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Distances in Canada can be deceptive, because of the high latitudes. So the question becomes the shortest distance between the Inuit and the Viking.
The word “Viking” was originally a verb similar to “explore”, and only associated with a people much later. Vikings are though of as starting in the 9th Century, but by then they had already reached England.
Those peoples that today are called Vikings may have had much earlier origins. Outside of the Roman Empire when the western empire fell in the 5th Century, bested by central Europeans who might have been in contention with the northern Europeans, these “pre-Vikings” would have had different horizons.
They couldn’t move South, and Russia might have been unfriendly as well, so they could travel West and North.