Heading underground

 Mere glimmer of a red dusk was all that was left from the daylight when Lara returned to my hotel room. It was somewhat rudimentary, but one would not expect lavish luxury in such a remote, sparsely inhabited place. To the contrary, it was lucky that the isolated village in the Northern Labrador offered accommodation in the first place.

She had spent the entire afternoon photographing the area of interest, some thirty kilometers southward, from an airplane flying at low altitude. Having taken off her heavy aviator jacket, she dropped a handful of memory cards on a little desk I had in the room, which served as an improvised command center.

Minutes later in front of my laptop, we were already examining aerial photos she made, looking for any sign of Gatnamot, the ancient underground temple mentioned in Icelandic sagas. My programming knowledge was very limited and crude, but I had managed to prepare a program which would hopefully detect and point to any regular structures or straight lines in the photographs, and spare us from checking all of them manually.

It did pick around forty photographs of some interest, even though we were both aware that the likelihood of them all being false positives was extremely high. Lara, nevertheless, insisted on checking them right away. Matching her energy, especially when she wanted to research or uncover something, was often difficult.

The process was slow, with lots of zooming and matching any interesting shapes we spotted to their occurrences in other photographs, from different angles. They invariably turned out to be natural structures which, from a given angle and with the artefacts produced by the camera and the encoding, initially seemed interesting.

I clearly remember we were looking at the twenty-fourth photograph, right after a tea break we had taken to rest our eyes following more than two hours of examinations. Regardless of Lara's undiminished energy, it was coincidentally me who spotted something unusual. Rocks of various sizes and colors spread over grey soil were nothing unusual, but a certain one, isolated from the rest, seemed as if it was roughly rectangular.

Zooming in as far as the limited resolution made it sensible, we could only just discern creases in the rectangle, suggesting it was built, constructed from blocks, rather than a naturally occurring structure.

The moment was electrifying—was it indeed artificial in origin? Lara bit her lip, and I had no doubt she wanted to go and explore the place right away, but even she understood we would have to wait until daylight.

We went through the rest of the photographs nevertheless, and then set out to identify the exact location of the stone rectangle. Luckily, this was not particularly difficult: each photograph had a precise timestamp, and Lara's airplane's avionics had logged its exact location: all we had to do was to find and interpolate the airplane's location at the moment when the key photograph was shot.

And take plenty of rest.

 

With the area offering no easy rugged landing spots, and no helicopters available, next day Lara rented the best off-road vehicle she could find—a stout former military truck converted for civilian use. Again, contrary to many artificially tweaked depictions of Lara, she liked company on her travels, and insisted I join her, at least as long as she was on the surface.

We set off toward the coordinates calculated the night before, guided by the onboard GPS. Among the truck's many virtues, passenger comfort was missing and, combined with the rugged terrain, the journey was both slow and exhausting. Still, after over two hours of Lara's skilled driving, we finally approached the area we had been looking for.

Holding the photograph on my map, I managed to get the key bearings and navigated Lara to drive us to the vicinity of the rectangular rocky object, but not too close: we wanted to avoid the wheels destroying any possible clues in the ground in the object's proximity.

Stopping and observing the object in front of us was another electrifying moment, because the structure was clearly artificial in origin. Surrounded by a large patch of rocky dirt, there was a stone platform roughly the size of a snooker table, made of tightly fitting individual stone blocks. There was no chance of it having been randomly assembled by nature.

We left the truck and carefully approached the object, diligently recording and photographing everything as we walked.

"Looks rather like a grave of a giant," she said.

The sides of the object were featureless, so we climbed on its top. The only features I could discern were creases between the stone blocks—everything else seemed like normal wear and tear throughout centuries, possibly over a millennium.

It was an interesting find in itself, to be sure, but there was no entrance nor any special details I could see. Lara's knowledge, however, allowed her to see facts where I could not. She kneeled and inspected the blocks we were standing on.

"Observe the surface," she spoke. "See these slightly asymmetric dents? Clearly modeled with a narrow iron chisel, which fits with the Viking theory. And individual blocks have dents of differing sizes, meaning multiple stonemasons were involved."

She stood up and considered for a moment. "Help me inspect all the blocks. It was not uncommon for the stonemasons of the era to chisel their initials or signatures on the stone blocks they made."

I had only begun the search on my half when Lara jubilantly called me. Indeed, near the edge of one of the stones, two little symbols were engraved: a rather narrow letter 'R', followed by a 'Y' with an extra vertical line at the top, resembling the Greek Psi.

"These are runes," she said with a very serious tone. "Think about it: runes. On American mainland. Yes, we know of the Norse colonization of Newfoundland in the eleventh century, but this is something else. Do you think we have found Gatnamot?"

I thought for a while before answering. My thoughts raced. "I think yes," I squeezed finally. "Based on Icelandic sagas and legends of the Naskapi, we found it exactly in the narrow area we predicted it would be. I think anything else would be an unthinkable, fully impossible coincidence."

"So do I. This alone will rewrite many history books."

We stood in silence, aware of the gravity of our find. Then Lara circled the small platform, looking for any further clues. Suddenly she stopped and turned toward me.

"But there is some... discrepancy. This is nothing like how the sagas describe it, nothing grand. A stone slab, and an important one at that, but nothing majestic nor sacred."

She was not wrong, but I had a natural answer. "Don't forget: these are sagas and legends, and thus likely to exaggerate everything, even if they refer to a real place. Perhaps Gatnamot indeed is no more than this slab, but the word-of-mouth and the need to embellish stories distorted it over time into the grand halls you are talking about. Think of Greek mythology as a good analogy: there is a palace at Knossos, and a very nice one at that, but the legends added the narrative about the famous labyrinth, for the sake of drama."

"You may be right. Perhaps the old storytellers would not be content with the narrative of the famous warriors gaining superhuman powers on a mere slab of stone, and therefore invented the underground temples, secret halls, and whatnot."

"Exactly. Even the legends based on truth are typically full of such fantasies and dramatizations. In nearly all cultures. Still, let's search onward—perhaps there are other clues we have missed so far."

The next set of runic initials was less of a surprise, and from the third onward, it was hardly news anymore. Luckily, it was a sunny day, and sharp shadows helped noticing small details.

Lara was examining the central element of the structure, a large square block of stone, when she called me. That one was not perfectly flush with the surface, and she pointed me to an unusual set of indentations on its side, near the top edge. They were visibly chiseled, and formed a line which was supposed to be straight, but was slightly irregular.

"Any idea what this is? Was the stonemason testing his chisel here, hoping this side would never be visible?"

Lara was not yet aware she had made a brilliant discovery.

"I know what this is," I said in amazement. "I have seen them in Nordic structures already. These are anchors for the metal hooks, to make lifting easier!"

"Lifting? So this panel is supposed to be lifted?" I heard the excited tremble in her voice.

"Indeed! You can even see these micro-fractures where the metal hooks, probably pulled by a group of people, wore down the stone over time. This entire panel is not just floor... it's a heavy trap door!"

She flexed her fingers. "We need to find a way to lift it," and for once, I agreed with her.

There was no way two people, no matter how athletic, could lift the slab manually. But our truck gave me an idea.

"We have a winch on our truck we can try. No idea how thick—and therefore how heavy—the panel is, but maybe it is within the capability of the winch."

Lara parked the truck right in front of the structure, while I attached the winch hook to the panel. We started the winch which, predictably, first raised the truck's front wheels onto the platform. Then we stopped the winch, braked the car, even put several rocks in front of its wheels to improve its stability, and restarted the winch.

One could hear the winch motor struggle, but after a few moments, with heavy rumble, the panel started to rise slowly. We stopped the winch and rushed to the newly-opened hole.

As it turned out, the ancient legends had not exaggerated. Underneath the panel, there was a steep stairway leading down underground, and turning right after ten meters or so.

She looked seriously at me. "You know I cannot not enter."

"But...! Without equipment?"

She smiled and walked to the back of the truck, where she took a backpack. "Never leaving home without it. Now, listen—I will not break my word, and will therefore not insist on you following me. But if I am not back by seven o'clock, feel free to leave and seek help from the authorities."

Before I could even form some kind of a reply, she was already kneeling next to the panel and entering the underground.

Secrets of Labrador

Lara was there a few minutes early: the clock tower in the town center had not yet rung six o'clock when I heard the sharp clang of the knocker. Moments later, I was leading her into my humble little chalet's cozy sitting room. She wore rather inconspicuous casual clothes—black jeans, grey sneakers and a simple blue shirt atop a white blouse. Her hair was not braided, but bound into a simple and practical ponytail.

Without much pomp, I pointed her toward the sofa and drew her attention to a kettle on the table. She quietly enjoyed the black tea for a few moments and looked out through the window at the relentless night rain.

Despite of all the usual commercially influenced stories which portrayed her as crass and ruthless, Lara was altogether not at all unpleasant. She was just terrible at small talk, which could occasionally be misinterpreted as arrogance, for those who would never progress past the shallow topics.

"So," she said after we updated each other on the main news since the previous Winter when we had last met, "you already know what brought me here."

Of course I knew. Even if she had not told me many times before when we were arranging her visit, I would have easily guessed her quest to be related to the new revelations about the Naskapi.

Sitting in my favorite armchair facing Lara, I took a glass of whisky from the mantlepiece. "I will tell you what I know, but first—just for my curiosity—how did you find out about the Naskapi? It was you who approached me first."

"More mundane than you would think, really," she said shrugging her shoulders, surprised by the question. "Almost all was based on rumors in the archaeological circles. I say 'almost', because a little, very little, came from subtle hints in the Norman legends."

It took me several seconds to understand the connection, and I slapped my forehead. "Oh, of course! It actually makes sense. It all does."

She was intrigued by my reaction. "What do you mean?"

"You see," I explained, "my sources are mostly Icelandic in origin: complex threads of their ancient sagas interwoven in a somewhat consistent tapestry. Not the Hyperboreal theory, mind you, but the truly Icelandic matter, which..."

"...shares the same Viking roots with the first settlers of Normandy," Lara confidently completed the sentence.

"Yes! That's a clear link. I will have to explore that route a bit."

"All right—but what did you learn so far?"

I anticipated the question, so I took a notebook I had ready on a shelf, and spread the bookmarked page on the table for Lara.

"See here: there are seventy-six references to the far eastern lands in the collected sagas. Some are clearly fanciful and are simply used as means of sending a character on a long, difficult voyage. But others are more coherent, more structured, and simply sound as if they refer to a specific, real place."

I let Lara comprehend the diagram. "Indeed," she said at last. "But what made you think they all, or most, refer to the same real place related to the Naskapi?"

"These references are not copied here in full length: it would take too much space. But I read them all, and they mention various main landmarks with remarkable consistency. See—I enumerated them here below."

I flipped the page and showed another diagram to my reputable guest.

"Here, then, is another list, showing all the landmarks mentioned in the legends of the Naskapi, at least legends that survived. At first glance, there are no exact matches. But then..."

"Right," Lara's quick wits spotted the connections easily. "Some are suspiciously similar."

"Are they not? The great triangle and the divine spire. Then, the notched bay and the gulf within the gulf. This is perhaps the clearest one: the wavy forest and the dark sea woods. Given the exaggerations commonly found in the ancient legends, along with the elapsed time that distorted the descriptions throughout the generations, these matches are not half bad."

"This is an excellent find," she said with suppressed excitement. "I am somewhat surprised no etnologist or historian has spotted this yet."

"Do not forget that the systematic study of the Naskapi legends is a very recent thing. It was only three or four years ago when McFerell and Black published their first works, and it took them until last Summer to systematize it all."

Lara asked, "how many matches did you find altogether?"

"Four likely ones, and additional two that are at least worth considering. As soon as I compiled this short list, I procured as precise maps of the areas historically inhabited by the Naskapi as I could, and looked for the actual landmarks they could represent."

"How could you be so sure they were not in Eastern Iceland?"

"Because an entire army of historians already did the same, never found any matches there, and assumed the landmarks were purely fictional. But no one had looked for them in the lands of the Naskapi, namely, Labrador."

Lara smiled at me. "And you found them."

"Strictly scientifically speaking, that is a matter of interpretation. Perhaps I found them because I was specifically looking for them."

I asked Lara to join me at the dining table where I unrolled a large map of Labrador, and pointed to several places I had circled with a red marker.

"The four likely and two possible matches are all shown here. I obtained some aerial and satellite photographs too. In any case, it may well be that the both folklores refer to these exact features. It is, however, a big supposition, because the landscape must have looked differently that long ago."

She just nodded, quietly sipping her tea and absorbing the information.

"Now for the key point which is, I admit, pure speculation. For one reason or another, it is not mentioned in the Naskapi legends, but the Icelandic sagas occasionally do refer to a mythical location of Gatnamot. Have you heard of it?"

Her brown eyes narrowed. "Gatnamot? It sounds vaguely familiar. Was it the underground temple?"

I smiled at her. "Yes, the mysterious secret place visited by the most distinguished warriors, where they supposedly temporarily gain superhuman powers required for an upcoming battle. In the sagas, unsurprisingly, these powers often turn out to be the key element overturning a defeat into victory. And even though Gatnamot appears across multiple sagas, its exact location is never described in any. Neither is it linked to any such landmark."

"Which, obviously, did not dissuade you," she said with some humor in her voice.

"It would have, were it not for another set of hints provided in the sagas. It has to do with the distances. Distances between locations linked to known landmarks and Gatnamot. Those I collected on this page in my notebook. See here: in this instance, the brave soldier Ketill walks two days and two nights from the spire to Gatnamot, and then takes one more day to reach the coast. In another example, the swordsmith Einar rides his trusty horse from the great bay to Gatnamot, passing over some hills on his way, and reaches it after three days. There are five such examples in the sagas."

I took a pencil and continued, "assuming all these timings are correct, and combining them with estimated speeds of walking at day, at night, riding a horse over hills, and so on, it is possible to find a patch of land which roughly satisfies all five examples from the sagas. It is here," and with those words I used my pencil to indicate a spot some ninety kilometers inland from Labrador's northeast coast.

Lara looked at the map for a moment, and then turned toward me. "But surely, it cannot be such a precise point," she said slowly. "Due to tolerances in the speed estimations, and probably imprecise legends."

She was right. "True: this is just the center of the resulting area. It is actually a rough circle of some ten, perhaps fifteen kilometers in diameter," I said.

She nodded, immersed in thought. "You narrowed it down remarkably, but it is still about a hundred square kilometers of land. Not something one can search easily, especially if having no hints of what one is actually looking for."

It was my turn to smile. "I anticipated your question in advance, and gave it some thought in the meantime. The situation is not as bad as it seems, because a great majority of those hundred square kilometers can be eliminated right away."

"How?" she asked, with undeniable sparkle in her eyes.

I took a precise satellite photo of the area in question from my notebook. "As you see, the area is full of tiny lakes. If Gatnamot was on the surface, it would have been discovered centuries ago. Therefore, if underground, as the sagas sometimes vaguely indicate as well, it would either have to be at a safe distance from any lakes in order to prevent flooding due to porous soil, or on a slightly raised surface. This reasoning alone eliminates at least three quarters of the possible area."

"And probably we can narrow it down a little further," she continued. "Whether they built a temple or a barn, people of the era naturally prioritized locations in vicinity of rivers. There is a river in the area, and the best bet would be to start searching around it."

"That's a good point," I admitted.

Her gaze was still on the map, but I was sure her thoughts were already deep into preparations for the journey to Labrador.