Did the Vikings get to America before Columbus? Yes. The Vikings appear to have reached North America in 1021, which is 471 years before Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World.
The Vikings reached North America a long time before Columbus arrived in South America, but they didn’t stay there for very long. They settled Iceland, then Greenland, and finally arrived in Canada. They made one settlement at a place called L’Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland, and that is the only one. They may very well have reached other places, and they could have made settlements, but the only one that has been found is the one in Newfoundland. They called the land Vinland,
Vikings were a group of people that explored and raided out of the Norse speaking countries of Scandinavia. They are usually referred to as Norsemen, but not all Norsemen were Vikings. The word “Viking” probably comes from the Old Norse word “Viking”, which means “a person who raids”. The Viking Age is generally considered to be from 793 when they made their first raid in another country, namely England, until 1066 when the Viking King Harald Hardrada was defeated by King Harold of England. Interestingly, this battle was one of the reasons why King Harold was defeated by William the Conqueror a few days later. During the Viking Age, they explored and raided all along the east coast of England, Scotland, up into the islands above Scotland, Iceland, and Greenland.
The Vikings had a simple method of expansion. They arrived at an area to plunder and pillage before heading back home. After a while, it became hard to find places to plunder and pillage near the sea, so they moved further inland. That made it harder to get home, so they made settlements. Then they repeated this. They also traded wherever they went. Because of their shipbuilding skills they were able to travel very far and thus the Vikings spread. The Vikings didn’t always settle and there were many areas that they only ever raided. They also spread east as well as west. However, we are looking at how they reached America.
By the 8th century, they had taken over most of the Scandinavian peninsula and they began to look abroad. They began to settle England and Scotland in the 9th century. They also reached the coast of Iceland in the 9th century, although they didn’t settle much of the island. By the 10th century, they had settled most of Iceland and the west coast of Greenland. The Vikings built over 450 farms on Greenland and they farmed the land. It only seemed natural to continue west, and they landed in America in the 11th century. It is said that there were stories of a land west of Greenland that had been sighted when a Viking boat had been blown off course. That must have been quite a gale because it is about a thousand kilometers from Greenland to Canada. At the end of the 10th century, several Vikings decided to sail that way and see if they could find land. The most famous of these Vikings was Leif Ericson, whose father, Erik the Red had founded the colony on Greenland. Leif Ericson managed to sail to Newfoundland and he started the settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows. The Vikings cut down trees from the local forests to make buildings in the settlement, and this is how archaeologists have dated it. The date was 1021. The Vikings didn’t stay in the settlement for very long because they had trouble with the Native Americans and they didn’t get enough support from Greenland. They pulled up and left after a few years. It is possible that they landed in other places as well, but there is no evidence.
How they were able to get there is another matter. They had the ships for such a prodigious journey, but they don’t appear to have any way to accurately navigate. Their long ships were some of the best in the world at the time and they were able to sail long distances at high speeds. No one yet knows how they were able to find their way. Still, as there is evidence of Norse settlements in Canada, they obviously could navigate. They pulled out of North America fairly quickly, but they were in Greenland until roughly 1450. They farmed and raised cattle and sheep, but the mini ice age cooled the climate too much and it became too hard to farm the land, so they abandoned their settlements. The Vikings in England began to go home after 1066 and they slowly retreated across Europe to their homeland. And this is what I learned today.
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Sources
https://www.thildekoldholdt.com/post/viking-vs-norse-vs-scandinavian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_North_America
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsemen
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58996186
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Age
Image By Number 57 at English Wikipedia – own work. Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40650108