The duty goes back to the sources of French America, focusing on the exploration of Quebec newspapers and archives. To broaden our horizons, we will travel from the northern confines of the Hudson to the sunny dreams of Florida, while tracing the thread of a shared history.
The men sailed in the estuary of a large river, says the Saga of Erik the Red. This mythical story, which evokes the Viking presence in what we now call America, was probably written in the 13thand century. On the outskirts of these lands that they do not know, these adventurers see wild wheat, streams full of fish, animals of all kinds in the middle of the great forest. This land, they call it “Vinland”. Where exactly did these intrepid travelers set foot? What relationship did they have with the indigenous populations, already present in these lands?
At the beginning of the 1960s, at the northwestern end of the island of Newfoundland, at L’Anse aux Meadows to be precise, the remains of dwellings briefly used by Icelandic navigators were discovered. Since this discovery by a couple of Norwegian archaeologists, Anne Stine and Helge Ingstad, this site has never ceased to fascinate researchers. A recent study, published by the journal Nature, gives details on this point of occupation of the territory by Scandinavians. These intrepid navigators were there, temporarily, at least from 1021. So there are more than 1000 years. Scientific advances in the dating of pieces of wood now make it possible to ensure this. Fact to note: we found, on the site, remains of walnut, a tree that was not present in the surroundings.
Is it possible that these Scandinavian sailors advanced further, far beyond Newfoundland, inland? This is likely, specialists have believed for decades, always in search of elements to ensure it beyond any doubt.
In 1917, the ethnographer and geographer Hans Peder Steensby, of the University of Copenhagen, made people talk about him. He asserts, in a long study which is interested in the route taken by the men of the North from Greenland to Vinland, that the voyages of these men in the Atlantic were intensive. Steensby goes even much further. He tries to show, by daring cross-checks, that the Vinland of which the old Nordic sagas speak should be located more or less in the vicinity of Montmagny, in today’s Quebec. It is in this sense in any case that he interprets, as best he can, the adventures of Thorfinn Karlsefni, who left with three boats and a hundred men at the beginning of the 11th century.and century.
Geographers quickly oppose Steensby’s theses. After all, the mild climate described in these sagas does not correspond to the vigorous winters of Canada, he is told, among other things. But the climate, in a millennium, may have changed. More or less short periods of warming are observed, in geographical times. To the point where, in Montmagny, the amateur baseball association is not called the Vikings for nothing!
There is no doubt, in any case, that the European presence in America is to be placed well before the expeditions of the usual figures of “discoverers”, whether that of Christopher Columbus, that of Giovanni Caboto or that of Jacques Cartier. Moreover, when he arrives in the river, he comes across a fishing boat which is already there… For how long have these places been known to Europeans? The current global warming could make more accessible some sites hitherto not conducive to archaeological excavations. Steensby’s hypotheses, difficult to prove, nevertheless take root in the imagination.
Hypotheses
Several hypotheses have been formulated, over time, as to the fact that these navigators were able to ascend the St. Lawrence River well beyond its estuary. The Vinland Club, a film directed by Benoit Pilon in 2019, starring Sébastien Ricard, is based, moreover, according to the logic specific to a fiction, on various interpretations of a possible Viking presence on the shores of the Saint-Laurent. In the name of a dive into the world of education before the Quiet Revolution, Pilon’s film has not, however, sublimated from scratch the idea of a Viking presence in these lands of the New World.
In July 1968, Quebec newspapers reported that René Lévesque, a namesake of the famous politician who is one of the few pioneers of archeology in Quebec, may have discovered Viking remains on the North Shore. Trained in geography and theology, Lévesque was encouraged in his research by the botanist and ethnologist Jacques Rousseau. According to Lévesque, “the establishment found at Brador obviously predates the arrival of Jacques Cartier in Canada. The hypothesis of a Basque-Spanish establishment is not ruled out. And Lévesque is quick to add that it “could also be a millennial settlement once inhabited by the Vikings.” Certainly, he says, the site was occupied by Aboriginal people 10,000 years ago.
A closer study of this exceptional site, located between the harbor of Belles Amours and the village of Lourdes-de-Blanc-Sablon, finally reveals that these vestiges belong to the fishing industry of the beginnings of the French Regime in Canada. The place was, at the time, placed under the protection of Augustin Le Gardeur de Courtemanche (1663-1717), commander on the Labrador coast. However, several traces of earlier Aboriginal occupations intersect these remains.
It is the same René Lévesque, inhabited by a blind passion for the origins of his company, who will then search like a good man, in all directions, for the remains of Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec in 1608. 1999, after having multiplied the soundings around the basilica, he claims to have spotted the tomb with certainty. For the event, the media are invited. A stone wall is pierced in front of the cameras. Once it fell, the witnesses discover, bewildered, that we are not in front of a burial, but in the cold room of the Chinese restaurant Wong. This interest of René Lévesque with regard to a kind of cult of origins made him consider the possibility of creating an interpretative museum of the Vikings in the New World in the vicinity of Montmagny, in accordance with the hypotheses supported by Hans Peder Steensby.
In 1995, an amateur historian, waiting to find material proof of this Viking presence, offered analyzes of very old maps and believed he discerned the surroundings of Tadoussac and the Saguenay River as possible places of passage for these European navigators, while evoking, on the basis of the sagas, violent conflicts with the Native people.
Northern Appetite
Still, “the ‘Vikings’ will never form a people in America”, explains the medievalist Piroska Nagy. A professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, she gives, among other things, a course devoted to the Vikings. Interest is strong, she notes, for this course. “In our world subject to global warming, the North has the wind in its sails. We love the Nordics, all the Nordics… I think that, in a very individualistic world, ours, the medieval communities and the democratic side of Scandinavian societies are attractive. For Quebecers, a certain kinship of ideas with the Vikings, in any case, seems noble. »
But the Vikings did not populate America. “For these people, it is above all an occupation, a job that drives them: setting off in search of new riches, thanks to exploratory maritime voyages. For many early medieval Scandinavians, farmers or craftsmen, the adventure of the sea was a part-time affair. But the fascination we have for the “Viking world” makes us see them differently, as if they represented a “Scandinavian world”, its diaspora, its expansion… I don’t know if this feeling has been growing for a long time, but since I am in Quebec since 2008, this has always been an important perception among students. And here is a perception that deserves to be corrected, believes the historian.
In Gatineau, at the former Canadian Museum of Civilization, renamed by the curators the Canadian Museum of History, visitors can admire a tiny wooden figurine at the entrance to the permanent exhibition. It was found in 1978, during excavations on Baffin Island. The object appears almost polished as it is saturated with seal oil. It was sculpted around the year 1300. What is special about it? It represents a being dressed in clothing from the European Middle Ages… On the chest of this figurine, one even has the impression of discerning a cross. At the time of this archaeological discovery, the presence of a metal blade from the same period was noted, which suggests exchanges between two worlds. Is this the case?