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A Solar Eclipse and a Viking Settlement

We had two very different talks in our June meeting. In the first Les Knight spoke about the 1927 solar eclipse. Many SWAAG members will have spotted the yellow AA sign, commemorating the centre line of totality, as they drive into Richmond from Swaledale. There was great excitement prior to the event, the newspapers printed special supplements, the Ordnance Survey produced a map, and plans were laid to set up telescopes along the line of totality. Railway companies advertised excursions to places such as Richmond, Southport and Blackpool. LNER alone had 37 trains scheduled for the occasion. Les concluded that this was probably one of the greatest mass movements in British history, with over 3 million people being transported, by various means, to the north of England. In Richmond there were lectures, dances and whist drives to celebrate and 35,000 people went to Richmond racecourse to watch on the day. Virginia Woolf, a keen astronomer, went to Richmond too.

Sadly, from a weather point of view the 29th of June wasn’t the best of days – there was almost complete cloud cover. A plane was launched from Catterick, and a hot air balloon was blown out into the Irish Sea in its ill-fated attempt to get a better view. The best photo was obtained by the Astronomer Royal in the grounds of Giggleswick School. The headline in the Darlington and Stockton Times after the event was “The Eclipsed Eclipse”.

Alan Mills followed with a talk about his visit to the Norse settlement of L’Anse aux Meadows, on Newfoundland, in Canada. Excavated in the 1960s, by Anne Stine Ingstad, it provides conclusive evidence that the Vikings arrived in the Americas nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus. The site contains the remains of eight buildings and probably supported 60 to 100 people over a 20-to-30-year period. Workshops were also found together with typical Norse artefacts. The site may not have been occupied all year round.

The Norse sagas, which were written down in the 13th century, refer to exploration west of Greenland and mention the settlement of “Vinland”. Whether this was L’Anse aux Meadows is debatable. Butternuts, which don’t grow in Newfoundland, were found during the excavation and must have come from further south where perhaps grapes might also have been growing in the wild. As yet no other confirmed Viking settlements have been found in Canada.

J.H.



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News Record: 188 Updated: 11-07-2024 16:20:23