Posted on 07/15/2025 3:13:10 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Over 1,000 years ago, Norse explorers reached North America from Greenland, centuries before Christopher Columbus. Join historian Dan Snow as he explores how ancient Viking sagas about the discoveries of legendary Norse explorer Leif Erikson offer clues to where these intrepid adventurers may have landed. This clip is from The Vikings Uncovered (2016).
What The Viking Sagas Reveal About Who Really Discovered America | 3:58
BBC Timestamp | 853K subscribers | 68,830 views | July 8, 2025
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--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <-- 0:02 · Not only is Greenland a Viking colony for 500 years, 0:06 · but according to the sagas, it serves as a launching point 0:10 · for the most epic adventures of all. 0:14 · It starts when the son of Erik the Red, Leif Erikson, 0:18 · is blown off course in a storm in the seas west of Greenland. 0:28 · (SAGA READ OUT IN ORIGINAL LANGUAGE) 0:32 · He's at sea for quite a long time. 0:35 · Leif sights new lands 0:38 · that he had no reason to know that these lands existed. 0:42 · [Narrator] The sagas describe in detail Leif's trip 0:47 · and the different landscapes he discovers along a mysterious new coastline. 0:52 · For years, archaeologists and historians speculated 0:56 · that this coastline was in North America, 1:00 · and they tried to match the sagas' descriptions 1:03 · to the geography we see today. 1:06 · - Leif, he's sailing south, down along the coast, 1:09 · and he's describing the different landscapes they sail past. 1:12 · First of all, a land that they call Helluland, the land of stone slabs. 1:17 · [Narrator] Helluland seems to some experts 1:19 · to match what is now Canada's Baffin Island. 1:23 · [Emily Lethbridge] And then they come to a part of the country that's very heavily wooded, 1:26 · and they give the name Markland, or forested land, to that part of the country. 1:31 · [Narrator] Markland could correspond to today's Labrador. 1:35 · Further south, according to the sagas, 1:38 · Leif sends scouts ashore to explore the new land, 1:41 · and they bring wild grapevines back to the ship. 1:44 · So they name this place Vinland. 1:46 · [Emily] And they come back, one of them with a handful of self-sown wheat, 1:51 · and the other with a vine in their hand. 1:54 · [Dan Snow] Wild vines – is that where they get the name Vinland from? 1:57 · That's one interpretation, yes. 1:59 · The land of wild grapes and vines. 2:04 · [Narrator] Some experts thought that Vinland could be what is now Newfoundland 2:08 · and the coast around the Gulf of St Lawrence. 2:12 · - So that's how, according to this saga, 2:15 · North America was discovered. 2:17 · So this is hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus. 2:21 · Here it is, in this manuscript right here. 2:24 · [Narrator] But no one knew for sure if the stories were true 2:29 · without archaeological evidence. 2:32 · All that changed in 1960 when, after years of searching, 2:37 · archaeologists made a remarkable find at the northern tip of Newfoundland, 2:41 · in a place called L'Anse aux Meadows. 2:49 · Sarah is on her way to L'Anse aux Meadows 2:51 · to see the only confirmed Viking settlement in North America. 2:56 · She wants to find out what kinds of traces the Vikings left behind here, 3:01 · in the hope that she might discover new sites along the coastline. 3:06 · Approaching the site by boat, just as the Vikings would have, 3:10 · Sarah is struck by the sheer beauty of the place… 3:19 · ..as well as the extreme obstacles the Vikings faced. 3:23 · [Sarah Parcak] I can't even imagine being a Viking in a boat, 3:26 · sailing by icebergs the size of a mountain. 3:31 · Gives you a sense of just how intrepid and brave they were, seeking new worlds.
Northern Europeans vs. Southern Europeans. North guys may have been earlier but the South guys were more consequential.
The way I have heard it is “once Columbus discovered it, it stayed discovered.”
There was a show not long ago that had to do with the “moon eye people”. Turns out they were of Viking ancestry after their lodgings were “discovered”.
The boys from Oak Island already went over this. Vikings, then Templars, then the French, then the Spaniards and finally the English.
The first European known to have seen North America (apart from Greenland) was Bjarni Herjolfsson in 986. He was trying to get to Greenland and missed it—he saw parts of the Canadian coast (Baffin Island and Labrador, perhaps Newfoundland) but did not go ashore. He eventually reached Greenland and told people what he had seen—they made fun of him for never going ashore. Leif Eriksson knew about his discoveries when he made his explorations in or about the year A.D. 1000.
The Little Ice Age hit and they were forced to abandon Greenland and went back to Iceland, so the story goes.
Yeah, we just gotta keep up, eh?
And “stay where you’re to ‘til we comes where yer at”.
What has always puzzled me is the Vikings most definitely discover North America as in New Found land and what is now Northeastern USA. They settled but were not successful. Further South along the Eastern Coasts were far friendlier lands for settlement due to climate. They did not go there.
I guess that makes Donald Trump the last Viking warrior. LOL
It was through Columbus that knowledge of the Americas reached the wider world. All the Norse did was “discover” that there was more land to the west of Greenland, and this fact was soon forgotten and never acted on. The information never got to the wider world.
I sometimes like to imagine if other planets had been inhabitable if we would have spread to them already in mass. It is sad that everywhere we look is death besides earth
If the Vikings had established an ongoing civilization here, we could quite possibly be ruled by The Knights That Go Ni!
:^)
Quite so. Columbus established a lasting connection that led to European settlement and development of the New World and the rise of a global human civilization.
***in a place called L’Anse aux Meadows.***
I remember reading of this in National Geographic decades ago. It was said the evidence was so close to the top of the ground that if anyone had planted a potato crop it would have destroyed it.
Anyone remember this old book from 1961 THEY ALL DISCOVERED AMERICA by Charles Michael Boland. I had a copy decades ago.
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