[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.

[SoDak]

I agree. It also became increasingly hard to grow any kind of crop for food and for food for animals. Even in this day and age, with the current technology, it's awfully hard to scratch out a living in Greenland. I would very much like to go to Iceland and Greenland and Labrador via ship, just to see what they saw.

[Nakota]

Actually, if you sailed by way of Iceland, Greenland and Baffin Island you would only have been out of the sight of land for 2 days. Plus, the Vikings would have made their voyages in the summer time and at those latitudes the sun shines for most of the day. Not really a mystery given the ships the Vikings had. What they didn't have was weaponry that was sufficiently advanced to fight off continued and determined attacks by the unfriendly natives. That is probably why their North American settlements failed. They also may well have been assimilated into the native population, much the same happened in Ireland.