- 1 week ago
quest for the lost vikings s01e08
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00:02We have threads of a mystery that we're trying to weave together.
00:06Maybe the stories and the history books weren't quite accurate,
00:10and maybe they did go a little bit farther.
00:11We're trying to follow the threads of our ancestries.
00:15We can get within, I think, a mile of where White Men's Riding on the Rock is.
00:19In this book, they talk about this White Men's Riding on the Rock.
00:22Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What's that? Is that 1144?
00:25It's easy to miss these carvings.
00:28Yeah, I'm holding it in a farm field.
00:29And it dates to 1320.
00:32With the magnetometer, we found some interesting disturbed sites over here.
00:37There are glacial scratches on the backside of it.
00:41We're also very much on the hunt of a story called Curse of the Viking Grave.
00:45We're trying to go north through an area that's basically an emergency situation.
00:52Those cairns that he saw, we had to go search.
00:56I'm pretty comfortable that where everybody thinks this cairn is, is not where it is.
01:03So we're essentially here. Our camp is right here. So we can see a lot of the base points that
01:08Windy refers to.
01:09I wasn't prepared for way steep water.
01:15Put yourself in Windy Smith's maucousins that night that he came down here in the dead of winter.
01:22We saw a bunch of cairns on top of a ridge on an island.
01:26We're looking hard, and we're just going to keep at it.
01:29Well, I'm not cold anymore.
01:31Goddamn raven is laughing at us.
01:34We are remote here, so end of the day, can't mess it up.
01:38A little bit shallow here.
01:42And if we can't get out or can't get support, it turns in from an expedition into survival.
02:22The culmination of years of research and preparation comes down to right now.
02:28The Faraheim team is positive the lost cairn they've been hunting for, which they believe
02:34holds the remains of their Viking ancestors is close by.
02:39We had a little bit of time this afternoon to review all the information that we had about the location
02:45of the cairns.
02:46They examine a map and notes made by trapper Windy Smith, who was the first person to officially report it
02:53almost a century ago.
02:55There continues to be rumours and tales of indigenous people visiting the site within our lifetimes.
03:03So, we're essentially here, our camp is right here, so we can see a lot of the base points that
03:09Windy refers to.
03:10The team is based in a cabin in Nunavut, where the cairn is located, at least according to Windy's map.
03:17However, there are big differences between Windy's map and a government map.
03:23So, Mackenzie, Joe and David tried to interpret and compare both maps to find the exact location of the cairn.
03:32And we always thought that this long ridge here was the high point that he was mentioning.
03:37But when you read his description, he said the high point is at the mouth of the Windy River,
03:42and this high point is the key solution to the whole riddle.
03:51For more than ten years, we've been looking at where could Vikings, really mean Scandinavians, gone between 1000 AD and
04:001492.
04:01And this cairn is weirdly in a book called Curse of the Viking Grave, written by Farley Mowat,
04:09where people are saying they have been there and they've seen this, and it's very old. It's odd.
04:15The ancient cairn they're looking for is made from chopped wood and flat rocks and has walls that would be
04:23big enough for a body inside.
04:27They have established a high point on the terrain based on Windy's map.
04:32This can then orientate the team within the area and lead them to where the cairn is in relation to
04:38the high point.
04:40They will be helped along the way by the LiDAR drone.
04:45So the Windy Smith map is almost like an old school treasure map.
04:49It's like, go five steps this way, X marks the spot.
04:52And in the corner it says, not accurately drawn.
04:57So there's a verbal description in this map.
05:00And if you look at this map, you go, what the heck is this guy doing?
05:03Because this doesn't look anything like any map that exists.
05:08He comes out of the Windy River, and you can see it here.
05:11Those three islands.
05:13Yeah, and then you can see three islands, which we never really focused on before, but it says Muskeg Islands.
05:20Windy had identified three islands on his map near the cairn, which the team has now recognized on their map
05:27near the cabin they are staying in.
05:30If everything is accurate and lines up, the end goal of this entire journey should not be far from the
05:38front door of the cabin.
05:39And there's an arrow here that refers to these three islands.
05:45We have these three islands here, and they're right there.
05:48We can see them from the window.
05:50Windy's map does not correspond to this, and he admits it's all out of scale.
05:55But the basics are here.
05:58And the Windy Smith map from being here is almost like a little treasure map.
06:02We have learned that I don't think the cairn is where everybody thinks it should be.
06:07So if you start the three and a half miles from this point and go due east, you end up
06:12about here.
06:14Today, we always thought that it was over here, but it actually might be on this side in here.
06:22So we have to just extend our search parameters a little bit over to this point.
06:28The team know where they need to go to find the cairn.
06:32From the cabin, they will travel past the three islands to where the cairn should be.
06:38Out of diligence, they will search a wider area due to Windy's makeshift map to make sure nothing is neglected.
06:46The only thing we cannot rationalize is when he says 60-20 North.
06:53It just doesn't fit with anything that we've got.
06:56The 60-20 North is way south of, it's way down here.
07:00So we reread Windy Smith's report.
07:03We looked at Windy Smith's map.
07:04We looked at any other sort of auxiliary documentation we had.
07:08We discussed it amongst ourselves.
07:14We have the technology.
07:16We have a LiDAR drone, excellent piece of equipment.
07:18We've got a Cessna 25.
07:20We've got boats.
07:23We're not going to see it, as far as I can tell, from the water,
07:26because if you can see it from the water, all the canoeists that go by that have been talking about
07:30it forever,
07:31we just have to keep searching.
07:32We've got the technology, and we already know that it's going to be in the last place we look.
07:37Actually finding it is hard to say, but I'm an optimistic guy.
07:41I'd say over 75%.
07:46In float flying, we have a go-no-go point where we arbitrarily pick a distance,
07:51you know, down our take-off run.
07:53That if we're not at a certain set of performance parameters, then we abort.
08:01And I was at that set of parameters, and I continued, and away we went.
08:05So it was sufficient take-off run to finish, to get airborne.
08:09And there were no obstacles, which was huge.
08:12I didn't have to climb over anything.
08:13So the ice actually is an advantage, what we call a clear way.
08:16So it provides that opportunity to accelerate the in-ground effect and get away from the ground.
08:21So our new plan is to look at these two areas that, depending on how you read his description,
08:27and compare it to two types of maps that exist,
08:31we have two areas where we think the cairn is,
08:34compared to what everybody has ever said the location of the cairn to be.
08:39If we keep going, and we keep chipping away, and we eliminate the things that aren't working,
08:44or eliminate the places that it isn't, well, eventually we're going to find it.
08:48One of the reasons we had to be well prepared for this,
08:52because we don't want to turn an expedition into an adventure,
08:56by poor planning, and then adventure into survival,
08:59because that is not what we want to do.
09:03The team takes to the skies for another aerial scouting mission,
09:07in search of their ultimate goal, the lost Viking cairn.
09:11What's the depth look like to the right there?
09:14Not too good.
09:16The big benefit of a helicopter is, if we see something, we can literally plunk down right there,
09:23run out, look at it, and get back in the helicopter, if it's not what we're looking for.
09:26Where a flow plane may make us walk kilometers from the water, if there's water.
09:33And we've already run into some locations we can't get to on this search,
09:38because we can't land near it, and it's way too far to walk.
09:41Set the guys off, and it's kind of a tight spot, because the bay is still in ice.
09:47So there's a very narrow place to land.
09:52Then the shore, we weren't very certain about it, so when Paul let them off,
09:55he found out quickly that it's really hard to approach the shore.
09:59The group encounters another issue.
10:02We couldn't land where we wanted to land, because there's still ice.
10:10We had to be dropped off about a half a mile to a mile from where we really wanted to
10:15be.
10:16Are we getting in there?
10:17Ah, there's a few big rocks.
10:19See if you can navigate us in.
10:21That flow plane has to have a place to land.
10:25This is low water.
10:26And they got, it just has all these fingers coming off the land.
10:29Whoa, whoa, it's getting shallow.
10:33We are remote here, so end of the day, can't mess it up.
10:37A little bit shallow here.
10:40The plan was to take everybody over to the search area, but that didn't happen.
10:51Yeah, we need a dinghy.
10:52Like, how deep is it, Jay?
10:53Like, literally, are we up to your balls, or?
10:56No, no, no, no, you're up to your knees.
10:58The shallow water, rocks, and ice cause problems for the crew as they try to get to the shore.
11:05Because, um, if Mac actually put on her shorts, swim trunks, we're going to have wet balls.
11:11But other than that, let's just, let's get ashore.
11:13The water is like 40 degrees, which is like 10 Celsius or lower.
11:19And we're in the middle of nowhere.
11:20And we don't have dry clothes with us, because we're just expecting to go do some searching.
11:24So that turned into a little bit of an emergency, because you get hypothermia very quickly.
11:29David and JJ stripped down and walked precariously to the shore,
11:33while the others searched for another way to the land.
11:37Took off her pants and took off her boots and went barefoot.
11:40And that was not a good idea.
11:42Because, um, the rocks were sharp, the rocks were big.
11:45Both Jay and I ended up with a bunch of cuts from wading ashore.
11:54Yeah, it was, it was, uh, like we were a special operations group in the Canadian Army.
12:01Oh, David, who would have thought needed chest wearers to get out of an airplane on float.
12:08There's no time to rest.
12:10David and JJ dry off, warm up, and set off on the search.
12:15The thing about water is it, it takes your heat away very quickly.
12:18So when you get out of the water, 50 degrees actually feels pretty warm.
12:22Went on with our day.
12:24And they, uh, we were actually fairly comfortable once most of our stuff dried off.
12:30Okay. David?
12:31Yeah, let's go.
12:32You ready?
12:33You want to stay low, or do you want to, uh...
12:35Let's do low till we get to the high country here, then let's just go for it.
12:39We had to fly in and bring all our stuff with us.
12:43The problem is, if anything happens, we are very remote.
12:49And if we can't get out, or can't get support, it turns in from an expedition into survival.
12:55Well, I'm not cold anymore.
12:59I think there's some rocks up here I can get across.
13:03Goddamn raven is laughing at us.
13:06So ravens in Norse mythology sit on the shoulder of Odin.
13:11Ones like Huginn and Muginn.
13:13There aren't a lot of birds up there.
13:14And there's this raven sitting on a tree making sounds at us.
13:17We're going like, oh, this is a good sign.
13:18There's going to be a cairn around here somewhere.
13:21Gee, if we get across this, we're golden.
13:25Unfortunately, there is a fairly shallow river.
13:28So, uh, some of us, our boots actually didn't catch the water.
13:32Some of us got our shoes all wet again.
13:35I slashed my feet a lot.
13:38And I, it's been uncomfortable.
13:41No one thinks that finding the ancient Viking cairn, which could be the final resting spot of their ancestors, is
13:48going to be easy.
13:49So far, the trip is proving them right.
13:53Canada has a lot of remote areas.
13:55And, uh, growing up in Winnipeg, uh, and most Canadians, they can walk out of any city in Canada and
14:01within an hour be in the bush.
14:03Be, be totally quiet, hear nothing, have no power, see nobody.
14:09Uh, where we were is way further north.
14:12You know, a lot of people have been living there a long time.
14:15But if you're not prepared for it, uh, it is, uh, it is, uh, quite an adventure.
14:20So if we go to this high point, uh, we are maybe a couple hundred meters from the high high
14:27point.
14:27And then let's launch, because the wind's died down.
14:30Yeah.
14:30And let's, uh, let's get the search.
14:32And the plane is now, uh, they're searching for us too.
14:35Joe and Paul are in the air, tracking the guy's movement on the ground.
14:41No, no, I wish we had some way to drop, uh, messages or talk.
14:44Because they don't have a VHF with them, do they?
14:47No.
14:48VHF, or very high frequency, is radio band frequency often used in aviation and marine communication.
14:55We didn't expect we'd be having our own little adventure out here by ourselves.
14:59No, we thought we were gonna all be together, but...
15:01All right, well, let's, let's hoof it, and then we, uh, we are good.
15:05And then we just gotta figure out how we get the hell back out of here.
15:07Everybody boat if we add to the ice-time boat so you don't move.
15:10Yep.
15:13The original plan was to get the LIDAR out and search an area,
15:18and then get the second wave in to take local drones, smaller drones to locally search visually,
15:25because the LIDAR drone doesn't have a camera on it to tilt it down and look at stuff.
15:30And then have the rest of the people be able to walk to some spots that we saw yesterday.
15:36LIDAR is a sensor that can create 3D models of terrain with near-perfect accuracy.
15:43That's a good search area, man.
15:4595 acres?
15:46Yeah.
15:46Do you know how long the search will take?
15:49But, I mean...
15:49Uh, estimated duration, six minutes and three seconds.
15:52Of the whole area?
15:54Yeah.
15:54Holy crap, man.
15:56I mean, it's gotta get there, but the search area, apparently, six minutes.
15:59That's super cool.
16:09The LIDAR drone works so fast.
16:12You can search, like, 100 acres very, very accurately in an hour just by pressing a button.
16:21That thing is a beast.
16:27And that lets us have the other drones to go take a look at what we've seen from flying planes
16:33over the area.
16:34So I think we have an ear support search, the LIDAR drone search, the actual visual drone search,
16:42and then the ground-truthing of going to literally stand and look at the things we think are high-potential
16:48targets.
16:48The team has surmised that the Cairn won't be on the shoreline like they originally thought,
16:54and they're expecting the LIDAR data results to confirm that.
16:57So it's halfway done already?
17:00Yep.
17:01Holy smokes.
17:03That's incredible.
17:04David calls their technology expert, Tom Maguire, with a satellite phone.
17:09Hello, man.
17:10Speak to Tom Maguire, please.
17:11Hello, this is Tom Maguire.
17:13Well, I'm standing here in the middle of nowhere watching a LIDAR drone boot around.
17:18We've done, uh, well, 180 acres of scanning.
17:23Yeah.
17:23We're gonna probably do 300 before we're done.
17:26Tom has been very useful because, as a member of the Explorers Club, he understands what we're trying to do.
17:31He's been on several expeditions in the Arctic.
17:34So we'll have the whole point across from the, you know, that point of land, you know, the high point
17:39that points across the water.
17:42That's where we're literally standing right now.
17:46On this expedition, he's really helped because we can get on Starlink and say two things, three things.
17:52How's the ice?
17:53Oh, it's going out.
17:55What's the weather look like?
17:56You know, we're, uh, and, uh, and help us look at this spot.
17:59We saw something as we flew by it.
18:02And so he's been in real time helping us get our search area smaller and smaller and getting rid of
18:09stuff that, uh, we don't want to look at.
18:11We flew like 500 feet over this whole area for an hour and didn't really see anything that stuck out.
18:18You're gonna have to process all that data too.
18:20Yep. That's what, uh, Jay's, uh, nodding his head.
18:23I didn't see anything that had, like, flat rocks that you could make walls out of.
18:28I saw lots of boulders and piles.
18:31David and JJ are exhausted after covering a lot of ground today, but they still need a ride back to
18:38home base.
18:38Well, I think it's gonna take us about a half an hour to mule all this stuff back over the
18:42river, so.
18:43And, uh, they're gonna be here to pick us up in 33 minutes.
18:48Oh, well, perfect timing, man.
18:51JJ takes a tumble, heading to the meeting point.
18:55Yeah. Man down.
18:57Ow, fucker.
18:58You okay?
18:59Yeah.
18:59I mean, why am I even asking you that? You have to be okay.
19:02Ugh.
19:03Navigating these sharp, jagged rocks takes longer than expected, so they might not be ready with all their gear when
19:10the plane arrives.
19:12So we're searching a bunch of areas, and we're going, like, that's not there.
19:16But we have a couple theories we want to follow up, getting closer to the area where it could probably
19:21be.
19:28We didn't find the can, but finally make it back to rendezvous with the others to explore another location.
19:36One of the good things was taking outboard motors with us and being able to borrow boats that were on
19:42the shore there to get across the lake to search some areas.
19:45Because we didn't have our whole team there yet, and we wanted to get out and take a look.
19:51Windy Smith wrote that the cairn loomed as he approached it.
19:55So the team is keeping an eye for any structures on or just beyond the shore that could match.
20:03And we're on the water that would have been frozen when Windy Smith was dog sledding, and we're looking from
20:10his eyes.
20:12Almost certainly that cairn that Windy saw is not in this part here.
20:16There's too many trees too low.
20:19He's in a blizzard.
20:20It's a howling blizzard.
20:22It's 30, 40, 50 below windchill.
20:25He's in the lee.
20:26I'm coming out of the river.
20:27He's in the lee.
20:27It's not blowing too loud.
20:29He's up against the north shore.
20:30Lots of trees back there.
20:31He gets out into this open park.
20:33The visibility goes to zero.
20:36He's driving in a blizzard.
20:37It's a howling northwester.
20:39He comes out of the mouth of the Windy River, which is just over here, just around that corner.
20:44He sweeps down the bay here, the narrows, goes down around the corner, and he gets out there.
20:50And when you get to the end of this bay, you run out of trees.
20:53When you run out of trees, he's right in the teeth of the storm.
20:57Pulls up behind a bluff of trees, talking to his dogs, telling them it's all going to be good, chipping
21:02the ice off their eyelids.
21:04He looks over and he sees this thing, and he describes it as 16 by 16 by 6 feet high.
21:10Rocks and timbers.
21:11So what we're looking for is essentially man-made structures.
21:15As we have brought it, put yourself in Windy Smith's moccasins that night that he came down here in the
21:23dead of winter.
21:24We spent a decade looking at this and researching it and seeing it from the air and reading the stories.
21:31And here we are motoring down the lake where Farley Moat had been and Windy found the cairn.
21:38Finding a place to anchor the boat to the shore continues to be a challenge.
21:44I'm pretty comfortable that where everybody thinks this cairn is, is not where it is.
21:50From being here and seeing the geography and looking and reading his map, which I don't think you could evaluate
21:57if you haven't spent time here and went like,
21:59Oh, that's interesting. There's these islands that I'm looking at right now that aren't 10 miles that way.
22:04It gives us a high probability of finding the cairn from his description.
22:08Because the more we read the map, the more we look at the site we're actually at, and the searching
22:14we've done,
22:15I'm fairly confident, very confident, that it's not where everybody thinks it is.
22:20Yeah, this is good. It's good. Good choice. Excellent choice. This is good.
22:26Pretty good. Hang on. Hang on. Wait.
22:27Want me to go forward or not?
22:29No, forward.
22:30Oh, if you can.
22:31We don't really go forward, but we're, uh...
22:33Yeah, we're kind of done.
22:34We're so close. I could probably step...
22:36I have boots. I have boots.
22:37You got waterproof boots?
22:38I got boots here.
22:42Okay.
22:43Here, Jay, let me get that out of the boat, because I'm a fat fuck.
22:46Okay, so, this is exactly where we think Windy's new dog led him in that blizzard, right here.
22:54I can feel this.
22:59The group believes they are walking in Windy's footsteps, and that the cairn is near.
23:05Jay Jay gets the lidar ready for flight to ensure they stay on the right path.
23:10This green patch?
23:11That green patch.
23:11You want to go from the point there?
23:13No, no, no. Just there. Just that one. That's the only green patch there. Everything else is open.
23:17That'll take, like, three minutes.
23:19Well, good. Do it.
23:19If you do that whole thing, Jay, just for yucks, Johan the Wise hasn't got to play with this yet.
23:28How fast can this thing fly? Like, this wind is probably...
23:30Oh, like, 40... Like, without... So, scanning and then not scanning, two different things, right?
23:35Yeah.
23:35So, like, without scanning, you can go, like, 42 miles an hour, like, flat out.
23:39Oh, God.
23:39But, like, while scanning, there's a max on which the data set will actually start to lose quality.
23:44Okay, so this one's not a problem?
23:46No, this is fine.
23:46Cool.
23:48The lidar drone is airborne and starts scanning the area.
23:53It won't take long for it to give them some results.
23:57They call Tom for his insight as he remotely watches what the drone is seeing.
24:04We spend a lot of time air searching, and, you know, the eyeballs...
24:07Humans are really good at seeing patterns.
24:09And I've seen nothing where I go, like, we should go look at this.
24:13Well, you know that latin long I gave you yesterday or the day before?
24:17It was a bit of a tree, a bit of a valley, and you said you didn't see anything.
24:21That's what we're lidaring right now, is we're sitting right on the edge of it right now.
24:28So we came down from Windy River, followed Windy Smith's description.
24:35Imagine we were in the blizzard looking for some shelter, came along the shoreline, and that spot, the latin long
24:41that I sent you, that spot is where we're sitting now because that looks like the first place he could
24:46pull his dogs off the lake and start to look for shelter.
24:51So we're thinking we're in the area, we're in the zone that would have worked for Windy on that day.
24:58But we, and we're about 200 yards from the edge of the water now, and there's not a whole lot
25:03of us, you know, a lot of cover farther north, but there's patches like the one that you looked at
25:08a couple of days ago.
25:12We're thinking that we're going to, we're going to focus on those patches along here, along the shoreline.
25:19The lidar has been awesome.
25:21That combined with the airplane and the satellite imagery has been great.
25:25Problem is we're not finding a cairn site.
25:28We're not finding something that's like, aha, that's got to be it.
25:30And we are running out of search area where we think it could be.
25:36You know, it's a theory we want to check, and if there's any anomalies out there, we want to go
25:40take a look.
25:42Well, you know, on my initial survey, when I was looking for anything that looked out of the ordinary, I
25:49did spot two anomalies within, I would say, 100 yards of each other, right where that fingertip was placed.
26:02And one of them is something that sort of appears, for lack of a better description, almost in a triangular
26:10shape, in more of a pyramid description, not necessarily as if a triangle is drawn on the ground.
26:17And I say that because of the way that the shadows are casting on the ground with it.
26:23It's casting a long shadow on one side, and it's highlighted pretty heavily on another side.
26:29Tom immediately notices a sharp triangular shape on the lidar readout, something that doesn't match the natural contours of the
26:37land.
26:37A cairn would appear exactly like this, a raised geometric bump in the terrain where nothing should be uniform.
26:45The triangle Tom sees could point to a man-made structure hidden beneath the vegetation, suggesting their search area may
26:54be closer than they thought.
26:56And so this is telling me, based on the trees that are surrounding it, that it's got some high elevation
27:02that goes up.
27:04Well, let's go take a look at that.
27:06I wouldn't mind stomping off to the trees over here, because...
27:10Well, we can have a look, sure.
27:15Yeah, this gets drier up here.
27:16What do you think?
27:19Start making some, uh, jewellery?
27:22Hey, it's the wolf den!
27:24Yeah, it is, actually.
27:28We're looking hard.
27:29Like, it's a strain on the old eyeballs to try and see this thing, and it's, uh...
27:35And we're just gonna keep at it until we, you know, have eliminated all the places we think it is,
27:40because it's always in the last place you look.
27:43Joe and David start off on a path they hope is the same one that both Windy and Farley took
27:50many years ago.
27:52We're running out of search locations.
27:55We thought, for sure, the maps and being on site and flying over,
28:00there'd be like, aha, there it is, or there's something to look at.
28:03And Tom found a couple spots that we think could be the Cairn site.
28:11By following Windy's notes about the Cairn location instead of his map,
28:16David and Joe expect to find the Cairn or another landmark up ahead.
28:21They keep their eyes open for any point on the terrain that would be a good spot for a burial
28:27site.
28:27She's right up in here somewhere.
28:29See if I can see her before she moves.
28:35Go slow, go slow, go slow.
28:39And it turns out it's a bird on her nest.
28:44So we're just a little nervous because there are bears out here,
28:48and we didn't want to run into one.
28:51This game bird is found in northern Arctic, rocky climates in North America and Eurasia.
28:57But we're going to give her a wide berth because we're respecting the animals out here.
29:02Anyway, those mountains, what do you think?
29:08In terms of finding the Cairn, I think our approach has been as good as we can make it.
29:15And so we've evolved a theory of the area, and I'm pretty confident that we're in the right area.
29:21So the thing we're looking for keeps being described as a structurally strong, solid Cairn made out of wood and
29:30timbers.
29:31Yeah.
29:31I mean, this looks like dirt.
29:35So we found some mounts.
29:37Back in the day, that's a totally appropriate way to build a shelter.
29:40And we aren't sure what they are.
29:43We LIDAR'd them, but to really understand, we've got to come back and do some archaeology,
29:48and that'll be someone else's adventure.
29:51Look at the end here.
29:52Could there possibly have been an entrance at this end?
29:56A south-facing prevailing window out of there?
29:59Archival pictures from the collection of famous Canadian geologist and explorer, Joseph Tyrrell,
30:05show stone structures in the area that potentially could be the base for these mounds, and maybe Cairns.
30:12Could have been.
30:13Oh, yeah. I can see that.
30:14See it? See it?
30:15Humped over.
30:16Lots of insulation.
30:17I mean, it probably was never...
30:18No standing headroom in this thing.
30:19This is like a four-foot thing or something.
30:21It's kind of like a...
30:22Okay, so there's two of them.
30:23There's one there.
30:24There's one here.
30:25I haven't seen anything else like this the whole time we've been here.
30:28In fact, I don't know if I've seen anything like this in any of the other places that I've spent
30:32time in,
30:33the whole northern part of this country.
30:36So I honestly don't know.
30:37I mean, if somebody was going to build a Cairns, they have to live somewhere.
30:40Uh-huh.
30:41Because Mindy Smith said it took a long time.
30:44It's not a...
30:45It's a substantial structure.
30:47So if you have some guys who are here to build it,
30:50they've got to build something that's easier to stay in, so this is it.
30:53I mean, if we had some way of holding up an arch roof or something,
30:57we could build one of these in a couple of days probably.
31:01And this is obviously...
31:02This has been here a long time.
31:03I mean, these wilderness are probably 100 years old.
31:06You could make a shelter pretty quick if you had some way of holding it up.
31:09Well, there are trees here.
31:10There are saplings.
31:11If we cut into this or dug into us,
31:13and you saw some things that looked like saplings to hold this stuff up,
31:17I mean, we could physically build one of these ourselves to shelter in.
31:22Until the team can come back and investigate the mounds,
31:25they will remain a mystery for now.
31:28Those things are hundreds of years old.
31:30Don't have any idea what's connected to anything we're looking for,
31:33but anyway...
31:34Oh, here comes Paul.
31:35Here comes our lunch.
31:37Canada is huge, and, you know, I've lived all across it,
31:41and the majority of the population lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border.
31:45Winnipeg, you know, 10 miles east of it is the centre of Canada,
31:49and, you know, it's kind of like those points, right?
31:52They originate out of the centre, and we went north,
31:54and we're maybe a third the way up to the northern tip.
32:01To me, it's about the adventure, sea places,
32:05and I do get a little bit of self-satisfaction when I can say,
32:09hey, nobody else has been here, or nobody else has been there, but I have.
32:15Paul was able to spot three cairns while flying over Herne Bay earlier.
32:20These are of interest because of a rumour of carvings
32:24that can't be read by the Dene, or Inuit people.
32:28Those cairns that he saw, we had to go search.
32:31So we landed, started hiking.
32:33Let's go straight through here.
32:34I think so.
32:36You know, we open up onto a clear sort of hill that goes right to the top,
32:41and it was over this direction.
32:43Yeah.
32:44We have all the modern technology to get ourselves in and out of here,
32:48and you can see it as a logistics challenge.
32:49You can't imagine in the 20s and 30s and 40s in canoes.
32:53Okay, that's a challenge.
32:56So, we're still getting the elevation, so...
33:02It won't take us a lot easier than walking in the trees.
33:07This could be what they've been searching for all along
33:10to prove their theory about early Viking ancestors
33:13travelling through North America.
33:17Halfway up the hill, we're starting to sweat
33:19because you're actually getting into the sun,
33:21you're getting into the heat.
33:23Actually, I think the climbing season's over,
33:25getting into monsoons now.
33:27But I don't know for sure.
33:29You know, this whole slope's going to be pink
33:31with these flowers pretty soon.
33:33We saw two cairns up on the top,
33:35and we actually saw a third cairn down by the edge of the water.
33:39Now, it's really getting dry.
33:44Yeah, I'm blowing like an old pony.
33:47The cairns up on top are on a height of land.
33:49They're on a ridge.
33:50They're probably visible from the water.
33:52You can probably... there's probably skyline.
33:54There's the base of at least the biggest one
33:56is a huge boulder, probably five feet across.
34:00You got to keep the pace, and then I can die up here.
34:04There's a cairn just up ahead.
34:06We're looking hard.
34:09Coming over the hill,
34:10and there's this bright, shiny cairn
34:11sitting there waiting for you.
34:13You're really having to concentrate.
34:14It's almost like a search and rescue mission.
34:17Got to the top of the hill,
34:18and took a look at the cairns.
34:25When Paul and the team were flying around
34:28looking at sights,
34:29we saw a bunch of cairns on top of a ridge
34:32on an island.
34:34So we went and took a look.
34:41Huh.
34:45Well, that's one.
34:50Is it hollow or is there something into it?
34:52Well, inside it we have no idea.
34:54There is some old reports of some guys
34:56in the early 1900s, late 1800s
34:58coming through here
34:59and leaving messages in some of these places
35:01that people have subsequently recovered.
35:04This story has got so many facts to it.
35:07You got Farley Mowat writing it,
35:08but you got Windy Smith talking about it.
35:10And we have this oral story of someone who's been there.
35:13Well, it's hard to say.
35:14It doesn't look like it's been here forever, no.
35:16It doesn't look like it's been here for hundreds of years,
35:19maybe a hundred years or less, but...
35:21It didn't look like anything
35:23that would have been made 500 or 1,000 years ago.
35:27Those lichens are,
35:28they're okay with the rocks over top of them,
35:30so they haven't certainly integrated,
35:31but that one over there is substantially bigger
35:34than this guy.
35:36The second one up on top was similar,
35:38and you can see them for a long way away,
35:40even in the air.
35:41Like, they just stand out
35:42because they're quite different
35:42than all the little boulder fields around them
35:45and they're sort of on an open area.
35:47That one's been there a little bit longer.
36:04In the Arctic, there were a lot of rock piles,
36:08and the things we found up there
36:10were very much what a tourist would do
36:13all over North America,
36:14where they start stacking stones.
36:17Let's go have a look at that big one.
36:18Big one.
36:19Okay.
36:25This looks just a little man-made.
36:28I mean, what I mean, modern man-made.
36:30This guy here?
36:31Yeah.
36:31I don't know, actually.
36:34Yeah, actually, it may not be,
36:37because you look at the way the rocks
36:39are sitting on the big rock,
36:40and you can see the lines of the lichens
36:42following the edge of the rock,
36:43and that's taken a long time on the front side there.
36:47Again, the conversation with 50-, 60-, 70-year-old guys,
36:52I just don't think that's it.
36:54Well, I don't think that's it, but...
36:57I mean, it's a good place to put something.
37:00I mean, you can see this.
37:02You can see this point from all over here.
37:05All over the lake, you can see this point.
37:09Right on the ridge, so...
37:19Hmm.
37:19I mean, this guy slipped in there,
37:21but there's nothing on it.
37:29David later confirms with one of his contacts, Ron Lust,
37:33about the origins of these cairns.
37:36They're literally rock piles.
37:37The guy we just talked to who used to work at this lodge,
37:41said, yes, I built those in 1986.
37:45So, they have nothing to do with any rune stones at all.
37:50But we have been on a serious hunt
37:52for the cairns site that Farley spoke about.
37:58It doesn't look like it's in any place that we've looked.
38:02Not sure why that is.
38:03Ron was not aware of it,
38:06and he spent quite a bit of time with the Black Brochet folks.
38:10It doesn't mean that they told them about it,
38:12because there seems to be some sort of secretive activity around it.
38:15Nobody wants to talk about it,
38:16because we've talked to people that were at the cairn
38:18or claimed to have been to this cairn back in 2004.
38:23And we've talked to that person.
38:24We're going to continue to talk to that person.
38:26We're just going to have to approach it.
38:27And it's the same thing.
38:29You've got to talk to somebody who knows somebody,
38:31to talk to somebody who knows somebody,
38:32to talk to somebody who knows somebody,
38:34to talk to somebody that knows somebody,
38:35and it might not be the information you expect.
38:38Somebody put that there.
38:39And that was, that caught my interest enough.
38:43Seeing other things that, you know,
38:45we're looking for would have been a bonus,
38:46but who knows?
38:47Very interesting.
38:48People came through here.
38:50This has been an exhausting experience
38:52for the entire Faraheim team.
38:55But it's what they signed up for.
38:58David and Joe reflect on the journey that brought them this far
39:02and what they could do in the future to find the cairn
39:05they believe their Norse ancestors left behind.
39:11I'm not sure how I feel about not finding this cairn
39:14that we've searched so much for with everything we could think of.
39:19I believe there is a cairn here.
39:21There's too much evidence.
39:22Is it a Viking cairn?
39:24I don't know.
39:25Is it something?
39:26It's got to be something.
39:27I think there's too many people talking about it.
39:28Maybe we gave ourselves a false hope
39:32because Faraheimowat wrote Curse of the Viking Grave.
39:34He did all that Viking research.
39:36He was up here.
39:37Maybe he used the land up here as the basis for a story
39:42about Vikings just because he was starting to do
39:45West Viking research at the time
39:47and said this is an interesting thing.
39:49The expedition we did gave us this really great connection
39:52to Faraheimowat and the people that live up there,
39:55the indigenous people that are there as well as a guy like Wendy Smith.
39:58All that story and history is amazing.
40:00And Faraheimowat is a very good researcher.
40:03It just confounds us because he's writing stuff about Vikings
40:08and the curse of the Viking grave was after his research on Vikings.
40:12There's just this weird coincidence.
40:13The thing that's interesting that I don't still understand
40:16is that story we got told about a dagger and a scroll were found in this cairn.
40:22That doesn't necessarily mean it's a Viking dagger and scroll,
40:25but those are just odd words.
40:26One of the solid things that we found in it was complete serendipity.
40:31We found a fellow in Winnipeg who's found a 1320 penny.
40:371320.
40:37And he had never heard the Kensington rune story.
40:40And when I told him, he said,
40:41my gosh, it's on the way from Hudson Bay to the Kensington rune stone.
40:451320 English silver penny.
40:47It's the oldest English coin found in North America.
40:50It's a solid hook that we can build on.
40:53Well, and that leads down to Kensington and the Kensington rune stone.
40:58It does.
40:59Like we did that 3D scan.
41:01We have like that .002 millimeter resolution scan.
41:04We have the best scan in the world.
41:06I mean, literally we can see the chisel marks on it.
41:10Janie Weston took that data and stuff she's done over the decades.
41:14Janie is 100% convinced that the Kensington rune stone is real.
41:18Although the team didn't find the massive cairn,
41:22JJ's LIDAR scans revealed several unexplored anomalies missed by the Faraheim team.
41:28Suggesting it could still be out there,
41:31the team now plans to study the scans closely
41:33to pinpoint new search areas for their next expedition.
41:37In the Arctic, there are larger cairns like that,
41:41that the Inuit have made and other ones they say they didn't make.
41:45But we're going to have to keep going because we have did a lot of searching of where it isn't.
41:52That means we know where it could be.
41:55This part of the expedition is done, but the job is not finished.
42:01Joe, David, Mackenzie and JJ will continue their mission to understand their past.
42:07The lost Viking cairn may still be in the area, waiting to be rediscovered.
42:14Let's go east.
42:16Good idea. I'm in.
42:17a few minutes.
42:27Gonna be out.
42:31I'm coming up.
42:31Four, three, two, three.
42:37Poly, two, three, four.
42:41Big energy, one.
42:41Redbird.
42:42Two, three, three.
42:43Two, three, four, four.
42:43Two, two, three.
42:45One, two, three.
42:46Two, three.
42:46Two, three, two, three.
42:46Two, three, four, three.
42:47Two, three.
42:47Two, four, four, five.
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