Leif Erikson: In America 500 Years Before Columbus

Leif Erikson (Old Norse Leifr Eiríksson, "Leif the Lucky") was the son of Erik the Red and grew up in the Norse Greenland settlement. Around the year 1000 he sailed west and set foot in a wooded, fertile land that he called Vinland. So Northmen reached the American continent – some 500 years before Christopher Columbus.

Vinland in the sagas

The two Vinland sagas tell of several voyages: of Helluland (stone), Markland (forest) and Vinland (wine/pasture). Leif found wild grapes or berries, timber and mild land. But the Northmen did not stay: conflicts with the natives (called Skrælingar in the sagas) and the vast distance made a permanent settlement impossible.

The proof: L'Anse aux Meadows

In 1960 the archaeologists Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad found, at the northern tip of Newfoundland, the remains of a Norse settlement: L'Anse aux Meadows. Houses in the Icelandic-Greenlandic building style, a smithy, Norse objects. This proved the presence of the Vikings in America. A more recent study even dates the timber felled there precisely to the year 1021.

"Wits must he have who wanders wide, but all is easy at home."Hávamál 5, after Henry A. Bellows 1923 (public domain)

Leif Erikson stands for the furthest voyage of the Viking Age – and for how archaeology can turn an old saga into documented history. America was not "discovered" in 1492 but reached as early as around 1000.

Read more with us

Erik the Red · Harald Hardrada · Cnut the Great · Rollo of Normandy · Hedeby.

Sources & literature

Grœnlendinga saga; Eiríks saga rauða; excavation of L'Anse aux Meadows (Ingstad); Kuitems et al. 2021 (felling year 1021); quote public domain (Bellows 1923).

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