The Norse reach America
A settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows puts Europeans in the Americas around 1000.
- When
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
Norse voyagers from Greenland establish a base at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, excavated in the 1960s and confirming the sagas. A 2021 study dating wood cut with metal tools by a cosmic-ray spike in the tree rings fixed activity there to exactly 1021. Contact with indigenous peoples was hostile and the settlement was abandoned within a few years. It changed nothing, which is precisely what distinguishes it from 1492.