Viking Exhibit Opens at Maritime Museum

Exploring a subject of enduring public interest, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic launched a temporary exhibit today, May 24, featuring millennia-old objects from Viking culture.

Vikings! The Vinland Mystery is a composite exhibition built from two parts, created years apart, by museums in two different regions of Canada.

The core of the exhibit was produced in 1984 as The Vikings: Master Mariners, Traders, Colonists and Artisans, and was developed by Dr. E. Leigh Syms, curator of archaeology at The Manitoba Museum. It tells of the roots of the Viking culture in Scandinavia and how that culture expanded along a web of trade routes across Europe, into Asia, and across the seas to Iceland, Greenland, and North America.

The second part of the exhibit, Vikings! The Vinland Mystery, was produced this year by the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic with the help of Birgitta Wallace, a retired Parks Canada archaeologist. Ms. Wallace has spent most of her professional life immersed in the study of the Vikings, with a special focus on L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site of Canada in northern Newfoundland.

"For years scholars have debated the location of Norse (the Vikings') Vinland," said Ms. Wallace. "Thanks to discoveries at the L'Anse aux Meadows site, I think we now have found it."

In this exhibit, evidence leads to the location of Leif Erikson's Vinland, an area made famous by the Norse Sagas. Archaeological findings at L'Anse aux Meadows have established with reasonable certainty that Vinland comprised all coastal regions around the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the islands within it.

"It is exciting to participate through the exhibit, in sharing these conclusions with the public," said John Hennigar-Shuh, manager of the Maritime Museum. "Our staff are developing programs to be offered from the replica Viking encampment within the exhibit."

The exhibit Vikings! The Vinland Mystery runs at the Maritime Museum until the Labour Day weekend and is included in the regular cost of a museum pass. The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is located at 1675 Lower Water St. in Halifax.