Epoxy

North Wind Lake

Greenstone, Ontario, Canada

Also known as Beardmore, Greenstone, Thunder Bay District, Lake Nipigon

The relics are real. The story about them was not.

In 1931 a part-time prospector named Eddy Dodd said he had blasted a trench on his mining claim southwest of Beardmore, some thirty kilometres south of this lake, and turned up a broken sword, an axe head and a piece of metal taken for a shield handle. The Royal Ontario Museum bought them in 1936 for 500 dollars and put them on display as proof that Norsemen had reached the Great Lakes, three decades before anyone excavated L'Anse aux Meadows.

The objects are genuinely Norse, made somewhere between 850 and 1025. What was wrong was the ground they came out of. Dodd's landlord said they had been sitting in a basement in Port Arthur. Dodd gave the year of the find as 1930, 1931 and 1933 to different people.

The museum pulled them in the 1950s after Dodd's adopted son swore that his earlier account had been false. They are back on display now, labelled accurately.

Details

Feature: Lake
Build: Epoxy
Material: Solid Cherry
Colour: Ocean Blue
Size: 10-1/2" x 16"
Completed: June 2025

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

Detail of the North Wind Lake map by Keyway

How this one was made

Cherry, inset, with the dam following the waterline about half an inch out.

North Wind is a long diagonal lake running corner to corner across the board, narrow through most of its length with the two dam lines close together the whole way. It widens twice, once in the middle and once toward the north end, and both of those sections come apart into small bays and points. There are two or three islands through the middle, each ringed completely. At the southwest end the lake breaks into a set of narrow channels finer than the dam holding them.

A diagonal layout crosses the grain rather than running with it, so the dam meets the wood at a changing angle the whole way down.

Two colours, the water and the black. The black does the lettering, the compass rose and the small marker. Rose and marker are both syringe fills.