CELPIP Reading Part 3 Practice Test: L’Anse aux Meadows: Norse Footprints in Newfoundland

Paragraph A

On a grassy terrace at the northern tip of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula lies one of the most important archaeological sites in the Americas. For centuries, two medieval Icelandic sagas had told how Norse sailors, among them Leif Erikson, travelled west from Greenland and spent time in a land they called Vinland. However, there was no archaeological proof of where the Norse had actually landed. That changed in 1960, when the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, the archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, arrived in the small fishing village of L’Anse aux Meadows while searching the coast for possible Norse landing places. A local resident, George Decker, led them to a group of low, overgrown ridges near the shore.

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Over the following years, Anne Stine Ingstad directed excavations at the site with researchers from several countries. They uncovered the remains of eight buildings whose thick turf walls had once been laid over wooden frames, the same method of construction used in Iceland and Greenland at the time. Among the objects recovered were iron rivets, a bronze cloak pin and a small stone spindle whorl, a weight used for spinning thread. Spinning was generally women’s work in Norse society, so the whorl suggests that women may have been part of the group. One building also held a simple forge, along with slag left over from turning local bog ore into iron, a skill the newcomers had clearly brought with them.

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Radiocarbon tests placed the settlement at around the year 1000, roughly five centuries before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. Even so, it does not seem to have lasted long. Its rubbish heaps are thin, and no graves or barns for livestock were found, which suggests it was used for only a few years, perhaps as a base for exploration. Discarded ship rivets indicate that boats were repaired there. Perhaps the most intriguing find was a handful of butternuts. Because butternut trees do not grow in Newfoundland, the nuts must have been gathered far to the south, a sign that some voyagers ventured well beyond the camp. In 2021, researchers went further. By looking in the tree rings of wood from the site for traces of a known burst of cosmic radiation, they showed that the wood had been cut with metal tools in 1021.

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In 1978, L’Anse aux Meadows became one of the first places to be added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List, and it is also protected as a National Historic Site run by Parks Canada. To preserve them, the excavated foundations were covered over again, though their outlines can still be traced in the grass. Nearby, a group of reconstructed turf buildings gives visitors a sense of daily life a thousand years ago, with costumed interpreters demonstrating traditional crafts. A visitor centre displays some of the artifacts found at the site. Reaching it requires a long drive through sparsely populated country, and its facilities open mainly during the warmer months, yet it continues to draw visitors from around the world.