1000 years ago, the Vikings arrived in America

1492 is history that speaks to everyone, even the worst students in history and geography. The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, who then imagined him to be India, would completely redistribute the geopolitical maps, making the Kingdom of Spain one of the most powerful places in Europe in the sixteenth century.

But if historians long ago agreed to recognize the Genoese navigator as the first European to set foot in America, we now know that the reality is quite different. Indeed, in 1021, the Vikings were already present in the north of the continent, in particular in the territory of Newfoundland, on the Canadian east coast.

1000 years ago

This is not the first time that traces of the Viking civilization have been discovered here. In fact, the first excavations of the Anse des Meadows date back to the 1960s, and soon confirmed the presence of Scandinavian villages in this region of the world.

While in Europe, the Vikings were at their peak, plundering great European capitals like London or Paris, the Scandinavians also took to the west and Iceland, then Greenland and finally Canada.

More than 400 years before Columbus

The last big question about the arrival of the Vikings in Canada was not whether they came, but when. During the first excavations in the 1960s and 1970s, carbon-14 dating systems were not as accurate as they are today and results ranged from the late 7th century to the early 12th century. A date that sticks to the estimates of historians who believe that the arrival of the first Viking colonies would have occurred around the year 1000.

According to the latest Carbon-14 dating, which was published this week in the magazine temper nature, exactly 1,000 years ago, in 1021, the Vikings built their first bodies on Canadian soil. The calendar opportunity, dating, which was just announced, goes back 1,000 years.

Currently, the three Scandinavian countries, the cradle of the Viking civilization, have not planned any specific events to celebrate this millennium of conquest. Regarding the Viking tribes installed on the American continent, they gradually disappeared due to intermarriage with the local population.