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Document generated on 09/26/2021 3:22 p.m. Material Culture Review Ingstad, Benedicte. 2017. A Grand Adventure: The Lives of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad and Their Discovery of a Viking Settlement in North America. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Diane Chisholm Volume 84, 2016 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/mcr84_br01 See table of contents Publisher(s) Cape Breton University Press ISSN 1718-1259 (print) 0000-0000 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Chisholm, D. (2016). Review of [Ingstad, Benedicte. 2017. A Grand Adventure: The Lives of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad and Their Discovery of a Viking Settlement in North America. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.] Material Culture Review, 84, 81–83. All rights reserved © Cape Breton University Press, 2017 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Book Reviews Comptes rendus de livres DIANE CHISHOLM Review of Ingstad, Benedicte. 2017. A Grand Adventure: The Lives of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad and Their Discovery of a Viking Settlement in North America. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Pp. 455. Hardcover. B/w and colour photographs, maps, index. Translated by J. K. Stenehjem. ISBN 9780773549685. A Grand Adventure: The Lives of Helge and Anne are the intangible—memories and perceptions Stine Ingstad and Their Discovery of a Viking based on the author’s lived experience. A Grand Settlement in North America is not just grounded Adventure resonates with the author’s personal in biography, but in social history and archaeol- observations since she accompanied her parents ogy. It is a story that has great piquancy since on some of their trips. Benedicte’s recollections it is told by the Ingstads’ daughter, Benedicte, are also framed by the fact that she is herself a professor emerita of medical anthropology at social scientist who is trying to present a clear the University of Oslo. The volume chronicles and informed record of what transpired around the events that led to her parents’ discovery of a the discovery of the Norse habitation. She sets centuries old Viking settlement in the northern out to correct false assumptions that still adhere region of Newfoundland, at L’Anse aux Meadows, to her parents’ legacy fifty years later and exposes made public in 1961. But alongside that story we behind-the-scenes manoeuverings by others that are treated to an insider’s view of the relationship directly affected the Ingstads’ work at the time. of the Ingstads as a married couple and as profes- Both of the Ingstads were strong-minded sional colleagues, and how societal pressures individuals. Helge’s singular persona might best of that period affected them. Additionally, we be summed up in a line from one of his poems, are given a revealing picture of the world of “Being surrounded by people brings on loneli- archaeology in the middle of the 20th century and ness.” He once wrote in reference to his sister’s how the Ingstads and their work were regarded marriage that “Half the purpose of a woman’s in academia, and the established archaeological life is to get married and have children, not to community, worldwide. wander about like me and be a vagabond who The book is based on source material in the never settles.” It is somewhat ironic to consider possession of the author: forty shelves of boxes he eventually marries a woman who has these of archival data, diaries, unfinished autobiog- unfeminine inclinations. raphies by both Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad, The author demonstrates that her father was and documents from the National Museum in meticulous and thorough in his research meth- Iceland, the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, odology. Helge wrote the well-received book, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. The Land of Feast and Famine, based on his early Woven into these tangible sources, however, travels. It brought him the funds and celebrity to Revue de la culture matérielle 84 (automne 2016) 81 continue his expeditions, and Benedicte offers community with deep resentment—such that us details that explain the appeal of her father’s Anne was forced to commute the 140 km north writing. She tells us Helge described survival to Oslo, even though Helge and Benedicte could habits of the Indigenous peoples he encountered have moved to be there with her. This eventually in the north and the respect he had for their leads to two suicide attempts by Anne—no doubt traditional ecological knowledge (Helge learned, painful stuff for a daughter to commit to paper. for example, that ingested moss in reindeers’ It was Helge who first evinced an interest stomachs can be consumed by humans as a food in the story of Vinland and it is this story that source. Advice that is unforgettable no matter comprises the last section of the volume. In 1960 how hard one tries!). Helge began his search for the Vinland of Icelandic A Grand Adventure necessarily covers legend accompanied by Benedicte. Based on a lot of history since Helge’s life played out research done earlier in the century, primarily against a backdrop of significant events: the by Vaino Tanner, Ingstad was eager to explore dispute between Norway and Denmark over land on the northern tip of Newfoundland’s Great East Greenland; the deaths of national “heroes” Northern Peninsula in L’Anse aux Meadows, Amundsen and Nansen which opened the way near Epaves Bay (he had previously visited, and for a new explorer like Ingstad; his appointment eliminated, parts of Maine, Cape Cod, Nova as governor of Norwegian territories in the Scotia, and Cape Breton as possible locations of north; his dealings with the notorious Vidkun the Norse site). Ingstad believed the word vinland Quisling. Conversely, Benedicte’s mother, Anne meant “grazing pasture” or “meadow” rather than Stine Ingstad, is depicted as a young woman vin meaning “grapes” or “wine,” and L’Anse aux fuelled by notions of romance and adventure. Meadows approximated the topography sug- She determined she would marry Helge after gested by the word. This part of the book is doubly reading The Land of Feast and Famine and struck interesting because it conveys how logic and up a correspondence with him. Anne Stine research were also dependent on luck, chance, was actually engaged to a German nobleman coincidence, timing, and tenacity as factors that when Helge finally proposed at the beginning enabled Ingstad to find the ruins he sought. of the Second World War. The author views her The author describes the convoluted logistics parents’ courtship and subsequent marriage with involved in mounting the ensuing expeditions, a dispassionate eye—her father was nearly twenty which latterly included Anne Stine. Benedicte’s years older than her mother and accustomed to observations about the Newfoundlanders living following his own inclinations. A certain amount in the area—their speech and social customs— of strain must inevitably follow from such a union lend a compelling human picture to the text. and this forms part of the narrative of this book. Black and white photographs of the inhabitants As the rigours of marriage to Helge continue, further enhance its appeal as does a wonderful Anne decides she must have her own purpose photograph of Anne Stine exuding confidence, in life independent of her husband. To this end, secure in the belief Leif Eiriksson’s settlement she begins a course of studies in history that had been unearthed. eventually leads her to become an archaeologist A Grand Adventure doesn’t end with the in her own right (she was mainly interested in discovery. Instead it turns into something of the Stone Age). Since it is the middle of the 20th a cautionary tale. After Helge announced the century, Anne’s choices do not seem as natural L’Anse aux Meadows breakthrough, there was as they would today; a wife at that time was still a backlash by the Danes beginning in October expected to keep house and stay at home and of 1961 and continuing for years. The Danish this was certainly Helge’s expectation of Anne. In archaeologist Jorgen Meldgaard had investigated this regard, A Grand Adventure is a chronicle of the northern part of Newfoundland earlier but social history as the phrase “anatomy is destiny” never actually went to L’Anse aux Meadows nor begins to lose its meaning, not just for Anne found Norse artifacts or housing sites as the Stine but for women in general. It is worth noting Ingstads had done. Nevertheless, people felt that both Helge and their daughter, the author, he deserved the credit for the find. Helge was view Anne’s first archaeological job in another referred to as an “amateur archaeologist,” while 82 Material Culture Review 84 (Fall 2016) Anne’s accreditation as an archaeologist went as background for a book he was planning. She unremarked—treatment Anne was sure would observes that public focus was primarily on her never have happened to a male archaeologist. father while her mother’s work was relegated to The National Museum of Canada weighed in a minor position, despite Helge’s efforts to stress with a statement to the effect that the only news Anne’s role (letters would arrive addressed to Mr.

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