[SoDak]

I think it's pretty clear that the Vikings were in America long before Columbus. The L'Anse Aux Meadows site, the viking coins recovered on cape cod, and the increasingly apparent accuracy of the Icelandic sagas all point to this as fact instead of legend.

[Boundless]

> I think it's pretty clear that the Vikings were
> in America long before Columbus.

Some race of rock-movers surely was:
http://gonewengland.about.com/cs/nhsightseeing/a/aastonehengenh.htm

[School of Rational Thought]

JASÅ!

[Alberta's Child]

Just looking at a map of the North Atlantic will tell you that the presence of vikings in North America long before Columbus should come as no surprise; the trip across the Atlantic from Europe to what is now Labrador is relatively short, particularly when you take into account the presence of Greenland in the middle.

Ironically, the vikings were apparently forced to abandon Greenland when it became increasingly difficult to send ships there from the European mainland during the "mini-Ice Age" of the 12th or 13th century.