Ancient Greenland mystery has a simple answer, it seems

(AXcess News) QASSIARSUK, Greenland - A shipload of visitors arrived in the fjord overnight, so Ingibjorg Gisladottir dressed like a Viking and headed out to work in the ruins scattered along the northern edge of this tiny farming village.

Qassiarsuk is tiny (population: 56), remote, and short on amenities (no store, public restrooms, or roads to the outside world), but some 3,000 visitors come here each year to see the remains of Brattahlid, the medieval farming village founded here by Erik the Red around the year 985.

When they arrive, Ms. Gisladottir, an employee of the museum, is there to greet them in an authentic hooded smock and not-so-authentic rubber boots. "There were more visitors this year than last," she says. "People want to know what happened to the Norse."

The Greenland Norse colonized North America 500 years before Christopher Columbus "discovered" it, establishing farms in the sheltered fjords of southern Greenland, exploring Labrador and the Canadian Arctic, and setting up a short-lived outpost in Newfoundland.

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A VIKING LANDSCAPE: THE MOSFELL ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT

Location: Iceland Length: 16 min.

This video describes the Mosfell Archaeological Project, an interdisciplinary research project employing saga studies, archaeology, physical anthropology, and environmental sciences. The project's goal is to construct a picture of human habitation and environmental change in the Mosfell region of southwestern Iceland. Work at Kirkjuhll in 2002 revealed a conversion period wooden stave church and a Christian cemetery with skeletons. The Mosfell Project contributes to the larger study of Viking Age and later medieval Iceland.

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Archeologists Discovered a 10th Century Tomb in Pskov

Another chamber entombment dating back to the epoch of Princess Olga (approximately 10th century) has been found at the Starovoznesensky digging site in Pskov.

According to the director of Pskov Archeological Centre Elena Yakovleva, the grave is not smaller than the two other tombs discovered in the previous years.
“The findings are in a very bad condition; it is difficult to say whether the remains are those of a man or a woman” - she says. Most probably the buried person once belonged to a noble family.

Let us recall that in the end of 2003 a grave of a Scandinavian woman of the tenth century was found at the 4 meters depth. The archeologists called the finding “a Varangian guest”. The second similar tomb was excavated in 2006. In the course of digging works the archeologists found out that the entombment had been pillaged some centuries earlier.

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Sea Stallion from Glendalough: Newsletter 20

The latest news letter about the Sea Stallion from Glendalough - the replica Viking ship that sailed from Roskilde to Dublin - is on the Internet.

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