Deputy Director Kevin Smith joins the Travel Channel's two-part season premiere of 'Expeditions Unknown'

On December 27th, 9 PM, the Travel Channel's top rated series Expedition Unknown kicks off their fourth season with a two-part episode about Viking myth and mystery. The Haffenreffer Museum's Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Kevin P. Smith, joins adventurer Josh Gates to explore the origins of Viking expansion from Denmark to Iceland, Greenland, Canada, and the United States. 

Smith has been leading archaeological investigations inside  Surtshellir Cave in a collaborative project with the National Museum of Iceland's Guðmundur Ólafsson since 2000. They have been researching the archaeological and mythic history of the massive lava cave, including a unique Viking Age site deep below Iceland's forbidding Hallmundarhraun lava field. Archaeologists believe the site, called Vígishellir, is one of the best preserved Viking structures in the world, variously interpreted as an outlaw band’s lair or the center of a Viking Age sacrificial site. And farther into the interior, additional caves are reported to have archaeological evidence of undocumented activities...

More can be learned about this research in Archeology Magazine's piece, The Blackener's Cave, published in May 2017. 

Viewers are free to watch the episodes, Viking Secrets and Vikings in America, on the Travel Channel's website.