Helge Ingstad is a Norwegian traveler, writer and archaeologist. He became famous for the discovery of the 11th century Viking settlement in Newfoundland in the 1960s. This proved that America was discovered four centuries before Columbus.
By education Helge, Marcus Ingstad, who wrote the book “In the footsteps of Happy Ley”, was neither an archaeologist nor a historian. He's a lawyer. However, it was precisely in the specialty received that he achieved the least.
Destination
The biography of the famous researcher began in 1899. He was born on December 30 in the town of Meroker. In 1915, the boy’s parents, the manufacturer Olav Ingstad and his wife Olga-Maria Kvam, moved to Bergen. There Helge graduated from high school. The graduate continued his further education in 1918-1922 in Levanger. He intended to become a lawyer.
However, he unexpectedly successful practice was interrupted, and the young lawyer went to Canada. True, he was attracted to travel from childhood. He wandered around the Mackenzie River for four years. Ingstald studied the ethnography of local tribes on the nature of the subarctic. The result of the trip was the essay "Life of a fur hunter among Indians of Northern Canada."
The book was published in 1931. Helge’s only Klondike Bill novel was written in Canada. The river Ingstad Creek is named after the Norwegian hunter, nameless before his journey.
By decree of King Haakon VII in July 1932, July 12, Ingstad was appointed Governor of the Land, Eric the Red in Greenland. Both legal education and polar experience were taken into account. Ingstad also served as judge. By decision of the International Hague Court, Norway abandoned the disputed territory.
Helge then moved to the position of judge and governor in Svalbard in the Svalbard region. There, for two years, the traveler worked and lived. The traveler held this post until 1935. He described his work in the book "East of the Great Glacier."
In 1941, Helge arranged his personal life. Ingstad's wife was Anna-Stina Mahe. For several years, the researcher communicated with her through correspondence. In the family in 1943 there was an only child, daughter Benedict. She chose a scientific career and became a famous anthropologist.
In search of the lost
In 1948, Ingstad published the work "Land with Cold Shores." It describes the history of the settlement of Spitsbergen by the Norwegians, tells about the first inhabitants of the archipelago. Then there was a trip to Mexico, in search of the lost Apache tribe. In 1948 the only play The Last Ship was written by a traveler.
In 1949-1950, Instad went to Alaska with an expedition to study the Nunamiut tribe. The result of this trip was the brightest ethnographic book of the author "Nunamiut. Among the land Eskimos of Alaska." In 1960, he made a real breakthrough by discovering the remains of a Norman settlement near the village of Lans-o-Meadows. This find was compared with Troy, and the Norwegian himself - with Heinrich Schliemann. The findings of the find in 1965 are presented in Westerwerg in Vinland.
Thanks to books Helge gained fame far beyond the borders of Norway. Imperceptibly, the lawyer turned into a historian and ethnographer. Since 1953 he studied the Norman colonization of Greenland by the Icelandic sagas, got acquainted with the location of ancient settlements. The researchers were also interested in the lands mentioned from the early annals. The Scandinavians called the Normans the Norwegians who lived much north of the other inhabitants of these lands.
Confession
After comparing the results of research in Greenland, Ingstad in 1959 published a popular science essay on the fate of the colony and Normans in Greenland, "Country under the Guiding Star." The work analyzes the message of the Normans about their accidental discovery of a new land - Vinland.
Helge compares data on sea routes, navigable qualities of ships of that time, island flora and fauna, and geographical landmarks. According to the traveler’s rule, he wrote only about what he was completely sure of. The coast of Greenland turned to America by him was examined with the help of the schooner "Benedict". Modern and old excavations conducted by the Danes were compared. In 1960, the ruins of a settlement were discovered.
At the head of the expedition in 1961, Ingstad worked on excavations until 1964. The settlement was dated back to the discovery by the Normans of Vinland. Scientists agreed with the findings of the traveler. In the fall, Helge made a report in New York and then in the US Congress.
The facts of the discovery by the Normans of the American continent and the beginning of its development by Europeans were officially recognized by the President of the United States. October 9th was officially announced as Leik Eiriksson’s Day.
