Those Vikings just never seemed to stop travelling.

A Canadian archeologist has unraveled a new piece of Arctic history from a strand of ancient yarn found near Pond Inlet on Baffin Island.

The yarn lay frozen beneath the tundra, and then in the Canadian Museum of Civilization's collection in Hull, Quebec, for the past 15 years. Now it is being recognized as an artifact that may tell a remarkable story - that the Norse visited north Baffin Island in the 13th century, 300 years after they abandoned their attempted settlement in Vinland (now Newfoundland).

"It's Norse, definitely Norse," says Pat Sutherland, an associate curator at the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

The three-metre piece of yarn comes from a site 100 kilometers west of the present-day community of Pond Inlet.

Around 800 years ago, Vikings likely brought this yarn from Greenland to Baffin Island, where it managed to survive intact for centuries in the cold, dry conditions of north Baffin.

In 1984 Pond Inlet's resident priest and archeologist, Father Guy Mary-Rousseli re, found the yarn and other Norse artifacts alongside Inuit materials at a site from the Late Dorset period, 800 to 1300 AD.

The Nunguvik site was occupied by Dorset people who lived in the eastern Arctic from about 500 BC to AD 1500 . Their clothing was sewn from animal skins and they did not spin wool or weave cloth. The yarn, therefore, came from elsewhere.

The yarn's presence at the Nunguvik site means that Dorset people - the Tuniit - and Vikings in Greenland surely knew of each others' existence and possibly even traded various items.

"I would say that it sheds new light on the state of their contact," Sutherland says.

Vikings settled Greenland in 985 AD, growing some crops, raising cows, goats and sheep, and fishing.

But their settlements were not self-sufficient. When the climate suddenly cooled, travel between Greenland and Scandinavia was almost completely cut off, and the Vikings eventually returned home or died out.

The finds from Nunguvik are part of a larger CMC collection of Norse-related material from sites in the Canadian Arctic.

Many of these artifacts will be displayed as part of a major upcoming exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. called "The Norse in North America," celebrating the 1000th anniversary of the Vikings' arrival in North America. The exhibit will come to the Canadian Museum of Civilisation in 2002.

1. What lay frozen beneath the tundra, and then in the Canadian Museum of Civilization's collection in Hull, Quebec, for the past 15 years?