L'Anse aux Meadows
— — the grass where the longhouses stood.
Not only on a wall.
“A meadow above a shallow bay at the top of Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula. The wind comes off the Strait of Belle Isle and the grass leans the same way it has for a thousand years. Underneath are the outlines of eight sod-walled buildings, the only confirmed Norse settlement in the Americas. A reconstructed longhouse stands at the edge of the field. The interpretive trail is short. People walk it slowly and don't say much. from the studio
L'Anse aux Meadows, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
L'Anse aux Meadows sits at the northern tip of Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula, on Epaves Bay where it meets the Strait of Belle Isle. The site is the only confirmed Norse settlement in North America outside Greenland, dated to around 1000 CE. It was found in 1960 by Norwegian explorers Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad and excavated through the 1960s. Parks Canada manages the grounds, which include three reconstructed sod buildings beside the original archaeological remains. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978, the first cultural site on the list.
There is almost no worked stone at L'Anse aux Meadows. The Norse here built with what the land gave them: turf cut from the bog, a timber frame inside, a hearth of beach cobble. Archaeologists identified eight structures, including three large halls and several workshops, along with a small bronze cloak-pin and a soapstone spindle whorl that placed the builders firmly in the Norse tradition. The bog around the site preserved the wood and the iron slag from a small smithy, the earliest evidence of iron-working in the Americas.
The site is open seasonally, generally June through early October, with the visitor centre and reconstructed longhouse closed in winter. It lies about 450 kilometres north of Deer Lake by road along Route 430, the Viking Trail. Costumed interpreters work the reconstructed buildings in summer and demonstrate iron-smelting, weaving, and woodworking. The walking loop through the original archaeological remains is roughly two kilometres on boardwalk and grass. A small museum in the visitor centre holds artifacts from the Ingstad excavation.