VIKINGS!

Vikings from Greenland — the first Europeans to arrive in the Americas — lived in a village in Canada’s Newfoundland exactly 1,000 years ago, according to research published Wednesday.

Scientists have known for many years that Vikings — a name given to the Norse by the English they raided — built a village at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland around the turn of the millennium. But a study published in Nature is the first to pinpoint the date of the Norse occupation.

The explorers — up to 100 people, both women and men — felled trees to build the village and to repair their ships, and the new study fixes a date they were there by showing they cut down at least three trees in the year 1021 — at least 470 years before Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492.

“This is the first time the date has been scientifically established,” said archaeologist Margot Kuitems, a researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the study’s lead author.

“Previously the date was based only on sagas — oral histories that were only written down in the 13th century, at least 200 years after the events they described took place,” she said.

The first Norse settlers in Greenland were from Iceland and Scandinavia, and the arrival of the explorers in Newfoundland marks the first time that humanity circled the entire globe.

But their stay didn’t last long. The research suggests the Norse lived at L’Anse aux Meadows for three to 13 years before they abandoned the village and returned to Greenland.

Why didn't the Vikings settle further south in the United States

 Allan:

Because they foolishly came into conflict with the Native people who already lived there.

The Vikings thought that they were the superiors of the Natives who they encountered and their actions demonstrated that they did not respect them. 

Unfortunately for the Vikings, they didn’t come in large enough numbers and bring enough weapons to make that perceived superiority evident to those Natives. As a result they spent much of their time battling the locals when they should have been making friends.

After less than a decade it became clear that their colony was never going to expand and that they were going to be unable to ward off the Natives in the future. 

The colonists who survived mostly returned to Greenland or Iceland and as their culture was changing, they began to farm and become more fishermen than explorers and conquerors. 

They still returned to the Grand Bank to fish for cod; however there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that following the end of the colony in what is now Newfoundland that they ever returned as colonists.

Additionally the plagues that afflicted Europe in the 13th and 14th century killed substantial portions of the population in Iceland and Norway which were the sources of population for Greenland (where the plague MAY have reached). 

Even if the Vikings had wanted to launch new efforts at colonization, they lacked the numbers of people to do so. Basically survival was more important than exploration.

The eruption of a volcano on the island of Lombok seems to have changed the climate on Greenland to a much colder one and the Vikings were woefully unprepared to deal with it. Coupled with the lack of trees to build ships, it seems that the population of the land closest to the the Americas died out themselves from starvation, overhunting, disease, and low birthrates.

As noted in other answers, the Vikings never reached what is now known as the United States. If they had, they likely would have faced far more significant opposition as the Native populations farther south were much larger. It’s likely that they would been repelled, if not killed outright, when they tried to settle in the areas.

Jon Mixon

Semi-pro historian.September 

As usual, it's all bullshit!

 These revisionist assholes that try and change history to satisfy a personal agenda are really starting to get on my nerves folks!

This is the latest one:

"Gordon Campbell (born 1944) is a professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester known for his work on Milton and on the King James Bible."

Professor Campbell, for reasons known only to him, has written a new paper that claims the Vikings didn't discover America a thousand years ago....., but rather it was a group of Englishmen around the time of Columbas that made the first trek here! (By the way, Columbus didn't discover America either...., he discovered the Carribean islands!)

That's right kids, he wants his fellow Englishmen to get the credit for discovering America and it more than willing to discount Eric the Red and Leif Ericson and all those other jolly folks as really being the first Europeans to travel here!

They say history is written by the victors....., but this is just plain old fashioned cultural appropriation, first of the Indians, and then of the Vikings!

The way I see it anyway!