More berzerkness up-island
This site contains an inspired argument that Viking Vinland, Markland and Helluland were on the NW Coast. It’s thought-through to a scary degree, in the way that magnificent obsessions often are. Though as I always say, if something isn’t worth doing, it isn’t worth doing well. And based on my acquaintance with NW Coast Archaeology, I have to say that the theory falls down at a few key junctures. Worse, it is part of a long-running narrative in which aboriginal people of the Americas have their finest cultural achievements taken and assigned as the work of Europeans. See, for example, the Vikings in Minnesota theories, which argue that the great mounds of Mississippian Culture were the construction of White Men from the North. Do the Minnesota proponents have academic arguments with the Vancouver Island proponents? Were Vikings everywhere? Is this a racist narrative? Too bad all this energy is not put into something worthwhile, there is so much serious work to do.
