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Vikings - or perhaps other Europeans - may have set up housekeeping and traded with Inuit 1,000 years ago near today's community of Kimmirut. That's the picture of the past emerging from ancient artifacts found near Kimmirut, where someone collected Arctic hare fur and spun the fur into yarn and someone else carved notches into a wooden stick to record trading transactions. Dorset Inuit probably didn't make the yarn and tally sticks because yarn and wood weren't part of Inuit culture at that time, said Patricia Sutherland, an archeologist with the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Other artifacts from the area,...

DNA tests debunk blond Inuit legend Last Updated Tue, 28 Oct 2003 11:36:10 CAMBRIDGE BAY, NUNAVUT - Two Icelandic scientists have shot holes in the theory of the missing Norse tribes of the Arctic. Agnar Helgason and Gisli Palsson say their DNA tests have failed to find any evidence that Europeans mingled genetically with Inuit half a millennium ago. Agnar Helgason The scientists made the statement after a visit to Cambridge Bay last week. Rumours of blue-eyed, blond-haired Inuit have circulated through the Arctic since the turn of the century. They were thought to possibly descend from a group of...

Patricia Sutherland, a Canadian archaeologist, announced that she had found a 10 foot strand of ancient yarn in a collection of Dorset artifacts from Northern Baffin Island that were lying uncataloged here at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, where she is a curator. Since the Dorset, forerunners of today's Inuit inhabitants of northern Canada, at the time dressed only in cut and stitched skins, the yarn implied contact with the Norse. Now, as she studies of Canadian collections of native artifacts, she says, "I am finding new Norse materials every couple of weeks. It suggests there was a significant...

Editor’s note: This is the second of two parts. There are many stories of “Qalunaat,” white-skinned strangers who were encountered in Inuit occupied lands in times of old. Much of the traditional life had changed by the 1840s when Hinrich Johannes Rink went to Greenland to study geology and later became the governor of Greenland. Johannes was soon drawn to a new interest in the Inuit language and folklore, which he viewed as national treasures. He published old stories collected in 1866 “Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo” in which he included some early contact stories with the Qalunaat. In...

There are many stories of ‘Qavlunaat,’ white-skinned strangers who were encountered in Inuit-occupied lands in times of old. Stories of contact between these foreign people and Inuit were passed down the generations and used mostly to scare children to behave “or the Qavlunaat will get them.” This sparked my curiosity to explore both sides of the encounters from written records and Inuit oral legends to see if some of these events can be correlated. One must recall that these legends were passed down orally in the Inupiaq language. Inuit myths and legends of contact with other people were passed from...

DNA study to settle ancient mystery about mingling of Inuit, Vikings By BOB WEBER (CP) - A centuries-old Arctic mystery may be weeks away from resolution as an Icelandic anthropologist prepares to release his findings on the so-called "Blond Eskimos" of the Canadian North. "It's an old story," says Gisli Palsson of the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. "We want to try to throw new light on the history of the Inuit." Stories about Inuit with distinct European features - blue eyes, fair hair, beards - living in the central Arctic have their roots in ancient tales of Norse settlements...

A scientist who found deep grooves chiselled into the teeth of dozens of 1,000-year-old Viking skeletons unearthed in Sweden believes the strange custom might have been learned from aboriginal tribes during ancient Norse voyages to North America -- a finding that would represent an unprecedented case of transatlantic, cross-cultural exchange during the age of Leif Ericsson. The marks are believed to be decorations meant to enhance a man's appearance, or badges of honour for a group of great warriors or successful tradesmen. They are the first historical examples of ceremonial dental modification ever found in Europe, and although similar customs...