Day 9: Quirpon (Kar-POON)

Icebergs and Vikings on the Northern Peninsula today.

The weather was nasty today, a little rainy and a lot foggy. We decided to head over to Saint Anthony in the morning – that’s the biggest town out here – in the hopes the weather would clear up some in the afternoon. On the drive over, we took a short detour to Saint Carols, where our innkeepers told us we’d find an iceberg in the bay. Which we did.

I’d guess that’s something of a ‘baby’ iceberg, but it was still around 30 feet high, and just hanging out right near the shore.

After gazing adoringly at the iceberg for awhile, we headed into Saint Anthony. It’s a decent sized town, although not much to do. One of the highlights is just outside, called Fishing Point:

We headed back into town, and took the tour of the Grenfell Interpretive Centre. Dr. Grenfell was a British doctor who basically founded the entire medical infrastructure of Labrador and Newfoundland in the early 1900’s. It was actually pretty interesting, and on balance, he does seem to have done more good than harm (despite the preaching – as far as the museum reports, anyway, he didn’t try to convert the indigenous people, so that’s something).

After lunch we headed over the L’Anse aux Meadows, which is the only authenticated Viking settlement in North America.

Heading into the visitor center, we stopped to take this picture – just want to point out, it’s June 1.

Apparently Leif Erikkson and his men headed over this way from Greenland in the 1400’s, and stayed here for a few years while they explored and traded. The original settlement is gone, as the Vikings burnt all the houses and mostly picked up when they left, but you can see where they stood in the picture below. Parks Canada has rebuilt recreations a short way away, using local materials based on the footprints of what the archaeologists found:

In the longhouse, there was a couple of guides telling stories and sharing the history of the Vikings. No joke, one of them was named Ragner – how Viking can you get? The houses were made of sod (from the peat bog surrounding us), and actually incredibly warm. Apparently sod has an R-value of like 100.

We hung out for a while but eventually we needed to come out for some fresh air. There were a couple more icebergs in the bay:

If you look really closely in the picture below, between the island and the boat, you can see another iceberg way out in the distance. It must be enormous for us to be able to see it from shore:

Jon walked out on the beach and picked up a chunk of iceberg for me to touch, which was really sweet:

We’re going to try dinner tonight at The Norsemen, which is supposed to be the best restaurant around, all local ingredients. But I’m still not eating moose.