The following statement was issued today by Kevin Aylward, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation. It was also read in the House of Assembly:

Mr. Speaker, with regret, I wish to inform my colleagues that Dr. Helge Ingstad passed away this morning in Norway. If I may, I want to take a moment to pay tribute to this man; anthropologist, lawyer, author, explorer.

There are few among us who make the commitment to a vision, and ideal as Ingstad did. With his wife, the late Dr. Anne Stine Ingstad, he left Norway and made this province his home while he toiled for more than seven years to uncover the evidence needed to prove the Norse sagas correct that the Vikings discovered North America at L'anse aux Meadows 500 years before Giovanni Caboto. 

Ingstad, born in Norway in 1899, trained as a lawyer there but left his practice to explore the Arctic. In the 1950s he traveled to Greenland to investigate the Viking settlement where he became increasingly more interested in the Vinland colony in Newfoundland . Dr. Ingstad became convinced that the most likely site for Vinland was in northern Newfoundland, so he and his daughter explored southern Labrador and the Great Northern Peninsula. With a local member of the community, George Decker, he was led to an area at L'anse aux Meadows that we now know as the UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

The discovery at L'anse aux Meadows is hailed as one of the most significant pieces of archaeological and historical research to have ever taken place in this province. To Dr. Ingstad and his wife we are grateful for this. Helge Ingstad was awarded an Honourary Doctorate by Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1969 in recognition of his work.

He and his wife have the admiration and thanks of a province and a people for the archaeological and anthropological work which has given us L'anse aux Meadows. 

But more than that, their unselfish and unfailing commitment to this work has retrieved for us an unknown part of our history, a history that allowed us to so proudly recognize the arrival of the Vikings at L'anse aux Meadows more than a 1,000 years ago. During last year's Millenium event we celebrated our heritage as a people, we were awakened to a past that is proud and strong and we came to know better the history of those who lived here before us and those who visited them.

On behalf of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, I wish to extend condolences to the daughter of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad, Benedicte. As we remember her father's life we celebrate the unparalleled legacy he left to this province.

Let me leave you with the following excerpt from Erik's saga which was written as Erik prepared for the return journey from his explorations -

These oak - hearted warriors
Lured me to this land...
Let us head back
To our countrymen at home;
Let our ocean striding ship
Explore the broad tracts of sea.

Helge Ingstad, Godspeed.

2001 03 29                                      1:45 p.m.