Paragraph on “Where is Jellyfish Creek?” complete paragraph for Class 9, Class 10, Class 11 and Class 12

Where is Jellyfish Creek?

In the summer of 196o, Helge Ingstad, a Norwegian writer and explorer, went to look at what was thought to be the remains of early sixteenth century colonial houses at an isolated fishing village called L’Anse aux Meadows, by Epaves Bay on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland. L’Anse aux Meadows is a corruption of the original French name, L’Anse aux Meduse — Jellyfish Creek !

Helge Ingstad was looking for Vinland, the part of North America that was discovered and colonised by Norsemen from Greenland and Iceland. He had been following the confused sailing directions given in the two Icelandic sagas which describe the events leading up to the first discovery by Europeans of North America. The sagas were the great literary achievements of medieval Iceland. Written in prose, they first appeared in the twelfth century, and told the stories of kings, of families, of heroic enterprise and great adventures. Helge Ingstad was convinced that the remains at L’Anse aux Meadows were very much older than had previously been thought, and the site was excavated.

According to the sagas, Bjarni Herjolfsson, a young Icelandic merchant, first accidentally discovered North America in the summer of AD 985 or 986 but he did not land there. This was left to Leif Eiriksson, who bought Bjarni’s ship, and set out about the year AD 990.

The voyage passed without incident and soon Eiriksson and his crew came to the shores of the New World. When they landed, they decided to winter there. They found plenty of timber, wild wheat and wild vines bearing grapes. This gave Eiriksson his name for this new land of plenty ; he called in Vinland, which means Wineland !

The Norseman returned to Greenland and the sagas continue the story. About the year 1010 Thorfinn Karlsefni, a kinsman of Eiriksson, organised an expedition to try and colonise Vinland. He took men, women and livestock with him and they stayed there for three winters. In the end, they were forced to abandon the new settlement because of trouble with the Indians. While they were there, however, Thorfinn Karlsefni’s wife had a son, Snorri Thorfinnsson — the first white child to be born in North America.

In 1968, the Ingstads were convinced that they had found the first indisputable Norse remains in North America, but it was not the Vinland of the sagas. They tell of lands where wild wheat and wild grapes grow. These lands lie farther to the south — vines do not grow in Jellyfish Creek. But the evidence of these buildings does show that the Norsemen continued the pioneering voyages of Bjarni Herjolfsson, Leif Eiriksson and Thorfinn Karlsefni throughout the eleventh century.