A Voyage Long and a People Strange

Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange, a history of the discovery of the New World, starts with his trip to L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. L'Anse aux Meadows is a tiny fishing village in northern Newfoundland and the site of the first known Viking settlement in North America. Other than Parks Canada's reconstruction of the settlement, there isn't much there. It's a barren place, and cold -- icebergs are often seen in June and July.

For two days now I've been giggling over Horwitz's account of his arrival there:

The road ended at a wharf and a dozen or so homes by the water. At a gas station an hour earlier, I'd learned that a man named Tom kept a tour boat at L'Anse's dock. This seemed a nice way to start my exploration, viewing the coast from the water, as the Vikings had done. But the only person at the dock was a man in a parked car with a cap pulled low on his brow. I tapped on his closed window and asked where I might find Tom and his boat.
   "No icebergs  here," the man replied, barely lowering his window.
   "I don't want to see icebergs," I said.
   "What do you want to see?"
   "Where the Vikings came in."
   "No Vikings here, never were," he said. "No sir. That's all bullshit. They'd a found a better place than this. In the winter it's not fit to live in." He rolled up his window and drove off.
   Across the way, I saw an old man emerge from from a small home and walk over to pet a goat. A sign in his yard said, "For Sale Wool Socks," which I realized I could use. Wandering over, I commented on the chill.
   "This is a hot day, today," he answered, lifting his wool sweater to reveal a sweatshirt, flannel jersey, and T-shirt beneath. "Almost naked I am."
   The man was Job Anderson, one of the locals who'd helped the Ingstads when they are started excavations in the 1960s. "Work was scarce so I said yes," Job recalled. He mentioned that his grandfather was Norwegian and I asked if this had given him any sense of identity with the Vikings whose homes he'd helped to unearth.
   "Too far back," Job replied. "I can't tell you no lies. I never ran with them. I'm old, but not that old." Then he broke into song: "Born here in the morning, quarter after two, with me hands in me pocket, and me old ragadoo." When I looked at him blankly, he said, "A ragadoo's a coat."
   Job patted his goat. "She'll live till she dies, this one." I nodded, bought a pair of socks, and retreated to my car, bewildered by my first contact with Newfoundlanders. Were they having fun with me? Or were they all barking mad?

No and no. Welcome to Atlantic Canada. You'll meet people just like those two, all over the place. Especially in rural areas. When you live in an environment like this, you just stop taking notice. Or you assimilate. I've been saying "She'll live till she dies" for a while now. But mostly about my car. I don't have any goats. Yet.

Comments

[Audubon Ron]

Gorgeous setting.

[Sara O'Leary]

She'll live until she dies is pretty good but the "come here 'til I kick you" still outranks it to my mind.