Helge Ingstad

Helge Ingstad, 1935.

Helge Marcus Ingstad (born December 30, 1899 in Meråker , Norway , † March 28, 2001 in Oslo ) was a Norwegian archaeologist , writer and adventurer. Together with his wife Anne Stine Ingstad he found the Viking settlement in Canadian L'Anse aux Meadows , proving the true essence of the Icelandic Vinland Sagas , showing that Scandinavian settlers from Greenland already 500 years before Columbus , the discovery of America had succeeded.

Life

Memorial plaque in Antarctic Havn , Greenland

Helge Ingstad was born in Trøndelag (Trondelag) and grew up in Bergen . He studied law in the 1920s and worked as a lawyer in Levanger for a few years before deciding to change his life and move to Canada as a trapper for four years . To the east of Great Slave Lake , Ingstad Creek was named after him. His book Pelsjegerliv (My Life in the Wilderness), published in 1931, tells of this time and became a bestseller.

Ingstad went into politics in 1932 and became governor (Sysselmann) of Eirik Raudes Land in East Greenland. The area, which is not identical to the one in which Erik the Red actually settled, was briefly occupied by Norway. When Norway had to return the territory to Denmark after a judgment by the International Court of Justice in The Hague on April 5, 1933 , he became Sysselmann of the Svalbard Province for two years . There he met his future wife Anne-Stine Moe, who studied archeology, and married her in 1941. Their daughter Benedicte, who also became an archaeologist, was born out of the marriage.

The couple settled near the Holmenkollen in Oslo and used this house as a base, even though they repeatedly undertook expeditions, especially to North America. In 1961, the two discovered the remains of the Viking settlements of L'Anse aux Meadows, which were excavated in the following years under the direction of Anne-Stine Ingstad.

L'Anse aux Meadows

At the end of the 1950s, Ingstad began looking for the Vinland Leif Erikssons . The sagas and secondary literature on it had served him as the only source . During a closer study, Ingstad had also come across the notes of the Newfoundlander William Azariah Munn , who had already suspected a settlement in Newfoundland in 1914 , which was ultimately less than 20 kilometers from the place indicated by Munn.

Instead of following this advice, Ingstad first searched the entire east coast of Canada and the northern United States , before he was finally led by a fisherman to some ruins in Newfoundland that were believed to have been of Indian origin up to that point . Excavations soon confirmed the suspicion that these ruins were a settlement of European origin. The Ingstad couple had thus provided evidence of the truth of the sagas.

Last years

In the following years, Helge Ingstad mainly dealt with the evaluation of the material and the writing of books and a play. He died at the age of 101 in Oslo and received a state funeral at which the Norwegian Minister of State Jens Stoltenberg gave the funeral speech and the Norwegian King Harald V and Queen Sonja were also present.

Expeditions

Ingstad undertook various expeditions, especially in the 1930s to 1950s:

• 1936–1937 he looked for Geronimos "lost" Apache tribe in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico and the southern USA
• From 1949 to 1950 he wintered with the Nunamiut in northern Alaska
• In the 1950s he and his wife explored the Viking settlements in Greenland, where he dealt intensively with the Old Norse sagas and also came across the reports from Vinland .

Honors

Norwegian frigate "KNM Helge Ingstad"

• Honorary doctorate from the University of Oslo
• Honorary Doctorate from Memorial University of Newfoundland
• Honorary Doctorate from St. Olaf College , Minnesota
• Honorary member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences
• Member of the Order of St. Olav
• Member of the Wasa Order
• Name of an asteroid after him: (8993) Ingstad
• A Fridtjof Nansen class frigate is named after him: KNM Helge Ingstad

Works

Books

Non-fiction

• Pelsjegerliv , 1931 about his time as a trapper in Canada, German as Mein Leben in der Wildnis
• Øst for den store bre , 1935 about his time as governor in East Greenland
• Apache indians . Jakten på den tapte Stamme, 1939, about his time with the Apaches, German as The Last Apaches
• Landet med de kalde kyster , 1948 about his stay in Svalbard
• Nunamiut: Blant Alaska's inland Slovene. Boken handlar om inlandseskimåer, men Ingstad som tidigare levt bland , 1951 about his experiences with the Nunamiut, German as Nunamiut or flight into the Stone Age
• Landet under Leidarstjernen , 1959 about the studies on the traces of the Vikings in Greenland
• Vesterveg to Vinland: Oppdagelsen av norrøne boplasser in North America. Gylendal, Oslo 1965, (about the excavations in L'Anse aux Meadows), German: The first discovery of America: In the footsteps of the Vikings. Ullstein, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main / Vienna 1966.
• together with Anne Stine Ingstad : The Norse Discovery of America. Norwegian University Press, Oslo 1985 / Oxford University Press, Oxford [Oxfordshire] / New York 1985, ISBN 82-00-07562-1 .
• Nunamiut Stories , 1987
• together with Anne Stine Ingstad: The Viking discovery of America: the excavation of a Norse settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. Checkmark Books, New York 2001, ISBN 0-8160-4716-2 .

novel

• Klondyke Bill , 1941, German as Klondike Bill

Play

• Siste båt , premiered in 1946

Others

Songs of the Nunamiut - Collection of Ingstad's photos and audio recordings of Inuit chants from his time in Alaska

Web links

• Literature by and about Helge Ingstad in the catalog of the German National Library
• L'Anse aux Meadows at Parks Canada