The Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ottawa and the Canadian Nordic Society are co-hosting a special Speakers’ event featuring the noted Norwegian anthropologist, Professor Benedicte Ingstad, who will give a presentation on the discovery by her parents and follow-up research on ancient Viking settlement site at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
In 1960 the Norwegian Helge Ingstad discovered a Norse settlement in Newfoundland dating from 1000 A.D. During the sixties his wife and archaeologist, Anne Stine, led an international team excavating the site. Their findings proved that the Vikings went to America 500 years before Columbus in accordance with the Saga stories about Vínland. This was a great achievement and prolonged European-American history by 500 years.
Benedicte Ingstad (born 1943) is the daughter of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad. She is a professor in medical anthropology at the University of Oslo. She spent several summers during her adolescence with her family at L’Anse aux Meadows and assisted her mother with the excavations. She’s also the only person with access to the rich archives the Ingstads left behind.
In Norway she recently published a biography on her father, Helge Ingstad, and a book about the discovery, the excavations and her parents
Anne Stine excavating at L'Anse aux Meadows. Photo: The National Libary of Norway/Ingstad Collection