Precolumbian contacts with the New World by Norse explorers. When the scholar Thormod Torfason published his Historia Vinlandae Antiquae in 1705, the news of the Scandinavian discovery of America spread throughout northern Europe. Torfason cited two Icelandic sagas to support his views: Graenlandinga Saga and Eirik\u2019s Saga. Both told of the voyage of explorers from the Norse settlements in Iceland and Greenland to a western land. According to the sagas, around 1001 C.E., Leif Eriksson led an expedition to North America. For many years, an ancient Norse presence in the New World went unquestioned. During the 1940s, however, the Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morrison rejected the stories of the sagas and declared that Columbus had no predecessor. But in the 1950s, archaeologists uncovered a Norse community at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada, decisively overturning Morrison\u2019s views. They now believe that the L’Anse aux Meadows settlement may be Eriksson\u2019s settlement in the land he called Vinland.<\/p>\n
Controversy continues about how far into the North American continent the Norse explorers penetrated. The sagas record that Eriksson named the territory of Vinland after the many grape vines that grew wild there. In that case, L’Anse aux Meadows could not be Vinland because grapes do not grow wild that far north. Some historians argue that Eriksson\u2019s \u201cgrapes\u201d were really wild cranberries, which can still be found in the bogs of Newfoundland. Others including the Norse scholar Hjalmar R. Holand claim that Ericksson\u2019s grapes were really true grapes and that Vinland was therefore further south. Holand places it in or near modern New York City. Other locations that have been suggested for Vinland include Massachusetts Bay, the coast of Maine, and even tidewater Virginia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Precolumbian contacts with the New World by Norse explorers. When the scholar Thormod Torfason published his Historia Vinlandae Antiquae in 1705, the news of the Scandinavian discovery of America spread throughout northern Europe. Torfason cited two Icelandic sagas to support his views: Graenlandinga Saga and Eirik\u2019s Saga. Both told of the voyage of explorers from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-v"],"yoast_head":"\n