What little is left of a stone-and-sod wall dug up on Baffin Island could point to a trading relationship between Norse seafarers and a now-extinct group of aboriginals that dates back more than 700 years, according to a top Arctic researcher. The structure, which Pat Sutherland, Canadian Museum of Civilization’s chief of Arctic archeology, says bears a resemblance to those at the New World’s only confirmed Viking settlement, a UNESCO world heritage site at Newfoundland’s L’Anse aux Meadows. After failing to establish a permanent settlement in Newfoundland, Sutherland believes that the Norse travelled between Greenland and the Arctic for decades, trading with the Dorset people.
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