AGAINST the VIKING CAVE
The following quote is from Arctic Odyssey, the Life of Rear Admiral Donald B. Macmillan, p 155f:
"Mac(millan) concluded that if they were shipwrecked, it was the kind of shelter they would build or seek out, especially if they happened to be stranded on a bleak island such as this, utterly devoid of trees and without sufficient soil into which one might dig to construct an underground dwelling.
"Any shipwrecked crew, and there have been many during the last five hundred years, might have done this. (...) It seemed unlikely that anyone would purposely live in this barren place when there are bays and inlets covered with thick spruce forests almost in sight of its shores that would make much better home sites."
Comment: Macmillan did not resolve the persistent reference to Vikings carried through generations of people who did not read. No other local story was given. Nor did he explain why Norse names were used in an English land. Nor did he stay long enough to experience the summer mosquitos and wasps that drove most of the people to the edge of the sea.
