In 1960, Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad discovered the remains of a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern shore of Newfoundland. Helge was a Norwegian lawyer turned explorer, and Anne was a professional archaeologist. They spent eight years uncovering the Viking settlement, which may be the Vinland of Leif Erikson as told in the Norse sagas.
Having worked on similar sites in Iceland and Greenland, they were well qualified to explore a Norse site that dated to A.D. 1000. Initially greeted with deep skepticism, their systematic explorations turned up indisputable evidence of European contact, 492 years before Columbus.
This memoir is by their daughter, a professor emerita of medical anthropology at the University of Oslo, who accompanied her parents on many of their far-flung explorations. Making use of their personal papers and photographs, she has produced an exciting tale. This is a fascinating memoir of a determined family that changed the history of the Americas. —Mark Michel
