Norse colonization of North America#Pseudohistory

{{Main|Norse settlements in Greenland }}

File:Hvalsey Church.jpg ruins in Greenland]]

The two Vinland sagas, the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red, cover Norse explorations into the Western Atlantic within the genre of Icelandic sagas. They are heroic narratives originally shared orally and written down centuries later in Iceland during the 13th and 14th centuries.{{cite web |title=Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga |url=http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/features/viking/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020223143725/http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/features/viking/ |archive-date=23 February 2002 |access-date=18 October 2015 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}} Written within the literary tradition of and according to the literary expectations for Icelandic sagas, they portray Greenland as a place at the edge of the world where people were exiled and tested. This limits their reliability as a historical record.{{cite journal |last=Grove |first=Jonathan |date=2009 |title=The Place of Greenland in Medieval Icelandic Saga Narrative |journal=Journal of the North Atlantic |volume=201 |pages=30–51 |doi=10.3721/037.002.s206 |issn=1935-1933 |jstor=26686936}}

The earliest mention of Greenland in the sagas refers to a group of rocky islands in the Atlantic reported by Gunnbjörn Ulfsson when his ship was blown off course from Iceland in the early 900s.{{cite web |last=Milligan |first=Mark |date=27 April 2021 |title=The Vikings of Greenland |url=https://www.heritagedaily.com/2021/04/the-vikings-of-greenland/138815 |website=HeritageDaily |language=en-us}} Named after him, Gunnbjarnarsker or "Gunnbjörn's skerries", were likely near modern-day Kulusuk just off the eastern coast of Greenland,{{cite journal |last=Steensby |first=H. P. |date=1918 |title=Norsemen's Route from Greenland to Wineland |url=https://archive.org/details/meddelelseromgr561918denm |journal=Meddelelser om Grønland |location=Copenhagen |publisher=Kommissionen for Videnskabelige Undersøgelser i Grønland |volume=LVI |page=162}} but their exact location is unknown.{{cite journal |last=Lehn |first=Waldemar H. |date=20 July 2000 |title=Skerrylike Mirages and the Discovery of Greenland |url=https://opg.optica.org/ao/abstract.cfm?URI=ao-39-21-3612 |journal=Applied Optics |volume=39 |issue=21 |pages=3612–3619 |doi=10.1364/AO.39.003612|pmid=18349932 |bibcode=2000ApOpt..39.3612L |url-access=subscription }} According to the Landnámabók, Snæbjörn Galti led the earliest recorded intentional Norse voyage to Greenland and started a failed settlement on the eastern coast of Greenland. The colony struggled, Snæbjörn Galti was murdered, the settlement was abandoned, and only two colonists survived the return to Iceland.{{cite web |last=Carlson |first=Marc |date=31 July 2001 |title=History of Medieval Greenland |url=https://idrisi.narod.ru/mcarlson.htm |publisher=Self-published}} [https://cadre.okstate.edu/speaker-bios/marc-carlson.html Author biography].{{cite web |date=8 September 2001 |title=History |url=http://nat.is/greenlandeng/greenland_history.htm |website=NAT.IS|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010908014938/http://nat.is/greenlandeng/greenland_history.htm |archive-date=8 September 2001 }} Ívar Bárðarson, a Catholic priest sent to Greenland in 1341, wrote that the skerries were about "two days and two nights sailing due West" from Iceland and the halfway point on trips to the later more successful colonies on the western coast. After the end of the Medieval Warm Period, the area began to freeze over and became hazardous to ships.{{cite journal |last=Marcus |first=G. J. |date=1954 |title=The Greenland Trade-Route |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2591227 |journal=The Economic History Review |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=71–80 |jstor=2591227 |issn=0013-0117}}

According to the sagas, Erik the Red (Old Norse: Eiríkr rauði) was banished from Iceland for manslaughter, and sailed westward to the lands reported by Gunnbjorn. His crew continued past the skerries, down the coast of Greenland, and settled on an island near Tunulliarfik Fjord; he named the fjord Eiriksfjord after himself.{{cite encyclopedia |title=Erik the Red |encyclopedia=Brittanica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erik-the-Red |access-date=5 January 2025}} He remained for three years, explored the area, and decided to found a settlement.{{cite web |last=Anderson |first=Rasmus B. |date=18 February 2004 |editor-last=Hare |editor-first=John Bruno |title=Norse voyages in the tenth and following centuries |url=http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/nda/nda27.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200102155739/https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/nda/nda27.htm |archive-date=2 January 2020 |access-date=27 August 2008 |website=The Norse Discovery of America |orig-year=1906}}).{{cite web |last1=Reeves |first1=Arthur Middleton |author-link1=Arthur Middleton Reeves |last2=Anderson |first2=Rasmus B. |date=1906 |title=Discovery and colonization of Greenland |url=http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/nda/nda18.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200110123718/https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/nda/nda18.htm |archive-date=10 January 2020 |access-date=27 August 2008 |website=Saga of Erik the Red |quote=The first winter he was at Eriksey, nearly in the middle of the Eastern Settlement; the spring after repaired he to Eriksfjord, and took up there his abode. He removed in summer to the western settlement, and gave to many places names. He was the second winter at Holm in Hrafnsgnipa, but the third summer went he to Iceland, and came with his ship into Breidafjord.}} He named the area Greenland, and returned to Iceland to recruit settlers, promising tracts of land to his followers. Erik established his estate Brattahlíð along the inner reaches of Eiriksfjord.{{cite book |last=Wernick |first=Robert |title=The Vikings |date=1979 |publisher=Time-Life Books |isbn=978-0-8094-2709-3 |series=The Seafarers |location=Alexandria, Va}}

File:Eastern-settlement-eng.png on Greenland, covering approximately the modern municipality of Kujalleq. Eiriksfjord (Erik's fjord) and his farm Brattahlíð are shown, as is the location of the bishopric at Gardar.]]

Norse Greenland consisted of two main settlements. The Eastern Settlement was at the southwestern tip of Greenland, while the Western Settlement was about 500 km up the west coast, near present-day Nuuk.{{cite web |title=Abandonment of Norse Settlements in Greenland (c. 1450s) - Climate in Arts and History |url=https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/abandonment-of-norse-settlements/ |website=Climate in Arts and History |publisher=Smith College}} A smaller settlement later founded near the Eastern Settlement is sometimes considered the Middle Settlement.{{cite journal |last1=Edwards |first1=Kevin J |last2=Cook |first2=Gordon T |last3=Nyegaard |first3=Georg |last4=Schofield |first4=J Edward |date=2013 |title=Towards a First Chronology for the Middle Settlement of Norse Greenland: 14 C and Related Studies of Animal Bone and Environmental Material |journal=Radiocarbon |volume=55 |issue=1 |pages=13–29 |doi=10.2458/azu_js_rc.v55i1.16395 |bibcode=2013Radcb..55...13E |url=https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/85302/1/85302.pdf}} The combined population peaked around 2,000–3,000.{{cite journal |last=Lynnerup |first=Niels |date=2014 |title=Endperiod Demographics of the Greenland Norse |journal=Journal of the North Atlantic |volume=7 |issue=sp7 |pages=18–24 |doi=10.3721/037.002.sp702 |jstor=26671842 |s2cid=163050538}} At least 400 farms have been identified by archaeologists.

File:Hvalsey stables.jpg

Norse Greenlanders were limited to living along scattered fjords on the island that provided habitable land for their animals (such as cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, and cats) to be kept and farms to be established.{{cite journal |last=Pringle |first=Heather |date=14 February 1997 |title=Death in Norse Greenland |journal=Science |language=en |volume=275 |issue=5302 |pages=924–926 |doi=10.1126/science.275.5302.924 |issn=0036-8075 |s2cid=161540120}}{{cite journal |last1=Dugmore |first1=Andrew J. |last2=McGovern |first2=Thomas H. |last3=Vésteinsson |first3=Orri |last4=Arneborg |first4=Jette |last5=Streeter |first5=Richard |last6=Keller |first6=Christian |date=2012 |title=Cultural adaptation, compounding vulnerabilities and conjunctures in Norse Greenland |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |volume=109 |issue=10 |pages=3658–3663 |bibcode=2012PNAS..109.3658D |doi=10.1073/pnas.1115292109 |jstor=41507015 |pmc=3309771 |pmid=22371594 |doi-access=free}} In these fjords, the farms depended upon stables (byres) to host their livestock in the winter, and routinely culled their herds so that they could survive the season.{{cite journal |last=Berglund |first=Joel |date=1986 |title=The Decline of the Norse Settlements in Greenland |journal=Arctic Anthropology |volume=23 |issue=1/2 |pages=109–135 |jstor=40316106}} With the coming of the warmer season livestock were taken from their byres to pastures, the most fertile being controlled by the most powerful farms and the church.{{cite journal |last=McGovern |first=Thomas H. |date=1980 |title=Cows, Harp Seals, and Churchbells: Adaptation and Extinction in Norse Greenland |journal=Human Ecology |volume=8 |issue=3 |pages=245–275 |bibcode=1980HumEc...8..245M |doi=10.1007/bf01561026 |jstor=4602559 |s2cid=53964845}} What was produced by livestock and farming was supplemented with subsistence hunting of mainly seal and caribou as well as walrus for trade. The Norse mainly relied on the Nordrsetur hunt, a communal hunt of migratory harp seals in the spring.

There is evidence of Norse trade with the Thule, the ancestors of the Inuit, and the Beothuk, related to the Algonquin. The peoples were called the {{lang|non|Skrælingjar}} by the Norse. The Dorset people had withdrawn from Greenland before the Norse settlement of the island. Items such as comb fragments, pieces of iron cooking utensils and chisels, chess pieces, ship rivets, carpenter's planes, and oaken ship fragments used in Inuit boats have been found far beyond the traditional range of Norse colonization. A small ivory figurine that appears to represent a Norseman has also been found among the ruins of an Inuit community house.{{cite book |last=Wahlgren |first=Erik |url=https://archive.org/details/vikingsamerica00wahl |title=The Vikings and America |year=1986 |publisher=Thames and Hudson |isbn=0-500-02109-0 |location=New York |pages=19, 66, 97}}

Trade was highly important to the Greenland Norse, who relied on imports of lumber due to the barrenness of the land. In turn they exported goods such as walrus ivory and hide, polar bear skins, and narwhal tusks. Ultimately these exchanges were vulnerable as they relied on migratory patterns affected by climate changes as well as on the viability of the few fjords on the island. A portion of the time the Greenland settlements existed was during the Little Ice Age and the climate was, overall, becoming cooler and more humid. A cooling climate and increasing humidity brought more storms, longer winters and shorter springs, and affected the migratory patterns of the harp seal. Pasture space began to dwindle and fodder yields for the winter became much smaller. This combined with regular herd culling made it hard to maintain livestock, especially for the poorest of the Greenland Norse. Closer to the Eastern Settlement, temperatures remained stable but a prolonged drought reduced fodder production.{{cite journal |last1=Zhao |first1=Boyang |last2=Castañeda |first2=Isla S. |last3=Salacup |first3=Jeffrey M. |last4=Thomas |first4=Elizabeth K. |last5=Daniels |first5=William C. |last6=Schneider |first6=Tobias |last7=de Wet |first7=Gregory A. |last8=Bradley |first8=Raymond S. |date=25 March 2022 |title=Prolonged drying trend coincident with the demise of Norse settlement in southern Greenland |journal=Science Advances |publisher=American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) |volume=8 |issue=12 |pages=eabm4346 |bibcode=2022SciA....8M4346Z |doi=10.1126/sciadv.abm4346 |issn=2375-2548 |pmc=8942370 |pmid=35319972}} In spring, the voyages to where migratory harp seals could be found became more dangerous due to more frequent storms, and the lower population of harp seals meant that Nordrsetur hunts became less successful, making subsistence hunting extremely difficult. The strain on resources made trade difficult, and as time went on, Greenland exports lost value in the European market due to competing countries and the lack of interest in what was being traded. Trade in elephant ivory began competing with the trade in walrus tusks that provided income to Greenland, and there is evidence that walrus over-hunting, particularly of the males with larger tusks, led to walrus population declines.{{cite journal |last1=Barrett |first1=James H. |last2=Boessenkool |first2=Sanne |last3=Kneale |first3=Catherine J. |last4=O'Connell |first4=Tamsin C. |author-link4=Tamsin O'Connell |last5=Star |first5=Bastiaan |date=1 February 2020 |title=Ecological globalisation, serial depletion and the medieval trade of walrus rostra |journal=Quaternary Science Reviews |volume=229 |page=11 |bibcode=2020QSRv..22906122B |doi=10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.106122 |issn=0277-3791 |doi-access=free |hdl-access=free |hdl=2262/91845}}

File:Kat nr 059 Pinne av trä (kopia), från Danmark - KMB - 16000300015527.jpg{{efn|In memory of Gudveg who died at sea, it reads: "This woman, whose name was Gudveg, was laid overboard in the Greenland Sea."{{Citation |last=Niels |first=Lynnerup |title=The Greenland Norse |date=1998 |work=Monographs on Greenland |issue=24 |page=54}}}}]]

In 1126, the population requested a bishop (headquartered at a bishopric established in Garðar), and in 1261, they accepted the overlordship of the Norwegian king. They continued to have their own law and became almost completely politically independent after 1349, the time of the Black Death. In 1380, the Kingdom of Norway entered into a personal union with the Kingdom of Denmark.

The settlements began to decline in the 14th century. The Western Settlement was abandoned around 1350. Less is known about life in the Middle Settlement, but radiocarbon dating indicates that it was likely inhabited for most of the period that the Eastern Settlement was inhabited, and archaeologists have found evidence of one house in use potentially as late as 1409. It is probable that the Eastern Settlement was defunct by the late 15th century. The most recent radiocarbon date found in Norse settlements as of 2002 was 1430 (±15 years). The last bishop at Garðar died in 1377. After a marriage was recorded in 1408, no written records mention the settlers.{{cite journal |last1=Dugmore |first1=Andrew J. |last2=Keller |first2=Christian |last3=McGovern |first3=Thomas H. |date=2007 |title=Norse Greenland Settlement: Reflections on Climate Change, Trade, and the Contrasting Fates or Human Settlements in the North Atlantic Islands |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40316683 |url-status=live |journal=Arctic Anthropology |volume=44 |issue=1 |pages=12–36 |doi=10.1353/arc.2011.0038 |issn=0066-6939 |jstor=40316683 |pmid=21847839 |s2cid=10030083 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220227031758/https://www.jstor.org/stable/40316683 |archive-date=27 February 2022 |access-date=27 February 2022|url-access=subscription }} Several theories have been advanced to explain the decline.{{cite news |last1=Barras |first1=Colin |title=Greenland's Vikings May Have Vanished Because They Ran out of Water |url=https://www.science.org/content/article/greenland-s-vikings-may-have-vanished-because-they-ran-out-water |website=Science |language=en |date=23 March 2022}}

File:Dorset,_Norse,_and_Thule_cultures_900-1500.svg (900 to 1500)]]

The Little Ice Age of this period would have made travel between Greenland and Europe, as well as farming, more difficult. Although the hunting of seal and other animals provided a healthy diet, there was more prestige in cattle farming, and there was increased availability of farms in Scandinavian countries depopulated by famine and plague epidemics.{{cite web |last=Stockinger |first=Günther |date=10 January 2012 |title=Archaeologists Uncover Clues to Why Vikings Abandoned Greenland |url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/archaeologists-uncover-clues-to-why-vikings-abandoned-greenland-a-876626.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190928002823/https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/archaeologists-uncover-clues-to-why-vikings-abandoned-greenland-a-876626.html |archive-date=28 September 2019 |access-date=12 January 2013 |publisher=Der Spiegel Online}} In addition, Greenlandic ivory may have been supplanted in European markets by cheaper ivory from Africa.{{cite journal |last=Seaver |first=Kirsten A. |date=2009 |title=Desirable Teeth: the Medieval Trade in Arctic and African Ivory |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-global-history/article/abs/desirable-teeth-the-medieval-trade-in-arctic-and-african-ivory/50BFF0443A3CF1EB2C011672D54BAC76 |journal=Journal of Global History |publisher=Cambridge University Press |volume=4 |pages=271–292 |doi=10.1017/S1740022809003155 |s2cid=153720935 |number=2}} Despite the loss of contact with the Greenlanders, the Norwegian-Danish crown continued to consider Greenland a dependency.{{cite web |last1=Brimnes |first1=Niels |title=The Colonialism of Denmark-Norway and Its Legacies |url=https://nordics.info/show/artikel/the-colonialism-of-denmark-norway-and-its-legacies |website=nordics.info |publisher=Aarhus University |language=en |date=7 January 2021}}

Not knowing whether the old Norse civilization remained in Greenland or not—and worried that if it did, it would still be Catholic 200 years after the Scandinavian homelands had undergone the Reformation—a joint merchant-clerical expedition led by the Norwegian missionary Hans Egede was sent to Greenland in 1721.{{cite book |last=Nedkvitne |first=Arnved |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Xs5wDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT14 |title=Norse Greenland: Viking Peasants in the Arctic |date=2018 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-351-25958-3 |access-date=19 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502033137/https://books.google.com/books?id=Xs5wDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT14 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |url-status=live}} Though this expedition found no surviving Europeans, it marked the beginning of Denmark's re-assertion of sovereignty over the island.{{cite book |last=Stern |first=Pamela |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y85JEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT179 |title=The Inuit World |date=2021 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-000-45613-4 |pages=179–182 |access-date=19 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502033135/https://books.google.com/books?id=Y85JEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT179 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |url-status=live}}

File:Wikingerkleidung.JPG

To some extent, it seemed that the Norse were unwilling to integrate with the Thule people of Greenland, through either marriage or culture. There is evidence of contact as seen through the Thule archaeological record, including ivory depictions of the Norse as well as bronze and steel artifacts. In the 20th century, there was little evidence for Thule artifacts among Norse habitations, however it is now known that Thule artifacts are found among Norse habitations, indicating that both groups acquired material goods from each other.{{cite book |last=Paterson |first=Alistair |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=weFmDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA57 |title=A Millennium of Cultural Contact |date=16 June 2016 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-315-43572-5 |page=57 |language=en |access-date=3 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230704004454/https://books.google.com/books?id=weFmDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA57 |archive-date=4 July 2023 |url-status=live}} The older research posited that it was not climate change alone that led to Norse decline, but also their unwillingness to adapt. For example, if the Norse had decided to focus their subsistence hunting on the ringed seal (which could be hunted year round, though individually), and decided to reduce or do away with their communal hunts, food would have been much less scarce during the winter season.{{cite journal |last=McGovern |first=Thomas H. |date=1991 |title=Climate, Correlation, and Causation in Norse Greenland |journal=Arctic Anthropology |volume=28 |issue=2 |pages=77–100 |jstor=40316278}} Also, had Norse individuals used skins instead of wool for their clothing, they would have fared better nearer to the coast, and would not have been as confined to the fjords.

However, more recent research has shown that the Norse did try to adapt in their own ways. This included increased subsistence hunting. A significant number of bones of marine animals can be found at the settlements, suggesting increased hunting with the absence of farmed food. In addition, pollen records show that the Norse did not always devastate the small forests and foliage, as previously thought. Instead they ensured that overgrazed or overused sections were given time to regrow and moved to other areas. Norse farmers also attempted to adapt; with the increased need for winter fodder and smaller pastures, they would self-fertilize their lands to try to keep up with the new demands caused by the changing climate.{{cite web |last=Kintisch |first=Eli |date=10 November 2016 |title=Why did Greenland's Vikings disappear? |url=https://www.science.org/content/article/why-did-greenland-s-vikings-disappear |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211111131631/https://www.science.org/content/article/why-did-greenland-s-vikings-disappear |archive-date=11 November 2021 |access-date=21 May 2022 |website=Science.org |language=en}} However, even with these attempts, climate change was not the only thing putting pressure on the Greenland Norse. The economy was changing, and the exports they relied on were losing value. Current research suggests that the Norse were unable to maintain their settlements because of economic and climatic change happening at the same time.

A 2022 study indicates that gravitational effects from a readvance of the Southern Greenland Ice Sheet caused a relative sea level rise of "up to ~3.3 m outside the glaciation zone during Viking settlement, producing shoreline retreat of hundreds of meters. Sea-level rise was progressive and encompassed the entire Eastern Settlement. Moreover, pervasive flooding would have forced abandonment of many coastal sites. These processes likely contributed to the suite of vulnerabilities that led to Viking abandonment of Greenland. Sea-level change thus represents an integral, missing element of the Viking story."{{cite journal |last1=Borreggine |first1=Marisa |last2=Latychev |first2=Konstantin |last3=Coulson |first3=Sophie |last4=Powell |first4=Evelyn |last5=Mitrovica |first5=Jerry |last6=Milne |first6=Glenn |last7=Alley |first7=Richard |date=17 April 2023 |title=Sea-level rise in Southwest Greenland as a contributor to Viking abandonment |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |volume=120 |issue=17 |pages=e2209615120 |bibcode=2023PNAS..12009615B |doi=10.1073/pnas.2209615120 |doi-access=free |pmc=10151458 |pmid=37068242 |s2cid=258189345}}

File:Authentic Viking recreation.jpg listed L'Anse aux Meadows site in Newfoundland, Canada. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that iron working, carpentry, and boat repair were conducted at the site.{{cite web |last=Wallace |first=Birgitta |title=L'Anse aux Meadows |url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/lanse-aux-meadows |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210227064113/https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/lanse-aux-meadows |archive-date=27 February 2021 |access-date=4 June 2020 |website=The Canadian Encyclopedia}}]]

Greenland lacked natural resources like forests and iron ore. The Greenlanders' oral history, recorded in the Saga of the Greenlanders and Saga of Erik the Red, mentions several places to the south or west that could supplement what was available on Greenland, notably Markland, Helluland, and Vinland.{{cite book |last1=Barnes |first1=Geraldine |title=Viking America: The First Millennium |year=2001 |publisher=Boydell & Brewer |isbn=978-0-85991-608-0 |page=xiii |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=foQE_G3XL6AC&pg=PR13}} There is generally believed to be a historical basis for Norse voyages to these places, despite some fantastical elements in the sagas such as Great Ireland and the uniped who kills Thorvald Asvaldsson in Vinland.{{cite book |last=Jones |first=Gwyn |title=The Norse Atlantic saga: being the Norse voyages of discovery and settlement to Iceland, Greenland, and North America |date=1986 |publisher=Oxford Univ. Pr |isbn=9780192158864 |edition=New and enl. |location=Oxford |pages=184–185}} In Adam of Bremen's 11th-century chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, he briefly mentions Greenland and islands beyond Norway including one "called Vinland".

{{efn

|"In the ocean there are very many other islands of which not the least is Greenland, situated far out in the ocean opposite the mountains of Sweden and the Rhiphaean range. [...] He spoke also of yet another island of the many found in that ocean. It is called Vinland because vines producing excellent wine grow wild there. That unsown crops also abound on that island we have ascertained not from fabulous reports but from the trustworthy relation of the Danes. Beyond that island, he said, no habitable land is found in that ocean, but every place beyond it is full of impenetrable ice and intense darkness."{{cite book |last=von Bremen |first=Adam |url=https://archive.org/details/historyofarchbis00adam_0 |title=History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen |date=2002 |publisher=Columbia University Press |location=New York |pages=218–219}} Translated by Francis J. Tschan.

}}{{cite book |last1=Bartusik |first1=Grzegorz |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0Yh0EAAAQBAJ |title=Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum: Origins, Reception and Significance |last2=Biskup |first2=Radosław |last3=Morawiec |first3=Jakub |date=29 July 2022 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-000-61038-3 |page=89 |language=en}} Icelandic annals record that, in 1347, a ship arrived from Greenland that had drifted off course while sailing to Markland for wood.{{cite journal |last=Guðmundsdóttir |first=Lísabet |date=April 2023 |title=Timber imports to Norse Greenland: lifeline or luxury? |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/timber-imports-to-norse-greenland-lifeline-or-luxury/DDE8F93A03FF674195796FAED57A020E |journal=Antiquity |language=en |volume=97 |issue=392 |pages=454–471 |doi=10.15184/aqy.2023.13 |issn=0003-598X|url-access=subscription }} A 13th-century Icelandic description of the world gives the rough order of the lands described in the sagas as Greenland, Helluland, Markland, and Vinland, which the author suspected was part of Africa.{{efn

|"In the outermost part of Italy, we find Apulia, which northern peoples call Pulsland. In middle Italy lies Romaborg. North in Italy is Langobardia, which we call Langbardaland. North of the mountains in the east, lies Saxland, and to the southwest, Fracland. Hyspania, which we refer to as Spanland, is a grand kingdom to the south, stretching down to the Mediterranean, between Langbardaland and Fracland. Rin [the Rhine] is a huge river running from Mundia in the north, in between Saxland and Fracland. Near the mouth of the Rhine lies Frisland, to the north by the sea. North of Saxland we find Danmork. The ocean swells into Austrveg (Østersjøen) by Denmark. Sviþjóð is east of Denmark; Noregr to the north. In the north of Norway lies Finnmörk. From here the coast bends towards the northeast and then to the east to Bjarmaland, which pays taxes to the kings of Garda. From Bjarmaland there is unbuilt land (löndobygd) stretching north up to where Grænland begins. Past Grænland, to the south, is Helluland, past which lies Markland, and from there it is not far to Vinland, which some people still believe is connected to Africa. England and Scotland are one island, but each a kingdom of their own. Írland is a great island. Ísland is also a large island, north of Ireland. All these countries belong to the part of the world called Europe."{{cite archive |first= |last= |item=Encyclopedia; Iceland |item-url=https://handrit.is/manuscript/view/en/AM04-0736-I |type=Geographical Treatise |item-id=AM 736 I 4to |date=1300–1360 |page= |pages=15v—17r, NKS 359 4to, 16-26 |fonds= |series= |file= |box= |collection=Safn Árna Magnússonar |collection-url=https://handrit.is/manuscript/list/collection/Acc |repository=Den Arnamagnæanske Samling |institution=The Arnamagnæan Institute |location=Copenhagen |oclc= |accession= }}{{cite web |last=Bandlien |first=Bjørn |title=AM 736 I 4to - English translation |url=https://www.academia.edu/43790593}}

}} In Europe, several medieval works reproduced this general description in cities as far away as Milan, where Dominican chronicler Galvano Fiamma mentioned terra que dicitur Marckalada 'the land called Markland' west of Greenland circa 1345.{{cite journal |last=Chiesa |first=Paolo |date=4 May 2021 |title=Marckalada: The First Mention of America in the Mediterranean Area (c. 1340) |journal=Terrae Incognitae |volume=53 |issue=2 |pages=88–106 |doi=10.1080/00822884.2021.1943792|hdl=2434/860960 |hdl-access=free }} Where these places would correspond to in modern-day Canada is still debated. Greenland colonists used timber for their boats and homes, so they likely made many unrecorded trips south for wood. Microscopic analysis of the materials used at 5 Norse sites on Greenland, shows that many families relied on driftwood and the sparse local trees, while the larger farms sourced lumber from Europe and North America.

Bog iron was widely used and smelted in forges on Greenland, but because no ores were present near the Eastern or Western Settlements, the iron had to be shipped from Labrador, Newfoundland, Iceland, or Europe. One indicator that iron was being extracted from North America rather than imported from the east was the usage of porous iron and slag blooms. Iron shipped from the east would have likely been products (tools, nails, axes) or iron bars.

There is one confirmed Norse settlement in modern-day Canada, L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.{{cite journal |last1=Kuitems |first1=Margot |last2=Wallace |first2=Birgitta L. |last3=Lindsay |first3=Charles |last4=Scifo |first4=Andrea |last5=Doeve |first5=Petra |last6=Jenkins |first6=Kevin |last7=Lindauer |first7=Susanne |last8=Erdil |first8=Pınar |last9=Ledger |first9=Paul M. |last10=Forbes |first10=Véronique |last11=Vermeeren |first11=Caroline |last12=Friedrich |first12=Ronny |last13=Dee |first13=Michael W. |date=January 2022 |title=Evidence for European presence in the Americas in ad 1021 |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03972-8 |journal=Nature |language=en |volume=601 |issue=7893 |pages=388–391 |doi=10.1038/s41586-021-03972-8 |pmid=34671168 |bibcode=2022Natur.601..388K |issn=1476-4687|pmc=8770119 }} A ruined stone and sod building at Tanfield Valley on Baffin Island may have been a medieval Norse home. It contained whet stones that had been used to sharpen copper-alloy blades. The Indigenous Dorset cold-hammered copper as well as meteoric iron, but did not smelt metals.{{cite web |last=Jolicoeur |first=Patrick |date=4 March 2015 |title=Dorset Culture |url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/dorset-culture |website=The Canadian Encyclopedia |publisher=Historica Canada |language=en}} Dating the Tanfield Valley site is complicated by it having been inhabited and abandoned multiple times.{{cite conference |last=Sutherland |first=Patricia |author-link=Patricia Sutherland |date=2000 |editor-last=Appelt |editor-first=Martin |editor2-last=Berglund |editor2-first=Joel |editor3-last=Gulløv |editor3-first=Hans Christian |title=Strands of Culture Contact: Dorset-Norse Interactions in the Canadian Eastern Arctic |url=https://www.historymuseum.ca/learn/research/resources-for-scholars/essays/dorset-norse-interactions-in-the-canadian-eastern-arctic/ |location=Copenhagen, Denmark |publisher=The Danish National Museum & Danish Polar Center |pages=159–169 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181204073956/https://www.historymuseum.ca/learn/research/resources-for-scholars/essays/dorset-norse-interactions-in-the-canadian-eastern-arctic/ |archive-date=4 December 2018 |access-date=19 December 2018 |book-title=Identities and Cultural Contacts in the Arctic: Proceedings from a Conference at the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen, 30 November to 2 December 1999 |url-status=live}}{{cite web |title=Strangers, Partners, Neighbors? Helluland Archaeology Project: Recent Finds |url=https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/archeo/helluland/str0301e.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181203230055/https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/archeo/helluland/str0301e.html |archive-date=3 December 2018 |access-date=19 December 2018 |publisher=Canadian Museum of History}} No settlements have been found in mainland Canada. No Norse materials have been recovered from excavations in mainland Labrador, which implies a lack of trading and a low likelihood for larger Norse sites south of Newfoundland.{{cite book |last=Fitzhugh |first=William W. |url=https://archive.org/details/vikingsnorthatla00fitz |title=Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga |date=2000 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Press |editor-last=Fitzhugh |editor-first=William W. |location=Washington, DC |pages=11–26 |chapter=Puffins, Ringed Pins, and Runestones: The Viking Passage to America |editor-last2=Ward |editor-first2=Elisabeth}} Surveys in the 1970s and 1980s could find no evidence of Norse settlements on the coasts of modern-day Quebec.

Historians have found that the Greenlanders had limited incentives and capabilities to expand south into a long-term colony in Canada.{{cite web |title=Where is Vinland? |url=https://canadianmysteries.ca/sites/vinland/othermysteries/whydidtheyleave/4067en.html |website=canadianmysteries.ca |language=en}} Population pressure was one of the factors that affected migrations out of Scandinavia and medieval Iceland, where as many as 70,000 Icelanders competed for limited resources. The same pressure never manifested in Greenland. The population gradually rose from a few hundred to a few thousand before populations declined across the North Atlantic due largely to climate change. During the period when temperatures dropped, the Black Death halved the populations of the colonists' trading partners in Iceland and Europe.{{cite journal |last=Lynnerup |first=Niels |date=2014 |title=Endperiod demographics of the Greenland Norse |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26671842 |journal=Journal of the North Atlantic |volume=7 |pages=18–24 |doi=10.3721/037.002.sp702 |jstor=26671842 |issn=1935-1984|url-access=subscription }}{{cite journal |last=Wallace |first=Birgitta |date=2009 |title=L'Anse aux Meadows, Leif Eriksson's Home in Vinland |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26686942 |journal=Journal of the North Atlantic |volume=201 |pages=114–125 |doi=10.3721/037.002.s212 |jstor=26686942 |issn=1935-1984|url-access=subscription }}

File:L'Anse aux Meadows map.png in Newfoundland]]

Evidence of the Norse west of Greenland came in the 1960s when archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad and author Helge Ingstad excavated a Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. They found a bronze, ring-headed pin like those the Norse used to fasten their cloaks inside the cooking pit of one of the larger dwellings. A stone oil lamp and a small spindle whorl, used to maintain the spindle's speed of rotation while spinning fiber, were found inside another building. A fragment of a bone needle was discovered in the firepit of a third dwelling. It may have been used for nålebinding, a needlework technique that predated knitting.{{cite web |last1=Wallace |first1=Birgitta |title=L'Anse aux Meadows |url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/lanse-aux-meadows |website=The Canadian Encyclopedia |publisher=Historica Canada |access-date=11 March 2025 |language=en |date=2025 |orig-date=2006}} A small, decorated brass fragment, once gilded, was also discovered. Much slag formed as a by-product from the smelting and working of iron was found on the site along with many iron boat nails or rivets.{{cite book |last1=Mueller-Vollmer |first1=Tristan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MtljEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA29 |title=Vikings: An Encyclopedia of Conflict, Invasions, and Raids |last2=Wolf |first2=Kirsten |date=2022 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-4408-7730-8 |pages=29–30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502033142/https://books.google.com/books?id=MtljEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA29 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |url-status=live}}

The site is different from the colonies in Greenland; it was not a permanent continuous settlement. Archaeologists have found no burials, no farmland, no stables for livestock, and a near absence of soapstone, which was widely used by the Greenlanders for household tools.{{cite book |last=Barraclough |first=Eleanor Rosamund |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AMJLDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA129 |title=Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-19-100448-3 |pages=99, 129 |access-date=23 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230425150132/https://books.google.com/books?id=AMJLDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA129 |archive-date=25 April 2023 |url-status=live}}{{cite journal |last1=Ledger |first1=Paul M. |last2=Girdland-Flink |first2=Linus |last3=Forbes |first3=Véronique |date=30 July 2019 |title=New horizons at L'Anse aux Meadows |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |volume=116 |issue=31 |pages=15341–15343 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1907986116|doi-access=free |pmid=31308231 |pmc=6681721 |bibcode=2019PNAS..11615341L |hdl=2164/13524 |hdl-access=free }}

Birgitta Wallace has said that location of the site and the type of buildings present "suggests that seafaring was the most important function of the settlement." The buildings include several large living halls and specialized workshops including one for boat repair and construction. According to historian Eleanor Barraclough, one major purpose of the site was boat repair.{{cite web |date=30 March 2017 |title=L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site |url=https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/lhn-nhs/nl/meadows/visit/cartes-maps |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190109062153/https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/lhn-nhs/nl/meadows/visit/cartes-maps |archive-date=9 January 2019 |access-date=8 January 2019 |publisher=Parks Canada |quote=Smelting hut—this small isolated building contained a furnace for producing iron from bog ore. A simple smelter stood in the middle of the floor. A charcoal kiln was nearby. The amount and type of slag found suggests that a single smelt took place. Very little iron was manufactured, only enough for making about 100 to 200 nails.}} The land is bare and open now, but it was forested during the time the Norse were active.{{cite book |last1=Ingstad |first1=Helge |author-link1=Helge Ingstad |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gj-I5hdpzGoC&pg=PP1 |title=The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland |last2=Ingstad |first2=Anne Stine |author-link2=Anne Stine Ingstad |publisher=Breakwater Books |year=2000 |isbn=978-1-55081-158-2 |page=135 |access-date=23 December 2017 |orig-year=1991}} The presence of wood and nuts from the Juglans cinerea walnut tree, which grows wild on the continental mainland but not Newfoundland itself, indicates that the site was used as a staging area for further voyages.{{cite journal |last=Wallace |first=Birgitta |date=2003 |title=The Norse in Newfoundland:: L'Anse aux Meadows and Vinland |url=https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/nflds19_1art02 |journal=Newfoundland Studies |language=en |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=5–43 |issn=0823-1737}}

It's unlikely that there were any permanent settlements on the scale of L'Anse aux Meadows on Newfoundland or in nearby areas of Canada. The sailing season from Greenland was short, the voyage was long, and Greenland had a limited population for further colonies.{{cite book |editor-last1=Stull |editor-first1=Scott D. |last=Wallace |first=Birgitta |chapter=Colonizers or Exploiters: the Norse in Vinland |title=From West to East: Current Approaches to Medieval Archaeology |date=1 April 2015 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |isbn=978-1-4438-7673-5 |pages=53–54 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tgznBwAAQBAJ |language=en}} L'Anse aux Meadows itself may have drawn 10 to 20 percent of the total Greenland colonists; the communal living halls could hold from 30 to 160 people.{{cite book |last=Kolodny |first=Annette |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B2qpdOb8o4cC&pg=PA95 |title=In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery |publisher=Duke University Press |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-8223-5286-0 |page=95 |access-date=22 September 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230425150136/https://books.google.com/books?id=B2qpdOb8o4cC&pg=PA95 |archive-date=25 April 2023 |url-status=live}} Point Rosee was identified by archaeologist Sarah Parcak as a possible Norse settlement based on near-infrared satellite images and high-resolution aerial photographs, but archaeological excavations in 2015 and 2016 showed no signs of Norse occupation.{{cite news |first=Holly |last=McKenzie-Sutter |date=31 May 2018 |title=No Viking presence in southern Newfoundland after all, American researcher finds |url=http://www.timescolonist.com/no-viking-presence-in-southern-newfoundland-after-all-american-researcher-finds-1.23320719 |publisher=The Canadian Press |access-date=18 June 2018 |quote=An archaeological report presented to the provincial government says there are no signs of a Norse presence in the Point Rosee area in the Codroy Valley. The report on the archaeological work carried out in the area in 2015 and 2016 failed to turn up any signs of Norse occupation, with "no clear evidence" of human occupation before 1800. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180618203935/http://www.timescolonist.com/no-viking-presence-in-southern-newfoundland-after-all-american-researcher-finds-1.23320719 |archive-date=18 June 2018 |url-status=dead}}

Trees at L'Anse aux Meadows were felled by the Norse in 1021.{{cite magazine |last=Handwerk |first=Brian |title=New Dating Method Shows Vikings Occupied Newfoundland in 1021 C.E. |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-dating-method-shows-vikings-occupied-newfoundland-in-1021-ce-180978903/ |magazine=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en}} Chunks of wood from the site were dated in 2021 using the 993–994 carbon-14 spike and tree rings.{{cite journal |last1=Kuitems |first1=Margot |last2=Wallace |first2=Birgitta L. |last3=Lindsay |first3=Charles |last4=Scifo |first4=Andrea |last5=Doeve |first5=Petra |last6=Jenkins |first6=Kevin |last7=Lindauer |first7=Susanne |last8=Erdil |first8=Pınar |last9=Ledger |first9=Paul M. |last10=Forbes |first10=Véronique |last11=Vermeeren |first11=Caroline |date=20 October 2021 |title=Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 |journal=Nature |language=en |volume=601 |issue=7893 |pages=388–391 |bibcode=2022Natur.601..388K |doi=10.1038/s41586-021-03972-8 |issn=1476-4687 |pmc=8770119 |pmid=34671168 |s2cid=239051036 |quote=Our result of AD 1021 for the cutting year constitutes the only secure calendar date for the presence of Europeans across the Atlantic before the voyages of Columbus. Moreover, the fact that our results, on three different trees, converge on the same year is notable and unexpected. This coincidence strongly suggests Norse activity at L'Anse aux Meadows in AD 1021. In addition, our research demonstrates the potential of the AD 993 anomaly in atmospheric 14C concentrations for pinpointing the ages of past migrations and cultural interactions.}} This provided the first certain date for the Norse presence at the site.{{cite journal |last=Price |first=Michael |date=20 October 2021 |title=First Viking settlement in North America dated to exactly 1000 years ago |url=https://www.science.org/content/article/first-viking-settlement-north-america-dated-exactly-1000-years-ago |journal=Science |language=en |doi=10.1126/science.acx9403|url-access=subscription }} Although not inhabited for long stretches of time, the site may have been used as late as 1145 AD. When they left, the Norse intentionally and deliberately abandoned the site, leaving behind no tools and mostly waste.{{cite book |last=Richards |first=J. D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FOkRDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA112 |title=The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-19-280607-9 |pages=112–113 |doi=10.1093/actrade/9780192806079.003.0011}}

{{Location map+|Canada Baffin Island|width=250|float=right |marksize=6|relief=1 |caption=Locations of possible Norse artifacts or ruins on Baffin Island

|places={{Location map~|Canada Baffin Island|lat_dir=N|lat_deg=72|lat_min=42|lon_dir=W|lon_deg=77|lon_min=57|position=top|background=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5)|label=Nunguvik|marksize=10}}

{{Location map~|Canada Baffin Island|lat_dir=N|lat_deg=62|lat_min=78|lon_dir=W|lon_deg=65|lon_min=48|position=top|background=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5)|label=Willows Island|marksize=10}}

{{Location map~|Canada Baffin Island|lat_dir=N|lat_deg=62|lat_min=39|lon_dir=W|lon_deg=69|lon_min=34|position=top|background=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5)|label=Nanook|marksize=10}}

}}

By 2012, Canadian researchers identified possible signs of Norse outposts from several areas on and around Baffin Island, notably possible Norse artifacts at the Nanook site in Tanfield Valley.{{cite web |last=Pringle |first=Heather |date=19 October 2012 |title=Evidence of Viking Outpost Found in Canada |url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121019-viking-outpost-second-new-canada-science-sutherland/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160517220110/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121019-viking-outpost-second-new-canada-science-sutherland/ |archive-date=17 May 2016 |access-date=28 January 2013 |website=National Geographic News |publisher=National Geographic Society}}{{cite journal |last=Pringle |first=Heather |date=November 2012 |title=Vikings and Native Americans |url=http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/vikings-and-indians/pringle-text |url-status=dead |journal=National Geographic |volume=221 |issue=11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180119110451/http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/vikings-and-indians/pringle-text |archive-date=19 January 2018 |access-date=28 January 2013}}{{cite news |last=The Nature of Things |author-link=The Nature of Things |date=22 November 2012 |title=The Norse: An Arctic Mystery |url=http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/the-norse-an-arctic-mystery.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121127184750/http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episode/the-norse-an-arctic-mystery.html |archive-date=27 November 2012 |access-date=29 January 2013 |publisher=CBC Television}} They also suspected yarn from Willows Island and Nunguvik (near Pond Inlet) to be Norse, but these were not corroborated by later dating methods. Despite early theories that the Norse introduced the practice of spinning thread to the native peoples, a 2018 study demonstrated an Indigenous spinning tradition. The study employed a new dating technique to separate oils that could potentially contaminate the spun fibers and corrupt the results.{{cite news |last=Lynn |first=Desjardins |date=27 July 2018 |title=Ancient Arctic People Spun Yarn Before Vikings |url=https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2018/07/27/indigenous-norse-spinning-archeology/ |work=RCI}} On Willows Island, archaeological sites contained strands of Dorset yarn spun between 15 BC and 725 AD possibly from Arctic hare or muskox. This predates all known European arrivals. Unlike European cordage, the Dorset yarn was spun at a consistent diameter and was never woven into fabric.{{cite news |date=24 July 2018 |title=Groundbreaking Research in Archaeology |url=https://hma.brown.edu/news/2018-07-24/archaeology-research |work=Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology |publisher=Brown University}}

A team led by archaeologist Patricia Sutherland excavated a ruined stone and sod building in Tanfield Valley and found a range of artifacts that indicate a possible Viking presence on the island. Moreau Maxwell had begun a dig in the 1960s and described the structure as "very difficult to interpret". Due to the presence of artifacts on the island that have a possible Norse origin, Sutherland suspected the building itself was Norse. Spun cordage found on Baffin Island in the 1980s and stored at the Canadian Museum of Civilization led to a more comprehensive exploration of the Tanfield Valley archaeological site for points of contact between Norse Greenlanders and the Indigenous Dorset people. At the site, Sutherland's team found whet-stones used to sharpen blades. They analyzed the metal fragments still in the whet-stone and found bronze, an alloy used by the Norse but unknown to the native peoples. They also found stones cut in a European fashion, Old World rat fur, and whalebone shovels similar to those used on Greenland. While there are indicators of an early Viking presence, radiocarbon dating could not conclusively identify the site as it had been occupied and abandoned several times, with the earliest material culture dating to before the arrival of the Vikings.

A stone crucible was found at the Nanook site in 2014. The crucible used very high heat to melt down metal alloys like bronze. Indigenous North Americans did not practice this type of metal-working, but the Norse regularly did. Radiocarbon dating placed it between 754 BC and 1367 AD. Sutherland said, "It may be the earliest evidence of high-temperature nonferrous metalworking in North America to the north of what is now Mexico."{{cite news |last= |date=16 December 2014 |title=Scientists Find Evidence of Viking Presence in Arctic Canada |url=https://www.sci.news/archaeology/science-viking-presence-arctic-canada-02349.html |work=Sci.News}}

{{Location map

|Canada Newfoundland and Labrador

|width=250

|float=right

|marksize=6

|lat = 60.0636

|long = -64.13084

|label = Avayalik Islands

|background=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5)

|label_size = 130

|caption = Avayalik Islands off the coast of Labrador

}}

When Martin Frobisher explored Labrador in the 1570s, the native peoples had an oral history of people they called kablunat ('white men') whose behaviors and customs resembled those of the Norse. The colonists in Greenland regularly used timber for houses and boats, and the most viable logging sites from Greenland were the heavily forested coasts of northern Labrador.{{cite book |last=Sutherland |first=Patricia D. |url=https://archive.org/details/vikingsnorthatla00fitz |title=Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga |date=2000 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Press |editor-last=Fitzhugh |editor-first=William W. |location=Washington, DC |pages=11–26 |chapter=The Norse and Native North Americans |editor-last2=Ward |editor-first2=Elisabeth}} Labrador also contained bog iron ore and nearby timber to supply charcoal as fuel for its smelting.

The Dorset culture extended down to the northern edge of Labrador.{{cite book |last1=Odess |first1=Daniel |url=https://archive.org/details/vikingsnorthatla00fitz |title=Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga |last2=Loring |first2=Stephen |last3=Fitzhugh |first3=William W. |date=2000 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Press |isbn=978-1-56098-970-7 |editor-last=Fitzhugh |editor-first=William W. |location=Washington |pages=193–206 |chapter=Skraeling: First Peoples of Markland, Helluland, and Vinland |editor-last2=Ward |editor-first2=Elisabeth I.}} The Native Americans who inhabited the southern portion were the ancestors of the Innu; they would have spoken one of the Algonquian languages and were possibly related to the Indigenous Beothuk of Newfoundland.{{cite web |date=2021 |orig-date=2009 |title=Precontact Innu Land Use |url=https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/indigenous/innu-land-use.php |website=Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage |publisher=Memorial University of Newfoundland}} Archaeologists refer to them as the "Point Revenge" culture.{{cite web |last=Pastore |first=Ralph |date=2021 |orig-date=1998 |title=Post-Contact Beothuk History |url=https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/indigenous/beothuk-history.php |website=Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage |publisher=Memorial University of Newfoundland}} At the Sandnæs farmstead in Greenland, arrowheads were found that resembled nothing in Norse culture but matched the arrows used by the Point Revenge peoples.

On the Avayalik Islands, off the very northern tip of Labrador, Patricia Sutherland found yarn being excavated that was distinct from the sinew-based cordage typically used by Indigenous arctic hunters. Later dating showed that it predated the Norse arrival.{{cite journal |last=Park |first=Robert W. |date=1 March 2008 |title=Contact Between the Norse Vikings and the Dorset Culture in Arctic Canada |journal=Antiquity |volume=82 |issue=315 |pages=189–198 |doi=10.1017/S0003598X0009654X}}{{cite journal |last1=Smith |first1=Michèle Hayeur |last2=Smith |first2=Kevin P. |last3=Nilsen |first3=Gørill |date=August 2018 |title=Dorset, Norse, or Thule? Technological Transfers, Marine Mammal Contamination, and AMS Dating of Spun Yarn and Textiles from the Eastern Canadian Arctic |journal=Journal of Archaeological Science |volume=96 |pages=162–174 |doi=10.1016/j.jas.2018.06.005|bibcode=2018JArSc..96..162H |hdl=10037/14501 |hdl-access=free }} Analysis of the yarn showed evidence for the Dorset spinning their own cordage and trading in a network that included the Norse, but not for a Norse settlement on the island.{{cite conference |last=Pinard |first=Claude |date=2008 |title=Review of Dynamics of Northern Societies: Proceedings of the SILA/NABO Conference on Arctic and North Atlantic Archaeology. Greenland Research Centre, National Museum of Denmark, Studies in Archaeology and History Vol. 10 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41103615 |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=168–170 |journal=Canadian Journal of Archaeology |jstor=41103615 }} Norse materials have not been found in Native American archaeological sites in mainland Labrador, which indicates a lack of trading and a low possibility that Norse sites as large as L'Anse aux Meadows will be found south of Newfoundland. Patrick Plumet led many coastal surveys west of Labrador in the Ungava Bay during the 1970s and 1980s but found no evidence of Norse settlements.{{cite book |last=Seaver |first=Kirsten A. |url=https://archive.org/details/vikingsnorthatla00fitz |title=Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga |date=2000 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Press |editor-last=Fitzhugh |editor-first=William W. |location=Washington, DC |pages=270–279 |chapter=Unanswered Questions |editor-last2=Ward |editor-first2=Elisabeth}}

{{Main|Vinland|Vinland sagas}}

According to the Icelandic sagas{{mdash}}Saga of Erik the Red,{{cite news |last=Sephton |first=J. |date=1880 |title=The Saga of Erik the Red |url=http://sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160504211747/http://sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en |archive-date=4 May 2016 |access-date=11 August 2010 |work=Icelandic Saga Database}} plus chapters of the Hauksbók and the Flatey Book{{mdash}}the Norse started to explore lands to the west of Greenland only a few years after the Greenland settlements were established. In 985, while sailing from Iceland to Greenland with a migration fleet consisting of 400–700 settlers and 25 other ships (14 of which completed the journey), a merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson was blown off course, and after three days' sailing he sighted land west of the fleet. Bjarni was interested only in finding his father's farm, but he described his findings to Leif Erikson who explored the area in more detail and planted a small settlement fifteen years later.

The sagas describe three areas beyond Greenland: Helluland, "land of the flat stones"; Markland, "the land of forests"; and Vinland, either "the land of wine" or "the land of meadows". Helluland is generally thought to correspond to Baffin Island but may include northern areas of Labrador. Markland is generally thought to be an area in Labrador. Vinland likely includes Newfoundland and possibly other areas around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.{{cite book |last=Schlederman |first=Peter |url=https://archive.org/details/vikingsnorthatla00fitz |title=Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga |date=2000 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Press |editor-last=Fitzhugh |editor-first=William W. |location=Washington, DC |pages=189–192 |chapter=A.D. 1000: East Meets West |editor-last2=Ward |editor-first2=Elisabeth}} There has long been debate about identifying any of the three "lands" to actual, known locations in North America. Vinland in particular has been the topic of widely divergent claims and theories.{{cite book |last=Sigurdsson |first=Gísli |url=https://archive.org/details/vikingsnorthatla00fitz |title=Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga |date=2000 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution Press |editor-last=Fitzhugh |editor-first=William W. |location=Washington, DC |pages=232–237 |chapter=The Quest for Vinland in Saga Scholarship |editor-last2=Ward |editor-first2=Elisabeth}}

In 2019 archaeologist Birgitta Wallace wrote:

{{blockquote

|text=L'Anse aux Meadows cannot be Vinland. Vinland was a land, the same way Iceland and Greenland are lands, countries. But L'Anse aux Meadows is a place described in the sagas as part of Vinland. It is the Straumfjord of Eric's Saga. It is the same kind of settlement, with the same kind of occupants and type of activities, a winter base from where expeditions went south in the summer. Although artifacts and buildings are typically Norse, the layout, location, and artifacts are different from the sites we know elsewhere in the Norse world. Just such a site is described in the sagas: Straumsfjord. A compelling reason why L'Anse aux Meadows has to be the main site in Vinland lies in demography.{{cite journal |last=Wallace |first=Birgitta |date=May 2019 |title=L'anse Aux Meadows and Vinland |url=https://issuu.com/swedishpress/docs/swedish_press_may_2019_vol_90-04_is_eeee550f2e7227 |journal=Swedish Press |volume=90 |issue=4 |pages=12–15 |access-date=31 December 2024}}

}}

File:Skálholt map 1690 copy (cropped).png showing Latinized Norse placenames in the North Atlantic{{efn|Latinized placenames:

{{bulleted list

| Iotun-heimar (Jötunheimr)

| Riseland (Land of the Risi)

| Grönlandia (Greenland)

| Helleland (Helluland)

| Markland

| Skrælinge Land (Land of the Skræling)

| Promontorium Winlandiæ (Promontory of Vinland)

}}}}{{cite book |last1=Campbell |first1=Gordon |title=Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth |date=25 March 2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-260598-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RIskEAAAQBAJ |language=en}}

]]

For centuries, it remained unclear whether the Icelandic stories represented real voyages by the Norse to North America. Although the idea of Norse voyages to, and a colony in, North America was discussed by Swiss scholar Paul Henri Mallet in his book Northern Antiquities (English translation 1770),{{cite book |last=Mallet |first=Paul Henri |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K9ZCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA282 |title=Description of the manners, &c. of the ancient Danes |date=1770 |publisher=T. Carnan and Company |volume=I |pages=282–289 |quote=Hitherto we have seen the Norwegians only making slight efforts to establish themselves in Vinland. The year after Thorstein's death proved more favourable to the design of settling a colony. |access-date=20 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502033136/https://books.google.com/books?id=K9ZCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA282 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |url-status=live}} the sagas first gained widespread attention in 1837 when the Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn revived the idea of a Viking presence in North America.{{cite book |last=Watts |first=Edward |title=Colonizing the Past: Mythmaking and Pre-Columbian Whites in Nineteenth-Century American Writing |date=2020 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |isbn=978-0-8139-4388-6 |pages=242–243 |chapter=The Norse Forefathers of the American Empire |quote=Translated to English and published on both sides of the Atlantic, Rafn's book, the interpretive translation of the Icelandic sagas originally transcribed by Snorri Sturluson and other Skaldic poets in the fourteenth century, catalyzed a transatlantic fascination with all things Viking. This would encompass more than the expected primordial land-based fantasy of a Norse origin. It also catalyzed a more durable blood-based fabrication that pushed the American appropriation of Gothic Anglo-Saxon identity deeper into the legendary past to its fictional roots in Scandinavian Teutonism by designating Anglo-Saxonism as a subculture of Norse Teutonism. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Thq1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT243 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502033136/https://books.google.com/books?id=Thq1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT242 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |url-status=live}} North America, by the name Winland, first appeared in written sources in a work by Adam of Bremen from approximately 1075.{{cite book |last=Whittock |first=Martyn |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YbdTDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT9 |title=Tales of Valhalla |date=2018 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-1-68177-912-6 |page=9 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502033137/https://books.google.com/books?id=YbdTDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT9 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |url-status=live}} The most important works about North America and the early Norse activities there, namely the Sagas of Icelanders, were recorded in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1420, some Inuit captives and their kayaks were taken to Scandinavia.{{cite book |last=Weaver |first=Jace |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=08IBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA37 |title=The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000–1927 |date=2014 |publisher=UNC Press Books |isbn=978-1-4696-1439-7 |page=37 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502033138/https://books.google.com/books?id=08IBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA37 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |url-status=live}}{{cite book |last=Plank |first=Geoffrey |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EurkDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA5 |title=Atlantic Wars: From the Fifteenth Century to the Age of Revolution |date=2020 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-086046-2 |page=5 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502033138/https://books.google.com/books?id=EurkDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA5 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |url-status=live}} The Norse sites were depicted in the Skálholt Map, made by an Icelandic teacher in 1570 and depicting part of northeastern North America and mentioning Helluland, Markland and Vinland.{{cite book |last1=Ingstad |first1=Helga |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gj-I5hdpzGoC&pg=PA111 |title=The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland |last2=Ingstad |first2=Anne Stine |date=2001 |publisher=Breeakwater Books |isbn=978-0816047161 |page=111 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502033138/https://books.google.com/books?id=Gj-I5hdpzGoC&pg=PA111 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |url-status=live}}

Purported runestones have been found in North America, most famously the Kensington Runestone. These are generally considered forgeries or misinterpretations of Native American petroglyphs.{{Cite journal |last=Kolodny |first=Annette |author-link=Annette Kolodny |date=December 2003 |title=Fictions of American Prehistory: Indians, Archeology, and National Origin Myths |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/4/article/51011 |journal=American Literature |volume=75 |issue=4 |pages=693–721 |doi=10.1215/00029831-75-4-693 |issn=0002-9831|url-access=subscription }} There are many unsubstantiated claims of Norse colonization in New England.{{cite journal |last1=Crocker |first1=Christopher |title=What We Talk about When We Talk about Vínland: History, Whiteness, Indigenous Erasure, and the Early Norse Presence in Newfoundland |journal=Canadian Journal of History |date=September 2020 |volume=55 |issue=1–2 |pages=97–98 |doi=10.3138/cjh-2019-0028 |doi-access=free }}

Gordon Campbell's book Norse America, published in 2021, develops his thesis that the "fleeting and ill-documented" idea that Vikings "discovered America" quickly seduced Americans of northern European Protestant descent, some of whom went on to deliberately manufacture evidence to support it.{{cite book |last1=Campbell |first1=Gordon |title=Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth |year=2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-886155-3 |pages=27, 212 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pHEhEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA212 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502034643/https://books.google.com/books?id=pHEhEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA212 |url-status=live}} There is no physical evidence of a Norse presence in North America except for the far east of Canada.{{cite journal |last=Rotella |first=Carlo |title=Pulp History |journal=Raritan |publisher=Rutgers University |pages=11–36 |date=Summer 2007 |volume=27 |issue=1}} Other so-called discoveries, mostly in the United States, have been rejected by scholars.{{cite journal |last1=Kraft |first1=Herbert C. |title=Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Indian/White Trade Relations in the Middle Atlantic and Northeast Regions |journal=Archaeology of Eastern North America |date=1989 |volume=17 |pages=1–29 |jstor=40914304 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40914304 |issn=0360-1021}} Supposed physical evidence has been found to be deliberately falsified or historically baseless, often to promote a political agenda. Literary critic Annette Kolodny criticized attempts to evoke what she termed "plastic vikings". These were fictional characters treated as historical figures, but "depicted variously as heroic warriors and empire builders, barbarous berserker invaders, fighters for freedom, courageous explorers, would-be colonists, seamen and merchants, poets and saga men, glorious ancestors, bloodthirsty pagan pirates, and civilized Christian converts" depending on the speaker or author.{{cite book |last1=Watts |first1=Edward |title=Colonizing the Past: Mythmaking and Pre-Columbian Whites in Nineteenth-Century American Writing |year=2020 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |isbn=978-0-8139-4388-6 |page=243 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Thq1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT243 |chapter=The Norse Forefathers of the American Empire}}{{cite book |last1=Kolodny |first1=Annette |title=In Search of First Contact |year=2012 |publisher=Duke University Press |location=Durham, NC |page=204}}

Monuments claimed to be Norse include:{{Cite web |last=Klein |first=Christopher |date=23 November 2013 |title=Uncovering New England's Viking connections |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2013/11/23/uncovering-new-england-viking-connections/JhxUdp7xvwZK8DjxqQ9cFO/story.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125084907/https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2013/11/23/uncovering-new-england-viking-connections/JhxUdp7xvwZK8DjxqQ9cFO/story.html |archive-date=25 January 2021 |website=The Boston Globe}}

• Stone Tower in Newport, Rhode Island
• Viking Altar Rock
• Spirit Pond runestones
• AVM Runestone
• Hammer of Thor (monument)
• Bourne Stone
• Narragansett Runestone
• Maine penny
• Ulen sword
• Beardmore Relics
• Oklahoma runestones
• The petroglyphs on Dighton Rock, from the Taunton River in Massachusetts

{{main|Kensington Runestone}}

File:KensingtonStone.jpg on display in the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce and Runestone Museum.]]

In late 1898, Swedish immigrant Olof Öhman said he found a sandstone slab covered in runes in Kensington, Minnesota.{{cite book |last1=Campbell |first1=Gordon |title=Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth |year=2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-886155-3 |page=173 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pHEhEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA173 |archive-date=2 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230502034643/https://books.google.com/books?id=pHEhEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA173 |url-status=live}}

According to Öhman, the stone was buried face-down and tangled in the roots beneath an aspen tree. Olaus J. Breda (1853–1916), professor of Scandinavian Languages and Literature in the Scandinavian Department at the University of Minnesota analyzed the inscriptions, found the rune-stone to be a forgery, and published a discrediting article in Symra in 1910.{{Cite news |last=Breda |first=Olaus |date=1910 |title=Kensington-stenen |pages=65–80 |work=Symra}} Breda also forwarded copies of the inscription to various contemporary Scandinavian linguists and historians, such as Oluf Rygh, Sophus Bugge, Gustav Storm, Magnus Olsen and Adolf Noreen. They "unanimously pronounced the Kensington inscription a fraud and forgery of recent date".{{Cite book |last=Blegen |first=Theodore Christian |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/190744 |title=The Kensington rune stone; new light on an old riddle |date=1968 |publisher=Minnesota Historical Society |isbn=0-87351-044-5 |location=St. Paul |oclc=190744}} Modern geological analysis indicates that runes were carved shortly before the stone's "discovery". There is very little weathering to the characters, and it is noticeably less weathered than nineteenth-century tombstones in the area.{{cite journal |last1=Edwards |first1=Harold |title=The Kensington Runestone: Geological Evidence of a Hoax |journal=The Minnesota Archaeologist |date=1 January 2020 |volume=77 |pages=6–40}}

{{main|Eben Norton Horsford#Viking}}

The nineteenth-century Harvard chemist Eben Norton Horsford connected the Charles River Basin to places described in the Norse sagas and elsewhere, notably Norumbega.{{cite journal |author=Robin Fleming |title=Picturesque History and the Medieval in Nineteenth-Century America |journal=The American Historical Review |volume=100 |issue=4 |pages=1079–1082 |year=1995 |jstor=2168201 |doi=10.1086/ahr/100.4.1061 |author-link=Robin Fleming}} He published several books on the topic and had plaques, monuments, and statues erected in honor of the Norse.{{cite book |author1=Eben Norton Horsford |author2=Edward Henry Clement |title=The discovery of the ancient city of Norumbega: A communication to the president and council of the American Geographical Society at their special session in Watertown, November 21, 1889 |url=https://archive.org/details/discoveryancien00yorkgoog |year=1890 |publisher=Houghton, Mifflin |page=[https://archive.org/details/discoveryancien00yorkgoog/page/n22 14]}} His work received little support from mainstream historians and archeologists at the time, and even less today.{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Stephen |url=https://archive.org/details/fantasticarchaeo00will |title=Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory |date=1991 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |isbn=978-0-8122-8238-2 |location=Philadelphia |url-access=registration}}Gloria Polizzotti Greis {{cite web |url=http://greisnet.com/needhist.nsf/VikingsontheCharles?OpenPage |title=Vikings on the Charles or The Strange Saga of Dighton Rock, Norumbega, and Rumford Double-Acting Baking Powder |access-date=18 February 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716041144/http://greisnet.com/needhist.nsf/VikingsontheCharles?OpenPage |archive-date=16 July 2011}}. Needham Historical Society

Other nineteenth-century writers, such as Horsford's friend Thomas Gold Appleton, in his A Sheaf of Papers (1875), and George Perkins Marsh, in his The Goths in New England, seized upon such false notions of Viking expansion history also to promote the superiority of white people (as well as to oppose the Catholic Church). Such misuse of Viking history and imagery reemerged in the twentieth century among some groups promoting white supremacy.{{cite magazine |last=Regal |first=Brian |date=November–December 2019 |title=Everything Means Something in Viking |magazine=Skeptical Inquirer |publisher=Center for Inquiry |volume=43 |issue=6 |pages=44–47}}

{{Main|Vinland Map}}

File:Vinland Map HiRes.jpg|upright=1.1]]

During the mid-1960s, Yale University announced the acquisition of a map purportedly drawn around 1440 that showed Vinland and a legend concerning Norse voyages to the region.{{Cite web |last=Cummings |first=Mike |date=1 September 2021 |title=Analysis unlocks secret of the Vinland Map — it's a fake |url=https://news.yale.edu/2021/09/01/analysis-unlocks-secret-vinland-map-its-fake |access-date=25 April 2022 |website=YaleNews |language=en |archive-date=15 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210915094955/https://news.yale.edu/2021/09/01/analysis-unlocks-secret-vinland-map-its-fake |url-status=live}} However certain experts doubted the authenticity of the map, based on linguistic and cartographic inconsistencies. Chemical analysis of the map's ink later shed further doubts on its authenticity. Scientific debate continued until in 2021 the university finally acknowledged that the Vinland Map is a forgery.{{Cite news |last=Yuhas |first=Alan |date=30 September 2021 |title=Yale Says Its Vinland Map, Once Called a Medieval Treasure, Is Fake |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/yale-vinland-map-fake.html |access-date=14 December 2021 |issn=0362-4331 |archive-date=21 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211121140732/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/yale-vinland-map-fake.html |url-status=live}}

Archeological findings in 2015 at Point Rosee,{{cite news |last=Bird |first=Lindsay |date=30 May 2018 |title=Archeological quest for Codroy Valley Vikings comes up short – Report filed with province states no Norse activity found at dig site |publisher=CBC |url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/codroy-valley-vikings-report-1.4684066 |access-date=18 June 2018 |archive-date=3 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180603023906/http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/codroy-valley-vikings-report-1.4684066 |url-status=live}}{{cite news |last=McKenzie-Sutter |first=Holly |title=No Viking presence in southern Newfoundland after all, American researcher finds |publisher=The Canadian Press |url=http://www.timescolonist.com/no-viking-presence-in-southern-newfoundland-after-all-american-researcher-finds-1.23320719 |url-status=dead |access-date=18 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180618203935/http://www.timescolonist.com/no-viking-presence-in-southern-newfoundland-after-all-american-researcher-finds-1.23320719 |archive-date=18 June 2018}} on the southwest coast of Newfoundland, were originally thought to reveal evidence of a turf wall and the roasting of bog iron ore, and therefore a possible 10th century Norse settlement in Canada.{{cite news |last=Strauss |first=Mark |date=31 March 2016 |title=Discovery Could Rewrite History of Vikings in New World |newspaper=National Geographic |url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160331-viking-discovery-north-america-canada-archaeology/ |quote=Sarah Parcak, a National Geographic Fellow and "space archaeologist" who has used satellite imagery to locate lost Egyptian cities, temples, and tombs [...] supported, in part, by a grant from the National Geographic Society [...] led a team of archaeologists to Point Rosee last summer [2015] to conduct a "test excavation," a small-scale dig to search for initial evidence that the site merits further study. |access-date=22 May 2016 |archive-date=21 April 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160421233343/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160331-viking-discovery-north-america-canada-archaeology/ |url-status=dead}} Findings from the 2016 excavation suggest the turf wall and the roasted bog iron ore discovered in 2015 were the result of natural processes.{{cite journal |last1=Pringle |first1=Heather |date=March 2017 |title=Vikings |url=http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/03/vikings-ship-burials-battle-reenactor/ |journal=National Geographic |volume=231 |issue=3 |access-date=14 May 2017 |quote=During a small excavation in 2015, Parcak and her colleagues found what looked like a turf wall [...] But a larger excavation last summer [2016] cast serious doubt on those interpretations, suggesting that the turf wall and accumulation of bog ore were the results of natural processes |archive-date=7 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170507122114/http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/03/vikings-ship-burials-battle-reenactor/ |url-status=dead}} The possible settlement was initially discovered through satellite imagery in 2014,{{cite journal |last1=Kean |first1=Gary |date=30 September 2017 |title=Update: Archaeologist thinks Codroy Valley may have once been visited by Vikings |url=http://www.thewesternstar.com/news/regional/update-archaeologist-thinks-codroy-valley-may-have-once-been-visited-by-vikings-121840/ |journal=The Western Star |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180926100125/http://www.thewesternstar.com/news/regional/update-archaeologist-thinks-codroy-valley-may-have-once-been-visited-by-vikings-121840/ |archive-date=26 September 2018 |access-date=13 March 2018 |quote=The expedition was documented by the PBS show "NOVA" in partnership with the BBC. The two-hour documentary, titled "Vikings Unearthed," will air on PBS [...]}} and archaeologists excavated the area in 2015 and 2016. Birgitta Linderoth Wallace, one of the leading experts of Norse archaeology in North America and an expert on the Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows, is unsure of the identification of Point Rosee as a Norse site.{{cite news |last=Barry |first=Garrett |date=1 April 2016 |title=Potential Viking site found in Newfoundland |publisher=CBC |url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/vikings-newfoundland-1.3515747/ |access-date=1 January 2018 |archive-date=3 April 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160403150322/http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/vikings-newfoundland-1.3515747 |url-status=live}} Archaeologist Karen Milek was a member of the 2016 Point Rosee excavation and is a Norse expert. She also expressed doubt that Point Rosee was a Norse site as there are no good landing sites for their boats and there are steep cliffs between the shoreline and the excavation site.{{cite news |last=Bird |first=Lindsay |date=12 September 2016 |title=On the Trail of Vikings: Latest search for Norse in North America |publisher=CBC |url=http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/viking-dig-point-rosee-newfoundland-2016-1.3751129 |access-date=12 March 2018 |archive-date=31 May 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180531181120/http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/viking-dig-point-rosee-newfoundland-2016-1.3751129 |url-status=live}} In their 8 November 2017 report,{{cite news |last1=Parcak |first1=Sarah |last2=Mumford |first2=Gregory |date=8 November 2017 |title=Point Rosee, Codroy Valley, NL (ClBu-07) 2016 Test Excavations under Archaeological Investigation Permit #16.26 |publisher=geraldpennyassociates.com, 42 pages |url=http://vocm.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/PENNEY-2017-Point-Rosee-Codroy-Valley-NL-Test-Excavation-Report.pdf |url-status=dead |access-date=19 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180620074156/http://vocm.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/PENNEY-2017-Point-Rosee-Codroy-Valley-NL-Test-Excavation-Report.pdf |archive-date=20 June 2018 |quote=[The 2015 and 2016 excavations] found no evidence whatsoever for either a Norse presence or human activity at Point Rosee prior to the historic period. ... None of the team members, including the Norse specialists, deemed this area as having any traces of human activity.}} Sarah Parcak and Gregory Mumford, co-directors of the excavation, wrote that they "found no evidence whatsoever for either a Norse presence or human activity at Point Rosee prior to the historic period" and that "none of the team members, including the Norse specialists, deemed this area as having any traces of human activity."

• Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories
• Vestri Obygdir
• History of Greenland
• Gunnbjörn's skerries
• History of Nunavut
• History of Newfoundland
• Danish-Norwegian colonization of the Americas
• Leif Erikson Day
• List of North American settlements by year of foundation
• Akilineq
• Wonderstrands
• Vinland flag
• White Amazonian Indians

{{notelist}}

{{reflist}}

{{commons category|Norse colonization of the Americas}}

• [https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/nl/meadows L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site], Parks Canada website
• [http://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/exploration/norse-north-atlantic.php The Norse in the North Atlantic], Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage website
• [https://archives-manuscripts.dartmouth.edu/repositories/2/resources/1123 Freda Harold Research Papers] at Dartmouth College Library

{{Norse exploration of the Americas}}

{{Canadian colonies}}

{{European Colonization of North America}}

{{Germanic peoples}}

{{Polar exploration|state=collapsed}}

{{Greenland topics}}

{{Pre-Columbian North America}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Norse Colonization Of The Americas}}

Category:Populated places established in the 10th century

Category:10th century in North America

Category:15th century in North America