Mississippi Vikings

I read a report recently about the work of some volunteers clearing the banks of the Mississippi who came across the remains of a Viking longboat, or knarr… dating back to between 990-1050 AD… That’s over a thousand years ago, and pre-dates Columbus by about five hundred years. The ship is massive… or to be precise, the remains indicate that the ship was massive:  it would be about 52 foot long, its beam would have been about 15 foot, and it could have carried up to 28 tons… that is a massive ship! It was clinker built, with the planks overlapping each other, the way many boats are still built today. There would have been a crew of about 30 men, and they would have been able to travel 75 miles in a day – I guess that would depend on tide, wind, and other conditions.

One ship has been found, but who knows how many other ships travelled there, and returned to where they had set off from? Newfoundland? Greenland? Iceland? Butternut squashes have been found in an archaeological site in New Brunswick, they are not native to the area so maybe they were brought here by Viking traders. One other piece in the jigsaw of trying to decipher these finds, is the mythology of the local native Americans, who have stories of red-haired devils visiting their ancestors.