Sutherland’s original paper was dismantled by University of Waterloo anthropologist Robert Park in an article in Antiquity magazine entitled, “Contact between the Norse Vikings and the Dorset culture in Arctic Canada”.
One line of Park’s attack points to pre-870 A.D. carbon dating of supposed Norse material from the Nanook site. That is the accepted date of first Norse settlement of Iceland and documented in the famous Landnámabók. This would impose a firm time line on any contact further West.
A recent article in The Iceland Review though describes the analysis of physicist Páll Theódórsson which pushes the settlement of Iceland back 200 years. While his work has (as far as I can determine) yet to be thoroughly critiqued by others, it may weaken one aspect of Park’s arguments.
It will be interesting to see how these arguments play out.
