough to fit in your glass of water. Here is another sampling.

     So in the end, despite our concern, we made it back to Qaqortoc with enough time to spare to enable us to walk around the central part of the town. Qaqortoc has the oldest public fountain in Greenland (there are only two) built in 1932, which is topped by whales spouting through their blowholes. There is an unusual amount of outdoor art for such a small town, thanks in large part to a project from the early 1990’s called “Stone & Man” in which a number of artists were invited to carve sculptures into rock faces and boulders. Then there is the town itself, displaying a riot of primary colors on its buildings and homes. Since Greenland has no trees from which to get wood for building houses, the buildings here are imported prefabricated from Scandinavia.

     As we left for the Veendam we saw several kids having a great time jumping off the pier into the icy cold water. Its hard to imagine doing that (let alone enjoying it as much as they were), but it’s August so this is as good as it gets for swimming around here. After boarding the ship we took a final look at colorful Qaqortoc & headed out to sea, passing (you guessed it) yet more mountains & icebergs, one of which had a large window in it.  A fitting farewell to Greenland.

September 10, 2014 | Categories: Voyage of the Vikings | 5 Comments