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Tanfield Valley, also referred to as Nanook, is an archaeological site located on Imiligaarjuit (formerly Cape Tanfield), along the southernmost part of the Meta Incognita Peninsula of Baffin Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. It is possible that during the Pre-Columbian era the site was known to Norsemen from Greenland and Iceland. It may be in the region of Helluland, spoken of in the Icelandic Vinland sagas ( Saga of the Greenlanders and Saga of Erik the Red).
The Helluland Archaeology Project was a research initiative at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History) to investigate the possibility of an extended Norse presence on Baffin Island, including possible trade with the indigenous Dorset culture. The project went on hiatus following Patricia Sutherland's ouster from the museum in 2012. While the project was active, excavations led by Sutherland at Tanfield Valley found possible evidenceBarber, Elizabeth Wayland (1992) Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean, Princeton University Press, "We now have at least two pieces of evidence that this important principle of twisting for strength dates to the Palaeolithic. In 1953, the Abbé Glory was investigating floor deposits in a steep corridor of the famed Lascaux caves in southern France … a long piece of Palaeolithic cord … neatly twisted in the S direction … from three Z-plied strands …" of medieval Norsemen textiles, metallurgy and other items of European-related technologies. Wooden artifacts from Dorset sites include specimens which bear a close resemblance to Norse artifacts from Greenland. Fur from rats were also discovered.
However, the eight sod buildings and artifacts found in the 1960s at L'Anse aux Meadows, located on the northern tip of Newfoundland, remain the only confirmed Norse site in North America outside of those found in Greenland.
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