Norse settlement of North America

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The exploration of North America by Norsemen began in the late 10th century. Voyages from Iceland reached Greenland and founded colonies along its western coast. Norse settlements on Greenland lasted almost 500 years, and the population peaked at around 2,000–3,000 people. The colonies consisted mostly of farms along Greenland's scattered coastal fjords. Colonists relied heavily on hunting, especially of walruses and the harp seal. For lumber, they harvested driftwood, imported wood from Europe, and sailed to modern-day Canada.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the Greenland colonists used lumber and possibly iron ore imported from North America. Archaeologists found remains of one short-term settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows near the northern tip of Newfoundland. The remains of buildings excavated there in the 1960s dated to approximately 1,000 years ago.<ref name="Nydal1989">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="CordellLightfoot2008">Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> It was not a permanent settlement and lacked graves and livestock areas. The site was abandoned, seemingly deliberately, by 1145 AD with no valuables or tools left behind.<ref name="Ledger-2019" /> Some wood fragments and nuts in the Norse remains were from plants not found in Newfoundland, but native to the continental mainland across the Gulf of St. Lawrence.<ref name="Wallace-2003" /> No other settlements in Canada and no settlements on the North American mainland have been conclusively identified as Norse.

One explanation for why it seems the Norse did not create permanent colonies beyond Greenland is a lack of population pressure. The Greenland colonies were abandoned gradually during the 14th and 15th centuries, due at least in part to climate change. The Little Ice Age brought more storms, longer winters, and shorter springs. It reduced the availability of food at the same time that the value of Greenland's exports to Europe plummeted. The last written record from Norse Greenland was a 1408 marriage. The latest article of clothing from the Eastern Settlement was radiocarbon dated to 1430 (±15 years).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The reasons for its abandonment have long been debated.

The Norse exploration has been subject to numerous controversies concerning the exploration and settlement of North America by Europeans. The primary sources for descriptions of the Norse voyages beyond Greenland are the Vinland Sagas. These heroic sagas were first written down in Iceland centuries after the events they describe. After the European discovery of the Americas, it was debated whether the lands they describe beyond Greenland (Helluland, Markland, and Vinland) corresponded to real places in North America. Since the public acknowledgment of Norse expeditions and settlements, pseudoscientific and pseudohistorical theories have emerged.<ref name="Feder2020">Template:Cite book</ref>

Norse Greenland

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Icelandic sagas

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref name="Milligan-2021">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Named after him, Gunnbjarnarsker or "Gunnbjörn's skerries", were likely near modern-day Kulusuk just off the eastern coast of Greenland,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> but their exact location is unknown.<ref name="Lehn-2000">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref name="Carlson-2001">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} Author biography.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Marcus-1954">Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> He remained for three years, explored the area, and decided to found a settlement.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}).</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="ROBW">Template:Cite book</ref>

Life

A map of the Eastern Settlement 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> A smaller settlement later founded near the Eastern Settlement is sometimes considered the Middle Settlement.<ref name="Edwards-2013">Template:Cite journal</ref> The combined population peaked around 2,000–3,000.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> At least 400 farms have been identified by archaeologists.<ref name="ROBW" />

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.<ref name="Pringle1997">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="DugmoreMcGovern2012">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref name="Pringle1997" /><ref name="DugmoreMcGovern2012" /><ref name="Berglund1986">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref name="DugmoreMcGovern2012" /><ref name="Berglund1986" /><ref name="McGovern1980">Template:Cite journal</ref> What was produced by livestock and farming was supplemented with subsistence hunting of mainly seal and caribou as well as walrus for trade.<ref name="Pringle1997" /><ref name="DugmoreMcGovern2012" /><ref name="Berglund1986" /> The Norse mainly relied on the Nordrsetur hunt, a communal hunt of migratory harp seals in the spring.<ref name="Pringle1997" /><ref name="McGovern1980" />

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 {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 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.<ref name="Wahlgren1986">Template:Cite book</ref>

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.<ref name="Berglund1986" /><ref name="McGovern1980" /> 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.<ref name="DugmoreMcGovern2012" /><ref name="McGovern1980" /> 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.<ref name="Pringle1997" /><ref name="DugmoreMcGovern2012" /><ref name="Berglund1986" /> A cooling climate and increasing humidity brought more storms, longer winters and shorter springs, and affected the migratory patterns of the harp seal.<ref name="Pringle1997" /><ref name="DugmoreMcGovern2012" /><ref name="Berglund1986" /><ref name="McGovern1980" /> 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.<ref name="Pringle1997" /> Closer to the Eastern Settlement, temperatures remained stable but a prolonged drought reduced fodder production.<ref name="Zhao 22">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref name="Pringle1997" /><ref name="DugmoreMcGovern2012" /> 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.<ref name="McGovern1980" /> 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref name="Wahlgren1986" />

The settlements began to decline in the 14th century. The Western Settlement was abandoned around 1350.<ref name="Wahlgren1986" /> 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.<ref name="Edwards-2013" /> 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).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The last bishop at Garðar died in 1377.<ref name="Wahlgren1986"/> After a marriage was recorded in 1408, no written records mention the settlers.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Several theories have been advanced to explain the decline.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Climate and decline

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.<ref name="www.spiegel.de">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In addition, Greenlandic ivory may have been supplanted in European markets by cheaper ivory from Africa.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Despite the loss of contact with the Greenlanders, the Norwegian-Danish crown continued to consider Greenland a dependency.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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.<ref name="Nedkvitne2018">Template:Cite book</ref> Though this expedition found no surviving Europeans, it marked the beginning of Denmark's re-assertion of sovereignty over the island.<ref name="Stern2021">Template:Cite book</ref>

Replica garments of those found in graves in Herjolfsness, Greenland

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,<ref name="Pringle1997" /> however it is now known that Thule artifacts are found among Norse habitations, indicating that both groups acquired material goods from each other.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The older research posited that it was not climate change alone that led to Norse decline, but also their unwillingness to adapt.<ref name="Pringle1997" /> 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.<ref name="DugmoreMcGovern2012" /><ref name="Berglund1986" /><ref name="McGovern1980" /><ref name="McGovern1999">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref name="DugmoreMcGovern2012" /><ref name="Berglund1986" /><ref name="McGovern1980" />

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.<ref name="Kintisch2016">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="McGovern1980" /> Current research suggests that the Norse were unable to maintain their settlements because of economic and climatic change happening at the same time.<ref name="Kintisch2016" />

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."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Norse settlements in Canada

Greenland lacked natural resources like forests and iron ore.<ref name="Schlederman-2000" /><ref name="Seaver-2000" /> 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.<ref name="Barnes2001">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="Jones-1986">Template:Cite book</ref> In Adam of Bremen's 11th-century chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, he briefly mentions Greenland and islands beyond Norway including one "called Vinland". Template:Efn<ref name="Bartusik-2022">Template:Cite book</ref> Icelandic annals record that, in 1347, a ship arrived from Greenland that had drifted off course while sailing to Markland for wood.<ref name="Guðmundsdóttir-2023">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.Template:Efn<ref name="Chiesa-2021" /> 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.<ref name="Chiesa-2021">Template:Cite journal</ref> Where these places would correspond to in modern-day Canada is still debated.<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" /> Greenland colonists used timber for their boats and homes, so they likely made many unrecorded trips south for wood.<ref name="Schlederman-2000" /><ref name="Seaver-2000" /> 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.<ref name="Guðmundsdóttir-2023" />

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.<ref name="Seaver-2000" />

There is one confirmed Norse settlement in modern-day Canada, L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.<ref name="Kuitems-2022">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref name="Pringle-2012" /> The Indigenous Dorset cold-hammered copper as well as meteoric iron, but did not smelt metals.<ref name="Jolicoeur-2015">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Dating the Tanfield Valley site is complicated by it having been inhabited and abandoned multiple times.<ref name="Pringle-2012" /><ref name="Sutherland 2000 159–169">Template:Cite conference</ref><ref name="Canadian Museum of History">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Fitzhugh-2000">Template:Cite book</ref> Surveys in the 1970s and 1980s could find no evidence of Norse settlements on the coasts of modern-day Quebec.<ref name="Seaver-2000" />

Historians have found that the Greenlanders had limited incentives and capabilities to expand south into a long-term colony in Canada.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Lynnerup-2014" /><ref name="Wallace-2009" /> 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.<ref name="Lynnerup-2014">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Wallace-2009">Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref name="Mueller-Vollmer2022" /> It may have been used for nålebinding, a needlework technique that predated knitting.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Mueller-Vollmer2022">Template:Cite book</ref>

The site is different from the colonies in Greenland; it was not a permanent continuous settlement.<ref name="Ledger-2019" /><ref name="Barraclough-2016" /> 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.<ref name="Barraclough-2016">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Ledger-2019">Template:Cite journal</ref>

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."<ref name="Wallace-2003" /> The buildings include several large living halls and specialized workshops including one for boat repair and construction.<ref name="Wallace-2003" /> According to historian Eleanor Barraclough, one major purpose of the site was boat repair.<ref name="ParksCanada2017">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The land is bare and open now, but it was forested during the time the Norse were active.<ref name="Ingstad2000">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="Wallace-2003">Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref name="Wallace-2015">Template:Cite book</ref> L'Anse aux Meadows itself may have drawn 10 to 20 percent of the total Greenland colonists;<ref name="Richards-2005"/> the communal living halls could hold from 30 to 160 people.<ref name="Kolodny2012">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="McKenzie-Sutter-2018">Template:Cite news</ref> What initially appeard to be a turf wall and bog iron at Point Rosee, were determined to be the result of natural processes.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="CBC2018">Template:Cite news</ref>

Trees at L'Anse aux Meadows were felled by the Norse in 1021.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Chunks of wood from the site were dated in 2021 using the 993–994 carbon-14 spike and tree rings.<ref name="KuitemsEtAl">Template:Cite journal</ref> This provided the first certain date for the Norse presence at the site.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Although not inhabited for long stretches of time, the site may have been used as late as 1145 AD.<ref name="Ledger-2019" /> When they left, the Norse intentionally and deliberately abandoned the site, leaving behind no tools and mostly waste.<ref name="Richards-2005">Template:Cite book</ref>

Baffin Island

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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.<ref name="Pringle-2012">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Pringle-2013">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> They also suspected yarn from Willows Island and Nunguvik (near Pond Inlet) to be Norse, but these were not corroborated by later dating methods.<ref name="Smith-2018" /> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref name="Pringle-2012" /> 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.<ref name="Sutherland 2000 159–169"/><ref name="Canadian Museum of History"/> 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.<ref name="Pringle-2012" /> 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.<ref name="Pringle-2012" />

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."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Labrador

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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.<ref name="Fitzhugh-2000" /> The colonists in Greenland regularly used timber for houses and boats,<ref name="Schlederman-2000" /> and the most viable logging sites from Greenland were the heavily forested coasts of northern Labrador.<ref name="Sutherland-2000">Template:Cite book</ref> Labrador also contained bog iron ore and nearby timber to supply charcoal as fuel for its smelting.<ref name="Seaver-2000"/>

The Dorset culture extended down to the northern edge of Labrador.<ref name="Odess-2000">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="Schlederman-2000" /> Archaeologists refer to them as the "Point Revenge" culture.<ref name="Pastore-2021">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Sutherland-2000"/>

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.<ref name="Pringle-2012" /> Later dating showed that it predated the Norse arrival.<ref name="Park-2008">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Smith-2018">Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite conference</ref> 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.<ref name="Fitzhugh-2000" /> 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.<ref name="Seaver-2000">Template:Cite book</ref>

Vinland sagas

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} According to the Icelandic sagas Template:MdashSaga of Erik the Red,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> plus chapters of the Hauksbók and the Flatey BookTemplate:Mdashthe 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<ref name="ROBW" /> 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.<ref name="ROBW" />

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".<ref name="Barnes2001"/> Helluland is generally thought to correspond to Baffin Island but may include northern areas of Labrador.<ref name="Schlederman-2000" /> Markland is generally thought to be an area in Labrador.<ref name="Schlederman-2000" /> Vinland likely includes Newfoundland and possibly other areas around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.<ref name="Schlederman-2000">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000">Template:Cite book</ref>

In 2019 archaeologist Birgitta Wallace wrote:

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.<ref name="Wallace 2019">Template:Cite journal</ref>{{#if:|

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Historiography

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),<ref name="Mallet1770">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="Watts2020">Template:Cite book</ref> North America, by the name Winland, first appeared in written sources in a work by Adam of Bremen from approximately 1075.<ref name="Whittock2018">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="Weaver2014">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Plank2020">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Locations proposed
Theorist	Helluland	Markland	Vinland
Carl Christian Rafn (1837)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Labrador or Newfoundland	Nova Scotia	Cape Cod
Gustav Storm (1887)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Labrador	Newfoundland	Nova Scotia
William Henry Babcock (1913)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Labrador	Newfoundland	Nova ScotiaTemplate:Efn
William Hovgaard (1914)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Baffin Island or Newfoundland	Labrador or Nova Scotia	Cape Cod area, south shore.
Hans Peder Steensby (1918)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Labrador	Labrador	New England or New Brunswick
G. M. Gathorne-Hardy (1921)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Labrador or Newfoundland	Nova Scotia	Cape Cod
Matthías Þórðarson (1929)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Labrador	Labrador	New England or New Brunswick
Template:Ill (1936)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" /><ref name="Halldor-1936">Template:Cite book</ref>	Northern Labrador	Southern Labrador	New England
John R. Swanton (1947)<ref name="Swanton-1947">Template:Cite book</ref>	Northern Labrador	Southern Labrador	New England
Discovery of the L'Anse aux Meadows Viking settlement (1960) {{safesubst:#invoke:Check for unknown parameters\|check\|unknown=\|preview=Page using Template:Center with unknown parameter "_VALUE_"\|ignoreblank=y\| 1 \| style }}
Tryggvi J. Oleson (1963)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	Baffin Island	Labrador	Cape Cod
citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	Baffin Island	Labrador	Waquoit Bay, Cape Cod
M. Magnusson and H. Palsson (1965)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	Baffin Island or northern Labrador	Southern Labrador or Newfoundland	New England
John R. L. Anderson (1967)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	Baffin Island or northern Labrador	Southern Labrador	Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
Carl O. Sauer (1968)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	Baffin Island	Southern Labrador or Newfoundland	Southern New England, Buzzard Bay or west.
Anne Stine Ingstad (1969)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Baffin Island	Labrador	L'Anse aux Meadows
Samuel Eliot Morison (1971)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Baffin Island	Labrador	L'Anse aux Meadows
Erik Wahlgren (1986)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Baffin Island	Labrador or Newfoundland	Bay of Fundy area
Birgitta L. Wallace (1991)<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>	Baffin Island	Labrador	Newfoundland and New Brunswick
Template:Ill (1997)<ref name="Sigurdsson-2000" />	Baffin Island	Labrador	Saint Lawrence Estuary
Robert Kellogg (2000)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>	Baffin Island or Labrador	Southern Labrador	St. Lawrence Valley or New England

Pseudohistory

While there is no physical evidence of a Norse settlements in North America except for the far east of Canada,<ref name="Rotella2007">Template:Cite journal</ref> other so-called discoveries have been proposed and rejected by scholars.<ref name="Kraft1989">Template:Cite journal</ref> Unsubstantiated claims of Norse colonization are especially common in New England.<ref name="Crocker2020">Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref name="Watts2020 2243">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Kolodny-2012">Template:Cite book</ref> Purported runestones have been found in North America, most famously the Kensington Runestone. These are generally considered forgeries or misinterpretations of Native American petroglyphs.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Gordon Campbell's book Norse America, published in 2021, presents 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.<ref name="Campbell2021">Template:Cite book</ref>

Monuments claimed to be Norse include:<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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

Kensington Runestone

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In late 1898, Swedish immigrant Olof Öhman said he found a sandstone slab covered in runes in Kensington, Minnesota.<ref name="Campbell2021173">Template:Cite book</ref> According to Öhman, the stone was buried face-down and tangled in the roots beneath an aspen tree.<ref name="Edwards-2020" /> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name="Edwards-2020">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Horsford's Norumbega

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The nineteenth-century Harvard chemist Eben Norton Horsford connected the Charles River Basin to places described in the Norse sagas and elsewhere, notably Norumbega.<ref name="Fleming1995">Template:Cite journal</ref> He published several books on the topic and had plaques, monuments, and statues erected in honor of the Norse.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His work received little support from mainstream historians and archeologists at the time, and even less today.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Gloria Polizzotti Greis {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}. Needham Historical Society</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Vinland Map

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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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Notes

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References

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External links

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L'Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site, Parks Canada website
The Norse in the North Atlantic, Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage website
Freda Harold Research Papers at Dartmouth College Library

Template:Norse exploration of the Americas Template:Canadian colonies Template:European Colonization of North America Template:Germanic peoples Template:Polar exploration Template:Greenland topics Template:Pre-Columbian North America

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Norse settlement of North America

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