Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Sunday 24 October 2021

A millennium in Newfoundland


The latest research into material evidence from the Viking site at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland has given a precise date for the presence there of Scandinavian colonists, and probably of their first arrival. With a precision that is also historically very tidy indeed the date was 1021, exactly a millennium ago. 

The dating is based on evidence from tree rings and relates to a specific event - the effect of solar flares in 992 twenty nine years earlier which can be vouched for in written evidence. Once that indicator is picked up in the timber it is easy to calculate the date timber was felled.


The BBC News site also has an account at Vikings settled in North America in 1021AD, study says



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