Vikings in Canada

Who were the Norse?

The Norse were seafaring people from Scandinavia. By the late 900s they had settled Iceland and then southern Greenland. We often call them "Vikings," but strictly a Viking was a raider; most Norse were farmers, traders and sailors.

Two old stories, the sagas (the Saga of the Greenlanders and Erik the Red's Saga), tell how Leif Erikson sailed west from Greenland around the year 1000 and reached a land he called Vinland. The sagas were written down about 200 years later and disagree on details, so for centuries many people thought they were mostly legend.

The proof in Newfoundland

In 1960, explorer Helge Ingstad and archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad were shown some grassy mounds by local resident George Decker at L'Anse aux Meadows, on the northern tip of Newfoundland. Anne Stine Ingstad led digs there from 1961 to 1968, and Parks Canada dug more in the 1970s.

Under the mounds were the remains of eight buildings made of sod (blocks of turf) over wooden frames: three large halls and five smaller buildings. One was a forge, where the Norse heated local bog iron to make iron nails (rivets), most likely to repair their ships. It is the oldest known iron smelting in the Americas.

Dating it to 1021

In 2021, scientists studied pieces of wood at the site that had been cut with metal tools, which the local Indigenous peoples of the time didn't use. A burst of radiation from the Sun in the year 993 left a clear marker in tree rings around the world. By finding that ring and counting the rings out to the bark, they showed the trees were cut in 1021. That proves the Norse were there in 1021; it doesn't tell us when they first arrived.

A short stay

L'Anse aux Meadows was a small camp, used for only a few years, perhaps less than a decade. Then the Norse left. Butternuts found at the site, which don't grow that far north, show they also travelled farther south, at least to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The site has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978.

Try it yourself

Open a map app and search for L'Anse aux Meadows. Zoom out until you can see Greenland too. Measure the distance across the Labrador Sea and imagine making that trip in an open wooden ship.

Good to know

• "About five hundred years" is rounded: Leif's voyage was about 1000 and the dated wood is from 1021, roughly 470 to 490 years before Columbus's 1492 voyage.
• "Canada" and "Vikings" are modern labels; the travellers were Norse Greenlanders.
• Leif Erikson's name is spelled several ways (Leifr Eiríksson, Leif Eriksson).
• Whether L'Anse aux Meadows was Leif's own camp is unproven. Most scholars see it as a base camp or gateway to "Vinland," whose exact location is still debated.
• Building count: Parks Canada describes three halls and five smaller buildings; some sources count nine structures.
• Indigenous peoples used the area before and after the Norse. The sagas describe meetings with people the Norse called "Skraelings."
• Avoid "discovered America": Indigenous peoples had lived here for thousands of years.

For AP US History learners

This is background to AP US History Period 1 (1491-1607): the Norse reached North America centuries before Columbus, but their short stay did not lead to lasting contact between the hemispheres the way 1492 did.