The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.1981, Page 37

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
35
TURNING OVER A NEW LEIF
Not only is it possible that Leif the Lucky landed in Nova Scotia
• 1,000 years ago, but it is Dr. Livingstone’s
cousin who presumes it
by Silver Donald Cameron
Livingstone plunges through the
undergrowth, intent upon his quest. He is
not the great missionary-explorer of Africa,
though he is of the same family, and he is
not seeking the secrets of the Zambezi. No:
Harry Livingstone is searching for a fresh-
water spring along the marshy shore of Cape
Breton’s Bras d'Or Lakes, near Nyanza —
the sort of spring that could have attracted an
ancient Norse explorer.
Leif the Lucky, say, seeking a location
for a settlement he would call “Vinland the
Good.” Leif the Lucky in Cape Breton?
Maybe.
Every schoolchild knows that Leif was
the son of Erik the Red, head man of the
Norse settlements in Greenland, and that
nearly a thousand years ago Leif sailed to
the westward and spent a winter in a land of
fine pastures, magnificent forests and wild
grapes. Those who have inquired a little
further realize that Leifs was only one of
several known Norse voyages to America,
and may have been only one of many. By
comparison, Columbus was a Christopher-
come-lately. Had the Vinland colony taken
root, North America might still be speaking
Icelandic.
And yet we don’t to this day know exactly
where Leif established his Vinland
settlement.
Harry Livingstone thinks he knows —
and as he talks, pointing out over the salt
waters of Cape Breton’s land-hemmed sea,
one almost sees the highprowed Viking
knorr, its striped square sail bellying in the
June breeze, running up the breathtaking
fjord of the Great Bras d’Or on a rising tide,
looking for a sheltered harbor with marsh
meadows for the cattle, nearby forests for
lumber, and a point or island for easy de-
fence against the skraelings, the native
people of this lush, green land.
‘‘Vinland has been placed everywhere
from Cape Chidley, at the northern tip of
Labrador, all the way down to Cape Hat-
teras in the Carolinas,” says Livingstone.
‘‘The most popular theories put it either in
Cape Cod or in Newfoundland. But nobody
has even suggested the most logical place,
which is eastern Nova Scotia. The saga de-
scription fits the Bras d’Or Lakes far better
than any of the alternatives. That’s my
opinion, anyhow.”
‘‘It’s only a theory,” cautions Dr. Ron
Nash of St. Francis Xavier University, who
has been excavating Indian sites all over
Cape Breton. “But Livingstone has pointed
out some literary evidence for it, and I think
it’s a plausible theory. The next thing would
be to get some research money together,
pinpoint some locations and search for the
hard physical evidence, the artifacts or ruins
that would prove that the Norse really were
here. And that’s going to be a real chore.”
Harry Livingstone pauses among the
trees, wiping his bald head with Old
Woodsman fly dope to keep off the mos-
quitoes, as much at home in the bush as he is
in the offices of Halifax. He’s retired from a
successful career as a personnel officer.
He is intensely interested in the Vikings
— which is not surprising, really; his own
family’s lifestyle is not so far from theirs.
His great-grandfather — David Living-
stone’s uncle Angus — came to Big Bras
d’Or in 1816, a semiliterate veteran of the
Napoleonic wars. He built a log house and