Helge Ingstad is a Norwegian traveler, writer and archaeologist. Famous for the discovery of an 11th century Viking settlement in Newfoundland in the 1960s. This proved that America was discovered four centuries before Columbus.
By education Helge Markus Ingstad, who wrote the book "In the Footsteps of Leyva the Happy", was neither an archaeologist nor a historian. He's a lawyer. However, it was in the specialty he received that he achieved the least.
Purpose
The biography of the famous explorer 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 completed his secondary school studies. The graduate continued his further education in 1918-1922 in Levanger. He intended to become a lawyer.
However, his unexpectedly successful practice was interrupted, and the young lawyer himself went to Canada. True, he was attracted to travel since childhood. He wandered in the Mackenzie basin for four years. Ingstald studied the ethnography of the local tribe and the nature of the subarctic. The result of the trip was the essay "The Life of a Fur Hunter Among the Indians of Northern Canada."
The book was published in 1931. The only novel by Helge "Klondike Bill" was written in Canada. The Ingstad Krik river is named after the Norwegian trapper, which was unnamed before his trip.
By decree of King Haakon VII in 1932, on July 12, Ingstad was appointed governor of Eric the Red Land in Greenland. Both legal education and polar experience were taken into account. Ingstad also served as a judge. By the decision of the International Hague Court, Norway renounced the disputed territory.
After that, Helge moved to the position of judge and governor in Svalbard in the Svalbard region. The traveler worked and lived there for two years. The traveler held this post until 1935. He described his work in the book "To the East of the Great Glacier".
In 1941, Helge set up his personal life. Ingstad's wife was Anna-Stina Mahe. The researcher communicated with her by correspondence for several years. The only child, daughter Benedict, appeared in the family in 1943. She chose a scientific career and became a renowned anthropologist.
In search of the lost
In 1948 Ingstad published the essay "The Land with Cold Shores". It describes the history of the settlement of Spitsbergen by 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 written by the traveler, The Last Ship, was published.
In 1949-1950 Instad went to Alaska on an expedition to study the Nunamiut tribe. The result of this trip was the brightest ethnographic book by the author “Nunamiut. Among the land Eskimos of Alaska. " In 1960, he made a real breakthrough, discovering the remains of a Norman settlement near the village of Lance aux Meadows. This find was compared with Troy, and the Norwegian himself was compared with Heinrich Schliemann. The results of the find in 1965 are presented in the essay "Westerweg in Vinland".
Thanks to his books, Helge gained fame far beyond the borders of Norway. Imperceptibly, the lawyer turned into a historian and ethnographer. From 1953 he studied the Norman colonization of Greenland from the Icelandic sagas, got acquainted with the location of ancient settlements. The researcher was also interested in the lands mentioned from the early annals. The Scandinavians called Normans the Norwegians who lived much to the 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 about the fate of the colony and the Normans in Greenland, "The 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, navigational qualities of ships of that time, island flora and fauna, geographical landmarks. According to the traveler's rule, he wrote only about what he was completely sure of. The shores of Greenland facing America were surveyed by him with the help of the schooner Benedict. The modern and old excavations carried out by the Danes were compared. In 1960, the ruins of the settlement were discovered.
At the head of the expedition in 1961, Ingstad worked on excavations until 1964. The settlement dates back to the time when Vinland was discovered by the Normans. Scientists agreed with the conclusions of the traveler. In the fall, Helge made a speech in New York and then in the US Congress.
The facts of the discovery of the American continent by the Normans and the beginning of its exploration by the Europeans were officially recognized by the President of the United States. October 9 was officially declared Leiva Eiriksson Day.
Traveler memory
Scientists did not search for settlements either before or after Helge. Only Ingstad, with the help of questioning the local population and searching from the air and land, managed to achieve results. Near Pistol Bay, he found something that armchair scientists could not find on maps.
The scientific community, which included world-renowned researchers, measured all the studies of the Norwegian "dilettante". Helge devoted all his strength to the search. He managed to achieve outstanding results in a field unfamiliar to him.
Until 1948 Helge Markus Ingstad remained Norway's largest and most popular travel and adventure writer.
His works have been translated into almost all European languages. In 1986 the researcher was awarded the "Norsk kulturrd" award from the Norwegian Council of Culture.
The famous traveler died on March 29, 2001.
In his honor in 2006, April 19, a mountain in Alaska was named. In 2007 the frigate "Helge Ingstad" was launched and put into operation.
