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 The year 2000 was named the
Year of the Viking, because it marked the millennium of Leif Erikson's
arrival in North America.
In 985, a Viking named Bjarni Herjolfson, on the way from Iceland to Greenland, was driven off
course by storms and fog. Eventually he sighted wooded land. It
didn't look like the description of Greenland he had been given, so he
sailed north until he found the Viking
settlement on Greenland. Fifteen years later, Leif Eriksson decided to
explore the land Bjarni had seen. Setting out with 34 men, he attempted
to follow, in reverse, the route Bjarni had described.
After passing areas they named
Helluland, (Flat-Stone Land) and Markland (Woodland), they
found a river outlet. They followed the river to a lake, carried their
skin sleeping-bags off the boat and built huts. Later they decided to
build a big house and stay for the winter. They found lots of salmon, and
the climate was milder than on Greenland. The next summer they sailed back
to Greenland. The hostility of the Native Americans, whom they named
skraelings, discouraged permanent settling, but they returned
repeatedly to explore further along the North American coast and gather
furs, timber and iron.
 Two of the Icelandic sagas,
The Greenlander's Saga and Eirik' s Saga, tell of Leif's
discovery of a new land southwest of Greenland. Some scholars believe that
Columbus learned about America through the Icelandic sagas in 1477 when he
traveled to Iceland.
In 1961 the Norwegian
archaeologists Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine discovered the
remains of a Viking settlement on Newfoundland, near the village L'Anse
aux Meadows. Ingstad and his crew spent six years exploring the site. One
house had a fireplace of exactly the same design as that on Leif
Eriksson's farm on Greenland. Many other buildings and numerous artifacts
were uncovered. The site was large enough to house about 90 people. Some
historians believe that this was the Vinland of the sagas. Others argue
that L'Anse aux Meadows' climate does not correspond to the sagas'
description of Vinland and conclude that Vinland must be further south,
where the Vikings explored, using the site as a permanent base.
There is now a National Historic
site with reconstructed buildings at L'Anse aux Meadows. The actual
remains of the original buildings have been left as they were discovered
by the Ingstads. Adjacent to the site are reconstructions of the
buildings, in addition to a museum and interpretative center.
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