Day 89 -> Vinland

A recreated Norse long house on L'Anse auw Meadows (Photo by D. Gordon and E. Robertson)

      Apparently, Norse Vikings are the real discoverers of North America, and Vinland was the name given to the area where they arrived in this country. Archaeology has given support to the long-held theory that old Norse sagas show Vikings reached North America c. 1000, approximately five centuries prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbuswhich occurred in 1492. In 1960, archaeological evidence of the only known Norse settlement in North America (outside of Greenland) was found at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland. This proved conclusively the Vikings' pre-Columbian discovery of North America. Recent archaeological studies suggest that this site is not the Vinland of the Norse accounts in its entirety but was the entrance to a larger region called Vinland by those people.
      Before the archaeologists made their discoveries Vinland was the subject of many stories, legends and fantasies which date to about 1300 AD. The legends have been analyzed to explore how medieval people conceptualized their world.

~Ally