Canadian Documentary Series Searches for Viking Explorers in Minnesota, Elsewhere

​On Sunday, Super Channel in Canada launched a new history-themed reality TV show called Quest for the Lost Vikings in which David Collette and Johann Sigurdson of the Explorer’s Club and the Fara Heim team travel across Canada and the United States in search of evidence that the Norse explored the interior of North America far beyond the settlements in Vinland credited to them. The eight-part series, which is airing in 70 countries (but not the U.S.) sees the two men visit the Kensington Runestone in Minnesota and other hoax stones in the hope of proving they are monuments to what publicity materials call the men’s “Viking roots.” 

​If the mix of reality TV show, dubious history, and ethnic pride sounds a bit familiar, well you’re probably thinking of America’s Lost Vikings, a 2019 Science Channel TV series in which Blue Nelson and Mike Arbuthnot did exactly the same thing, visiting many of the same sites, and also celebrating their Scandinavian ethnic pride.
 
The difference is that Quest for the Lost Vikings is Canadian.
 
The Fara Heim team—whose name means “Going Home”—is made up of individuals who claim direct descent from Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid Thorbjarnadottir, two Icelandic colonists who followed Leif Ericsson to Vinland. Their story is told in The Saga of Erik the Red.
 
I’m not, in theory, opposed to the idea that the Norse explored farther inland than the current evidence of their settlements suggests, but it’s difficult to see any clear or compelling proof of a sustained presence beyond Vinland. It’s been the subject of speculation for more than two hundred years, and in all that time, nothing has turned up beyond some hoaxes in the Midwest and New England and a few scant traces in Canadian Arctic.
 
I can’t say much more since the show isn’t available in the United States for me to see, and while there are other ways to watch it, I don’t think I have the patience to sit through what seems from the episode descriptions to be eight hours of exploration/adventure/outdoors reality TV with a small seasoning of history. Perhaps I will try to cover the final episode of the season, which teases some sort of archaeological finding of significance—though it can’t be too significant if there is no news about it, nor even much by way of promotion or reviews in the Canadian press.