The L'Anse aux Meadows Mystery: Why the Vikings Abandoned Canada

Nearly five centuries before Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic, another group of Europeans had already reached North America.

Around the year 1000 CE, Norse sailors from Greenland steered their longships west across the North Atlantic and landed on the northern tip of what is now Newfoundland. Led by Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, they established a small settlement that modern archaeology identifies as L'Anse aux Meadows.