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The Viking Trail: Stories of the Great Northern Peninsula
Adrian Payne spent more than fifty years guiding and hunting on the Great Northern Peninsula. The Vikings, who came to the shores of Newfoundland in the 11th century, hunted caribou and trapped fur-bearing animals in this rugged, untamed wilderness. Generations later, outfitters like Adrian Payne believe they are walking in the footsteps of these legendary Norsemen, and here he pays homage to them with stories of adventure and daring rescue in the wild.
When the Vikings overwintered in the New World, specifically in Newfoundland, they had truly found paradise. The ocean was full of cod and other species, and the rivers teemed with salmon and trout. The forest was full of fur-bearing animals. There were shiploads of timber to take back to their homeland, and the mountains were plentiful with thousands of caribou.
Why the Vikings didn't stay in Vinland, as they called the island of Newfoundland, is anyone's guess. The decision to leave may have been influenced by the natives, who continually attacked them while they slept. It is believed by many that some of them stayed behind and married into the Innu and Inuit cultures in Labrador.
When the Vikings overwintered in the New World, specifically in Newfoundland, they had truly found paradise. The ocean was full of cod and other species, and the rivers teemed with salmon and trout. The forest was full of fur-bearing animals. There were shiploads of timber to take back to their homeland, and the mountains were plentiful with thousands of caribou.
Why the Vikings didn't stay in Vinland, as they called the island of Newfoundland, is anyone's guess. The decision to leave may have been influenced by the natives, who continually attacked them while they slept. It is believed by many that some of them stayed behind and married into the Innu and Inuit cultures in Labrador.
226 pages, Paperback
Published September 8, 2023
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March 13, 2024
In The Viking Trail [Flanker Press] there’s mention of a place in the Long Range Mountains called Pissing Mare Falls. I intend to get back to that.
All the while I was reading Viking Trail I wanted to knock off and go back to Chapter One — Boyhood Memories. Never mind tales of the Vikings who hove ashore in Newfoundland long before either Johnny Cabot or Chris Columbus set foot on the sand and shingle beaches of the Americas.
Shame on me, but I’ve never gone to visit the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, and probably won’t. In a previous life, I lived in the often cold, cold wilds of Labrador. Since then, I’ve had no desire to visit northern climes.
Or warm southern climes, for that matter, but that’s a touchy subject that occasionally has caused martial conflict.
I’m rambling.
Among my boyhood memories (See me getting back on the rails?) are memories of L’Anse aux Meadows. A grandfather of mine, a seadog of sorts, often referred to Lancy Med’ers.
Sometimes, when in his cups, Pop sang a ribald shanty, the details of which my elderly noggin recalls only a single line — ‘Twas down around Cape Onion…
Rambling again. But I haven’t forgotten Pissing Mare Falls.
Okay, Chapter One.
Author Adrian Payne and I have similar memories, particularly the boyhood recreation colloquially called dogging.
Yes, dogging, as in trailing, sniffing out prey as Rover might do.
Of course, if one were to practice this moonlit pastime nowadays, he’d be accused of stalking and be condemned to corrective therapy. Because when one is “dogging” he — and at least one buddy — covertly follows courting couples, and (like Tom, I s’pose) peeps at them while they canoodle.
Is there a bay-boy who grew up in Newfoundland during the time when Confederation was on the cusp of pupping(!) who didn’t go a ‘dogging?
Come on, own up.
I confess. I was a bay-boy dogger. I was never caught. No irked Romero ever booted me in the arse. However, I did see sights that could tip a sensitive, impressionable young mind down a deep, dark rabbit hole.
Another shared memory — the Chinese burn, or sunburn in Adrian’s place of abode.
How to administer such a burn: Lay both hands on your victim’s forearm and, with brutal strength, twist in opposite directions until he howls.
Chinese burn is no longer played because … Think about it.
Now then, Pissing Mare Falls.
It amuses me that some place names are imaginative — Pissing Mare Falls, for instance. And Pisser Mare Pond, located in the hinterland of my bay-boy harbor.
Although similar, these are imaginative, humorous names for natural topography. Not stupendously imaginative, I s’pose. Not if both places were dubbed such because some local wag witnessed a mare piss…well, making her water in the pond’s case. Seeing the falls in flood likely tickled some comic’s funny bone and reminded him of voluminous equine flushing.
Does that last bit make a grain of sense?
On the flip side, there are geographical names so unimaginative that it pains one’s brain — First Pond, Second Pond, Third Pond — Big Rock, Big Beach, Big Bridge.
With that in mind, consider the natural wonders of Newfoundland’s west coast. One of them is a grand plateau, its top as flat as Granny’s brand-new chrome table. So flat in fact that the gods of Olympus could cue-up and play bagatelle on its surface.
Guess what the locals call that massive landform?
The Big Level.
Gotta love understatement, eh b’ys?
Thank you for reading.
All the while I was reading Viking Trail I wanted to knock off and go back to Chapter One — Boyhood Memories. Never mind tales of the Vikings who hove ashore in Newfoundland long before either Johnny Cabot or Chris Columbus set foot on the sand and shingle beaches of the Americas.
Shame on me, but I’ve never gone to visit the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, and probably won’t. In a previous life, I lived in the often cold, cold wilds of Labrador. Since then, I’ve had no desire to visit northern climes.
Or warm southern climes, for that matter, but that’s a touchy subject that occasionally has caused martial conflict.
I’m rambling.
Among my boyhood memories (See me getting back on the rails?) are memories of L’Anse aux Meadows. A grandfather of mine, a seadog of sorts, often referred to Lancy Med’ers.
Sometimes, when in his cups, Pop sang a ribald shanty, the details of which my elderly noggin recalls only a single line — ‘Twas down around Cape Onion…
Rambling again. But I haven’t forgotten Pissing Mare Falls.
Okay, Chapter One.
Author Adrian Payne and I have similar memories, particularly the boyhood recreation colloquially called dogging.
Yes, dogging, as in trailing, sniffing out prey as Rover might do.
Of course, if one were to practice this moonlit pastime nowadays, he’d be accused of stalking and be condemned to corrective therapy. Because when one is “dogging” he — and at least one buddy — covertly follows courting couples, and (like Tom, I s’pose) peeps at them while they canoodle.
Is there a bay-boy who grew up in Newfoundland during the time when Confederation was on the cusp of pupping(!) who didn’t go a ‘dogging?
Come on, own up.
I confess. I was a bay-boy dogger. I was never caught. No irked Romero ever booted me in the arse. However, I did see sights that could tip a sensitive, impressionable young mind down a deep, dark rabbit hole.
Another shared memory — the Chinese burn, or sunburn in Adrian’s place of abode.
How to administer such a burn: Lay both hands on your victim’s forearm and, with brutal strength, twist in opposite directions until he howls.
Chinese burn is no longer played because … Think about it.
Now then, Pissing Mare Falls.
It amuses me that some place names are imaginative — Pissing Mare Falls, for instance. And Pisser Mare Pond, located in the hinterland of my bay-boy harbor.
Although similar, these are imaginative, humorous names for natural topography. Not stupendously imaginative, I s’pose. Not if both places were dubbed such because some local wag witnessed a mare piss…well, making her water in the pond’s case. Seeing the falls in flood likely tickled some comic’s funny bone and reminded him of voluminous equine flushing.
Does that last bit make a grain of sense?
On the flip side, there are geographical names so unimaginative that it pains one’s brain — First Pond, Second Pond, Third Pond — Big Rock, Big Beach, Big Bridge.
With that in mind, consider the natural wonders of Newfoundland’s west coast. One of them is a grand plateau, its top as flat as Granny’s brand-new chrome table. So flat in fact that the gods of Olympus could cue-up and play bagatelle on its surface.
Guess what the locals call that massive landform?
The Big Level.
Gotta love understatement, eh b’ys?
Thank you for reading.
Displaying 1 of 1 review