1 00:00:00,732 --> 00:00:10,728 This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. 2 00:00:10,728 --> 00:00:20,724 The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones to the mysteries we will examine. 3 00:00:30,720 --> 00:00:37,718 In the year 986, a Viking ship penetrated arctic ice guarding the coast of an unknown land. 4 00:00:43,715 --> 00:00:46,714 The frigid waters teamed with life. 5 00:00:49,713 --> 00:00:56,710 A Viking colony was established at the very edge of the known world, in a country the settlers named Greenland. 6 00:00:57,710 --> 00:01:02,708 Three and a half centuries later, a ship from Europe put into the settlement. 7 00:01:02,708 --> 00:01:08,706 The sailors found the colony empty, abandoned, desolate. 8 00:01:08,706 --> 00:01:11,704 Why had the Viking settlers vanished? 9 00:01:27,698 --> 00:01:30,697 A bronze warrior marks the saga's beginning. 10 00:01:30,697 --> 00:01:38,694 A thousand years ago, Eric the Red led a fleet of Viking ships from this Icelandic harbor west into the unknown sea. 11 00:01:38,694 --> 00:01:42,692 It is a story that ends in mystery. 12 00:01:46,691 --> 00:01:53,688 History's tides have swept past man's fainter tracks, leaving only scattered patterns that seem to lead nowhere. 13 00:01:53,688 --> 00:01:57,687 Time has almost obliterated the adventures of one particular man. 14 00:01:59,686 --> 00:02:06,683 Eric the Red was an old-style Viking, earthy, wild, fiercely independent. 15 00:02:06,683 --> 00:02:12,681 Ten centuries ago in Norway, Eric killed some king's men in a bloody fight. 16 00:02:12,681 --> 00:02:14,680 He fled to Iceland. 17 00:02:15,680 --> 00:02:18,678 He found the land already settled. 18 00:02:19,678 --> 00:02:24,676 Then, as now, its people were sheep farmers and fishermen. 19 00:02:24,676 --> 00:02:32,673 They had recently become Christians, and with the zeal of converts built churches over the holy sites of their pagan days. 20 00:02:32,673 --> 00:02:40,670 The cults of the Old Norse faith were savagely suppressed, but Eric the Red continued to worship the Norse god Thor. 21 00:02:41,670 --> 00:02:46,668 July 1978. 22 00:02:46,668 --> 00:02:52,665 A small crowd gathers at a solitary farm in a rural district of western Iceland. 23 00:02:52,665 --> 00:02:58,663 They have come to witness secret rites banned since the days of Eric the Red. 24 00:02:59,663 --> 00:03:05,660 Svendjorn Bintyne has revived the Old pagan faith. 25 00:03:05,660 --> 00:03:10,658 His followers call him Allshärja Godi, High Priest. 26 00:03:10,658 --> 00:03:15,656 We have old gods in our religion. 27 00:03:15,656 --> 00:03:22,654 Our Vikings, the Old Vikings, they are the gods of the Old pagan faith. 28 00:03:22,654 --> 00:03:31,650 They asked the spirit, sea god, and battle god, fight god, and they will celebrate and we drink for your health. 29 00:03:31,650 --> 00:03:34,649 This is a Thor's hammer. 30 00:03:34,649 --> 00:03:38,647 Thor's hammer symbolized the Old Norse faith. 31 00:03:38,647 --> 00:03:43,646 It represented a thunderbolt, a mystic sign venerated by the gods. 32 00:03:43,646 --> 00:03:51,642 Svendjorn Bintyne leads his followers into a mountain sanctuary far from the roads and towns of modern Iceland. 33 00:04:14,634 --> 00:04:20,631 The Vikings worship the primal forces of nature. 34 00:04:20,631 --> 00:04:27,628 Chief Deity was the sky god, ruler of storms, wielder of thunderbolts. 35 00:04:27,628 --> 00:04:34,626 After ten centuries of suppression, a horn of mead is once again offered to mighty Thor. 36 00:04:57,617 --> 00:05:05,614 On the plain near Thingvalir Falls, the past is celebrated. 37 00:05:05,614 --> 00:05:11,611 Modern Icelandic farmers assemble as their ancestors did in the summer of 982. 38 00:05:11,611 --> 00:05:15,610 Horses are judged today. 39 00:05:15,610 --> 00:05:21,608 A thousand summers ago, the Vikings were the first to gather in the country. 40 00:05:21,608 --> 00:05:26,606 The Norse freemen gathered here to politic, to settle disputes. 41 00:05:26,606 --> 00:05:32,603 Times were changing, life was becoming more orderly, civilized. 42 00:05:32,603 --> 00:05:37,601 That spring, Eric's axe had swung in another bloody brawl. 43 00:05:37,601 --> 00:05:41,600 Eric the Red was outlawed. 44 00:05:41,600 --> 00:05:45,598 Eric fled. 45 00:05:45,598 --> 00:05:50,596 He sailed with his horse and went to the river. 46 00:05:50,596 --> 00:05:56,594 He sailed west, west into the unknown. 47 00:05:56,594 --> 00:06:05,590 From northern mists loomed a massive island, ice-bound, uninhabitable, but for a narrow strip of land on its southwest coast. 48 00:06:05,590 --> 00:06:12,588 Here, Eric's people settled, optimistically calling their new home Greenland. 49 00:06:12,588 --> 00:06:18,585 They homesteaded, building houses and barns and closing pastures and fields. 50 00:06:18,585 --> 00:06:23,584 But even in Greenland, Eric the Red did not find complete refuge. 51 00:06:23,584 --> 00:06:27,582 Eric's wife raised Greenland's first church. 52 00:06:27,582 --> 00:06:31,580 She barred Eric from their home until he agreed to give up pagan ways. 53 00:06:31,580 --> 00:06:37,578 But evidence suggests the old Vikings' conversion was not complete. 54 00:06:37,578 --> 00:06:41,577 Greenland's fjords could not sustain the colony. 55 00:06:41,577 --> 00:06:43,576 Crops would not grow. 56 00:06:43,576 --> 00:06:47,574 The land's wealth was to be reaped only in its wilderness. 57 00:06:47,574 --> 00:06:55,571 Small groups of Norse hunters fanned out through a vast expanse. 58 00:06:55,571 --> 00:07:11,565 Arctic seas soon wrecked their long ships, but they pressed on in small open boats on voyages that must have lasted years. 59 00:07:11,565 --> 00:07:23,560 Music 60 00:07:23,560 --> 00:07:27,559 Rarely were European ships able to journey to distant Greenland. 61 00:07:27,559 --> 00:07:33,556 Years elapsed between visits, but a few arctic treasures lured traders to venture west. 62 00:07:33,556 --> 00:07:36,555 One of those treasures was the Jire Falcon. 63 00:07:36,555 --> 00:07:41,633 The sultans in Caliphs offered coffers of gold for a live Greenland Falcon. 64 00:07:41,633 --> 00:07:46,551 Arab court geographers told them this fierce and most valuable hunting bird came from 65 00:07:46,551 --> 00:07:52,549 world's end, from the fabled Altima Tule, the land farthest north. 66 00:07:59,546 --> 00:08:03,545 North's hunters pushed beyond the edge of the known world. 67 00:08:06,544 --> 00:08:11,542 The great horned whale of the high Arctic. 68 00:08:24,537 --> 00:08:29,535 In distant Europe, medieval alchemists sold the whale tusk as unicorns horn, 69 00:08:29,535 --> 00:08:32,533 ground into magical potions. 70 00:08:33,533 --> 00:08:37,532 A single narwhal could make a hunter rich for life, 71 00:08:37,532 --> 00:08:43,529 if he survived the vast uncharted wilderness and succeeded in making his way back to Greenland. 72 00:08:45,528 --> 00:08:47,528 Few returned. 73 00:08:49,527 --> 00:08:51,526 Fewer ships arrived from Europe. 74 00:08:51,526 --> 00:08:57,524 The North's Greenlanders sank into ever deeper isolation and were lost to history, 75 00:08:57,524 --> 00:09:00,523 except for a single brief reference. 76 00:09:00,523 --> 00:09:05,521 In 1300, church annals noted that a Greenlander had been burned at the stake 77 00:09:05,521 --> 00:09:08,520 for secretly practicing the old faith. 78 00:09:08,520 --> 00:09:12,518 After that, there is only silence. 79 00:09:14,517 --> 00:09:19,515 In the summer of 1342, a ship put into the western settlement. 80 00:09:19,515 --> 00:09:26,513 It carried a bishop sent from Europe to investigate why the Greenlanders had fallen behind in their church tides. 81 00:09:27,512 --> 00:09:31,511 The North's farms were empty, abandoned. 82 00:09:31,511 --> 00:09:35,509 There was nothing else, no messages, no signs of life. 83 00:09:35,509 --> 00:09:38,508 The settlers had simply vanished. 84 00:09:38,508 --> 00:09:45,505 For the last 600 years, the fate of the North's Greenlanders has remained one of history's most baffling puzzles. 85 00:09:45,505 --> 00:09:51,503 In 1921, archaeologists dug near Cape Farewell at Greenland's southern tip. 86 00:09:51,503 --> 00:09:58,500 They found a church graveyard and the huddled remains of hunchbacks, dwarves, sterile cripples. 87 00:09:58,500 --> 00:10:00,499 Was the mystery solved? 88 00:10:00,499 --> 00:10:06,497 Had the North's colony died out from inbreeding and malnutrition, from severist cultural isolation? 89 00:10:06,497 --> 00:10:15,494 At the cemetery's edge, pointing west toward America, was a coffin nearly seven feet long and empty. 90 00:10:15,494 --> 00:10:22,491 The withered end of Eric's people were only the poor and weak left behind. 91 00:10:31,487 --> 00:10:37,485 The search for the lost Vikings of Greenland leads us to the northern coasts of Canada. 92 00:10:37,485 --> 00:10:41,483 Here, even in summer, Arctic seas rage. 93 00:10:41,483 --> 00:10:48,481 Travelers peer anxiously into the distance, looking for the signs of safe harbor that mean Pain Bay. 94 00:10:52,479 --> 00:10:59,476 Pain Bay, swept by fierce tides, frigid, remote, yet teeming with life. 95 00:10:59,476 --> 00:11:03,475 The richest caribou lands in Canada's eastern Arctic. 96 00:11:03,475 --> 00:11:08,473 Bear, trout, char, seal, and whale. 97 00:11:08,473 --> 00:11:13,471 High above Pain Bay, visible at sea for many miles, stand three beacons. 98 00:11:13,471 --> 00:11:19,469 It is believed they predate Columbus's first voyage to North America by centuries. 99 00:11:19,469 --> 00:11:25,466 A 500-pound rock crowns 15 feet of carefully laid stone courses. 100 00:11:25,466 --> 00:11:31,464 Yet the primitive Eskimo who roamed here when these sea beacons were built were four feet tall 101 00:11:31,464 --> 00:11:35,463 and lived in holes roofed with whale ribs and animal skins. 102 00:11:39,461 --> 00:11:44,459 Professor Thomas E. Lee of Quebec's Université Laval has spent 12 years 103 00:11:44,459 --> 00:11:48,457 seeking the builders of Pain Bay's curious ruins. 104 00:11:48,457 --> 00:11:52,456 Lee has developed a theory not accepted by some experts. 105 00:11:55,455 --> 00:12:01,452 The modern Canadian Eskimo community of Pain Bay has proved a rich source of information 106 00:12:01,452 --> 00:12:04,451 and has led Lee to develop his unique theory. 107 00:12:05,451 --> 00:12:07,450 Hello, Thomas Lee. 108 00:12:08,450 --> 00:12:14,447 Modern technology has overwhelmed the ancient lifestyle of the Inuit community. 109 00:12:14,447 --> 00:12:18,446 Where once the young learned the ways of the Eskimo from their fathers, 110 00:12:18,446 --> 00:12:25,443 now state-run schools provide education and gradually the old ways are becoming dim memories. 111 00:12:26,443 --> 00:12:32,440 Vaguely remembered are the legends of dwarves and giants that roam the land, the tunic. 112 00:12:39,438 --> 00:12:44,436 Legends that reach deeply into the Inuit past. 113 00:12:44,436 --> 00:12:47,435 This is my grandmother, Minnie Anahata. 114 00:12:47,435 --> 00:12:50,433 Her grandchild, Lolly Anahata. 115 00:12:50,433 --> 00:12:57,431 Mrs. Minnie Anahata was born 79 years ago in the igloo of an Inuit winter hunting camp. 116 00:13:01,429 --> 00:13:07,427 Professor Lee records tribal memories he believes date back nearly 800 years. 117 00:13:07,427 --> 00:13:11,425 His parents, Anahata got this story from his parents 118 00:13:11,425 --> 00:13:16,423 and they got this story from the Inuit who lived in Sackluck. 119 00:13:16,423 --> 00:13:19,422 That's why they got this story. 120 00:13:19,422 --> 00:13:21,421 And they could lift big stones. 121 00:13:21,421 --> 00:13:25,420 Yes, they've heard that they were fairly strong. 122 00:13:25,420 --> 00:13:27,419 And what kind of people were they? 123 00:13:27,419 --> 00:13:30,418 There were two kinds. 124 00:13:30,418 --> 00:13:34,416 Big and small one, even though small one they were still strong. 125 00:13:34,416 --> 00:13:39,414 So there was almost a giant tunic and also the small tunics. 126 00:13:39,414 --> 00:13:42,413 You know why they were scared of hadlamas? 127 00:13:42,413 --> 00:13:47,411 Because it was the first time they met hadlamas with white skin and boshi. 128 00:13:50,410 --> 00:13:53,409 They were different than Inuit. 129 00:13:53,409 --> 00:13:56,408 They had different colors. 130 00:13:56,408 --> 00:14:01,406 Maybe they had boshi eyebrows and etc. 131 00:14:01,406 --> 00:14:05,404 I first saw Pammy Ack Island in 1966. 132 00:14:05,404 --> 00:14:09,403 I had two Eskimo or Inuit with me, 133 00:14:09,403 --> 00:14:13,401 one of whom was an old man by the name of Zachari Ezi. 134 00:14:13,401 --> 00:14:16,400 I was born in the 19th century. 135 00:14:16,400 --> 00:14:19,399 I was born in the 19th century. 136 00:14:19,399 --> 00:14:22,398 I was born in the 19th century. 137 00:14:22,398 --> 00:14:25,397 I was born in the 19th century. 138 00:14:25,397 --> 00:14:28,395 I was born in the 19th century. 139 00:14:28,395 --> 00:14:31,394 I was born by the name of Zachari Ezi. 140 00:14:32,394 --> 00:14:39,391 Professor Lee has made a series of spectacular discoveries in this seldom visited region of Arctic Canada. 141 00:14:39,391 --> 00:14:44,389 He believes that he has identified the legendary tunic. 142 00:14:44,389 --> 00:14:48,388 Near the Payne River's mouth lies Pammy Ack Island. 143 00:14:48,388 --> 00:14:54,385 When I first saw it was in a wild and beautiful setting in sort of an amphitheater. 144 00:14:54,385 --> 00:14:59,383 It was extremely impressive because of its great size and setting. 145 00:15:06,381 --> 00:15:14,378 Well, Zachari Ezi took me across the island and then left me and pointed in the direction in which I should go. 146 00:15:14,378 --> 00:15:16,377 He said it was built. 147 00:15:16,377 --> 00:15:22,375 Well, he would express it by saying before, before, before, before. 148 00:15:25,373 --> 00:15:31,371 The central buildings in ancient communities were the longhouses, communal sleeping quarters. 149 00:15:31,371 --> 00:15:37,369 The Pammy Ack Island longhouses provide Dr. Lee with a basis for his theory. 150 00:15:40,368 --> 00:15:47,365 This enormous longhouse was 83 feet long and 20 feet wide inside dimensions. 151 00:15:47,365 --> 00:15:53,362 It was rather ship shaped with the walls out curving a little bit. 152 00:15:53,362 --> 00:15:58,361 And this is the north room, the sleeping quarters. 153 00:15:58,361 --> 00:16:03,359 The stones in the walls were very heavy. 154 00:16:03,359 --> 00:16:07,357 This particular stone weighs over a thousand pounds. 155 00:16:07,357 --> 00:16:14,354 And here we enter the Great Hall with 11 fireplaces down the center. 156 00:16:14,354 --> 00:16:20,352 And since there were 11 food storage pits on the outside of the building, 157 00:16:21,352 --> 00:16:25,350 I think it is very obvious that there were 11 families. 158 00:16:25,350 --> 00:16:31,348 And if we suppose that there were five people in each family, 159 00:16:31,348 --> 00:16:39,345 then we have approximately 50 or 55 people living in this longhouse. 160 00:16:39,345 --> 00:16:44,343 And that, of course, means social organization far beyond the scope of the eskimo. 161 00:16:44,343 --> 00:16:50,340 People who lived in this house were, in my opinion, Norsemen. 162 00:16:50,340 --> 00:16:54,339 I think that they were hunters from Greenland. 163 00:16:54,339 --> 00:16:57,338 Came here just the men alone. 164 00:16:57,338 --> 00:17:04,335 And probably they married native women and had half breed children. 165 00:17:04,335 --> 00:17:09,333 This was a very rich hunting place. It still is. 166 00:17:09,333 --> 00:17:13,331 Professor Lee believes that a handful of Viking hunters cut themselves a drift 167 00:17:13,331 --> 00:17:18,330 from the dying Greenland colony and settled here in North America, 168 00:17:18,330 --> 00:17:22,328 eventually fathering a tribe of mixed bloods. 169 00:17:22,328 --> 00:17:25,327 Lee's theories have been hotly attacked. 170 00:17:25,327 --> 00:17:29,325 His opponents claim the longhouse was built by eskimo. 171 00:17:29,325 --> 00:17:34,323 Yet the nearest forests that could have supplied beams for its caribou skin roof 172 00:17:34,323 --> 00:17:37,322 lie 150 miles to the south. 173 00:17:37,322 --> 00:17:42,320 They could only have been brought by ships, which the eskimo never had. 174 00:17:42,320 --> 00:17:45,319 The eskimo were well adapted to this environment. 175 00:17:45,319 --> 00:17:48,318 Never would they have built such a drafty, cold structure. 176 00:17:48,318 --> 00:17:52,316 Lee believes it served as a primitive palace. 177 00:17:52,316 --> 00:17:57,314 That longhouse was a part of a complex which extends up the coast all the way to Diana Bay, 178 00:17:57,314 --> 00:18:00,313 about 70 miles further north. 179 00:18:00,313 --> 00:18:04,312 You find these longhouses at intervals along that distance. 180 00:18:04,312 --> 00:18:08,310 And I have thought about this as being a sort of a kingdom. 181 00:18:08,310 --> 00:18:13,308 An Arctic kingdom whose leaders were Norse and whose followers were Stone Age eskimo. 182 00:18:13,308 --> 00:18:18,306 The remains of their crude tent rings still crowd around the longhouse. 183 00:18:18,306 --> 00:18:22,305 The eskimo had much to learn from Iron Age Europeans. 184 00:18:22,305 --> 00:18:29,302 Excavating carefully, Professor Lee found the weathered blade of a Norse battle axe. 185 00:18:29,302 --> 00:18:37,299 If we put out from this small bay and sail on a course that is due east 186 00:18:37,299 --> 00:18:43,297 with a favorable wind, in one week's time we will come directly into Erich's fjord 187 00:18:43,297 --> 00:18:47,295 on the southwest coast of Greenland. 188 00:18:47,295 --> 00:18:53,293 Did a remnant of Erich's people at long last find refuge here in this Arctic fastness? 189 00:18:53,293 --> 00:18:57,291 Set on a ridge not 50 yards from the great longhouse, 190 00:18:57,291 --> 00:19:01,290 these stone tombs crowned Professor Lee's sensational findings. 191 00:19:01,290 --> 00:19:06,288 In them he discovered what he believes are the remains of a primitive eskimo, 192 00:19:06,288 --> 00:19:10,286 a mixed blood, and that of a medieval white male, 193 00:19:10,286 --> 00:19:16,284 the first and only pre-Columbian European skull ever found in the Western Hemisphere. 194 00:19:16,284 --> 00:19:19,283 Lee's discoveries have stirred fierce controversy. 195 00:19:19,283 --> 00:19:22,281 Textbooks are not easily rewritten. 196 00:19:22,281 --> 00:19:27,280 Old theories tell us that past cultures lived and died in strict isolation, 197 00:19:27,280 --> 00:19:33,277 but new ideas suggest that mankind's evolutionary steps may have been closely linked. 198 00:19:33,277 --> 00:19:38,275 In death, the Norse Greenlanders gave birth to a new kind of eskimo, 199 00:19:38,275 --> 00:19:45,273 bigger, stronger, more skillful, whose descendants still hold the land farthest north. 200 00:19:53,269 --> 00:20:08,264 A day's journey upstream from the pain river's mouth, modern Inuit pitch a hunting camp. 201 00:20:08,264 --> 00:20:13,262 Yeah, I saw a lot of tracks. This is the only one we saw. 202 00:20:13,262 --> 00:20:18,260 Centuries pass, but arctic life does not change. 203 00:20:18,260 --> 00:20:22,258 Hunters still travel the river in search of caribou. 204 00:20:22,258 --> 00:20:28,256 I think that we have just begun to get at the answers to the Norse presence in Angava. 205 00:20:28,256 --> 00:20:34,254 We've just scratched the surface. We have not finished with the pain lake evidence 206 00:20:34,254 --> 00:20:38,252 by any means. We need at least one more expedition in there. 207 00:20:38,252 --> 00:20:45,249 And along the coast of Angava out this way, we have reports of longhouses 208 00:20:45,249 --> 00:20:52,247 that we have not been able to see. I think there may be a great deal of evidence remaining. 209 00:20:52,247 --> 00:20:57,245 In fact, I suspect that we will find more things in the interior someday 210 00:20:57,245 --> 00:21:00,243 when we do some thorough searching. 211 00:21:00,243 --> 00:21:06,241 On the heights above the camp stands a beacon that points deep into the North American interior. 212 00:21:06,241 --> 00:21:11,239 I would say that this was made by the Inuit or the Eskimo. 213 00:21:16,237 --> 00:21:22,235 But as you can plainly see, this is a Thor's hammer. 214 00:21:29,232 --> 00:21:34,230 Coming up next, did the Chinese discover America 1,000 years before Columbus 215 00:21:34,230 --> 00:21:39,228 in search of continues with a journey into the unknown to meet some daring ancient explorers. 216 00:21:39,228 --> 00:21:45,226 Then 20th century with Mike Wallace reports on the rise of new hate groups in America. 217 00:21:45,226 --> 00:21:51,224 And later tonight, History's Mysteries opens the Odessa file in pursuit of escaped Nazi war criminals. 218 00:21:51,224 --> 00:21:55,222 At 8, here on the History Channel, where the past comes alive.