Flying Home – Still retracing history

Our route home took us from Prague to Stockholm, and then across the Atlantic one more time.  Passing over Norway, we could see the fjords that bred the Norsemen, and from where they started their outward journeys.  We passed to the north of Scotland and Ireland, above the remote islands explored by Vikings and (at least in myth), St Brendan.  Next came Iceland, where the result of Mid-Atlantic Ridge volcanic activity is so apparent; just like Fogo, just like Madeira.  Iceland played a key role as a destination and waypoint for those early adventurers, who were navigating primarily on faith. Greenland, with its hostile and forbidding landscape shortly followed.  Finally came Newfoundland.  Somewhere below us was L’Anse aux Meadows and the nearby site of the first verified settlement by Europeans in the New World – Leif Erikson’s Vinland. 

As we journeyed north on our Atlantic Odyssey, we steadily moved back in time.  Darwin, in Tierra del Fuego in the 1800’s followed the footsteps of Cook in the 1700’s, and Drake and Magellan in the 1500’s.  As we moved farther north and east, we found traces of Vespucci, da Gama and Columbus from the 1400’s.  Flying north past the Iberian Peninsula, we could see the homeland of the Basques, who made even earlier forays into the Atlantic searching for whales and cod.

Just as frequently happened to all these explorers, our own little expedition was also blown off course to make new and unexpected landfalls.  Despite our advances, despite our technology, the ocean still wants to be heard. 

How satisfying it was, looking down from our airplane, that our last touchpoint with the Atlantic was the site of the first European steps into the New World; the New Found Land.  Here was the completion of those first steps.  Here also was the completion of our own voyage of discovery.