LEIF ERIKSSON AND VINLAND

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 set out with 34 men to find the land 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 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, Norwegian archaeologists Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine discovered  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 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.

There is now a National Historic site with reconstructed buildings at L'Anse aux Meadows. The remains of the original buildings have been left as they were discovered by the Ingstads. Adjacent to the site are reconstructions of the buildings, a museum and an interpretative center.