Wednesday, January 21, 2009


The Wonderstrands (also spelled Wunderstrands), Porcupine Strand, or simply The Strand, is a 40 km long beach just north of Cartwright. It was named by the Vikings who passed by there 1000 years ago. It was so striking the Vikings called it Wunderstrand. It is actually composed of four separate beaches broken by points of land. It is a unique area of Labrador. Inside the beaches you have either boreal forest, tundra, marsh land or sand dunes. It is home to the endangered Mealy Mountain Caribou Herd and is an important staging area for waterfowl. It is also part of an ongoing research project called the Porcupine Strand Archaeological Project. Several ancient peoples inhabited this area including Thule, Dorset and Paleo Eskimo if I am not mistaken. It was also home to our Inuit ancestors(who intermarried with English settlers to create the Metis we know today)
Two points of interest, it is rumored that the Vikings landed somewhere on the Strand to repair a broken keel most likely Cape Porcupine. Porcupine Strand was also the site of military activity in the 1940's as far as I know, particularly Cape Porcupine and Sandy Cove. I will elaborate on that more later.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting stretch of remote beach.Does the water ever get warm enough for swimming? perhaps a shallow inlet or bay.NH,USA

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  2. The water is very cold and there is a large surf in most places making it dangerous for swimming or landing in a boat. There is one place, North River, where you can go swimming on a really warm summer day.

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