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Getting to L’Anse aux Meadows is a lot easier than getting to Iona. At least in theory. There are no busses involved, and no ferries. No trains and no one lane roads. There are not even any sheep to contend with. You simply land in the airport at St. John’s, Newfoundland and go to the Budget Rental Car station and start driving west on Route 1… for approximately seven hours. Then when you get to Deer Lake, hang right and begin driving north on Route 430. You can’t miss it as there are not a whole lot of exits preceding it, and there are no options for driving south, so hanging right is really going to be your only choice. Now drive for another five hours. Unless it is raining. Then it will be six.
If the road signs along the way are any indication, the greatest danger that faced on the journey will be moose. Apparently, moose are running rampant across the island, which I do not personally consider to be a bad thing as moose are my favorite animal. But even I, the World’s Greatest Moose Lover, do not want to run into one with my rental car, so I am inclined to drive slowly when behind the wheel, meaning it might take you 6.5 hrs.
Having now made the journey, my personal suspicion is that the greatest danger on the journey is actually the road itself. For some reason Newfoundlanders do not believe in having shoulders to their roads. Instead, they believe in letting the edges of their roads disintegrate into 12 foot ditches. I pondered whether the drop off was intended to deter moose from running onto the highway. Could it be this was meant to protect me??? If so, it was only minimally effective. We ended up seeing two moose cross the road, only now with the additional danger of driving our car into a ditch.
Why make such a journey risking life and limb and moose-tastrophy? Well now, that is even easier question to answer than the question of how to get to L’ Anse aux Meadows: It’s because there were Vikings at the end!
Okay, well, not quite Vikings. Turns out that I’ve been using the word wrongly all these years. Viking is apparently more of a verb than a noun. It is the act of pillaging and plundering associated with the Norse people between 793-1066. But not all Norse folk who lived during “The Viking Age” were Vikings any more than all of us who live in the “Space Age” are astronauts. (Thank you, L’Anse aux Meadows Interpretative Center for that helpful explanation!)
L'Anse aux Meadows is the best guess as to where the Norse explorer Leif Erikson landed around the year 1000, making him the first person of European descent to land in North America. But even that may not be true. There are stories of another Norse sailor spotting this mysterious “new found” land in the decades before Erikson, and Irish legends tell of St. Brendan—patron saint of navigators—making the journey even earlier than that.
I remember hearing tantalizing bits of this story in 4th grade history class, but it was wayyy cooler to go there in person and see the reconstructed Norse camp and imagine what it would have been like a millennia ago. Apparently, the Norse who were living in Greenland at the time made four short trips to the area before 1040. They called the land “Vinland” but then never returned again. No one knows quite why, but my husband and I had enough time on the road to read aloud a whole book on Viking history that posed several theories. I recommend this one because it is not long and it is very readable as well as super cheap.
One of the things that really left an impression on both Mike and I was the way that many of the interpretative centers in Newfoundland, including the one at L’Anse au Meadows, framed the telling of history as episodes of contact, acknowledging that contact always results in change for both parties—some clearly positive, some clearly negative, and lots in the muddled in-between space that could be interpreted in a variety of ways. We found ourselves thinking about how our own lives have been formed by any number of contacts. They happen and we are forever changed by them.
Indeed, our coming to Newfoundland this month to celebrate our wedding anniversary was itself due to a random series of encounters that began around ten years ago or so when I met the assistant school superintendent of the Catholic Independent Schools of Vancouver, Canada who invited me to come out for a gathering of school principals. It was through that event that I met the superintendent of the schools in Victoria, Canada. And through that I met the chancellor and then Bishop Gary Gordon of that diocese, who through a priest of his diocese originally from Newfoundland, gifted us with a four-night stay… that turned into fourteen. You never know where meeting someone from another part of the world will take you. In this case, it has been all for the good and our lives are richer for it…. moose, ditches, and all.
Bishop Gary Gordon is just one of the wonderful people I interview in Season 2 of Waking Up Goliath. He gives great testimony from his own life as a bishop about what “contact” with the other can look like—what are the gifts, the challenges, the dangerous areas that we want to be incredibly conscientious about as leaders. I hope you’ll listen to his interview as well as the other interviews that are already released, including:
- Dr. Erin Barisano – the superintendent of Catholic schools for the diocese of Orange, CA
- Rhonda Miska – the director communications for St. Tim’s parish in Blaine, MN and founder of the Catholic Women’s Preaching Circle
- Trinka Hamel and Joann Terranova – who introduce us to a way of running meetings and building community known as “sociocracy for all”
- Sr. Megan McElroy – prioress of the Dominicans of Grand Rapids, MI
- Laura Kelly Fanucci – convener of MotheringSpirit.com
Totally different walks of life! All powerful examples of people who are trying to be intentional in the way that they connect with and influence others, aware that every contact can have ramifications far beyond what we can see in the moment.
The interviews are so great and so chuck full of wisdom, I cannot even tell you which one I enjoyed working on the most.
Here’s a quick reminder that I am still shooting for 39 Amazon reviews for Redeeming Power by the end of this month. Right now I am at 14. You can do it! It’ll only take 1 minute of your time… literally.
The next time I write, we’ll be in the month of September—a month in the Catholic community that is set aside to remember care for creation. I’ve got a few other resources to share, but if you are looking for something to help you plan a prayer service or to use in your own prayer, here is an excellent one from the Catholic Climate Covenant you might want to look at in advance. It’s got beautiful graphics, wonderful preaching tips, easily accessible prayers… the whole package. And all at no cost.
I’ll be back in touch soon. Meanwhile stay safe on those roads out there and enjoy the adventure that is life!