We Now Have A Better Idea Of When Vikings Arrived In North America

 

Oh, Vinland!

Vikings landed in the Americas before Christopher Columbus and now new research can pinpoint the exact year they arrived, CBS News reported.

Scientists analyzed pieces of wood from three different trees that had been chopped by Vikings at L’Anse aux Meadows, in current-day Newfoundland, Canada.

Using radiocarbon dating, researchers came across evidence of a massive solar storm – a huge burst of energy from the Sun that hit the Earth – in 992 CE. The blast put additional carbon in the atmosphere and consequently increased the amount of carbon in living things for that period of time.

The team then looked at the tree rings of the wooden pieces and determined that it was Vikings who had chopped them off 29 years after the solar storm.

That dates their year of arrival to 1021 CE – 471 years before Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492.

L’Anse aux Meadows is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has long been hailed as the first evidence of European presence in North America. The United Nations agency also noted that the timber-framed turf structures at the site resemble those found in Norse Greenland and Iceland from the same period.

Historians have noted that multiple Indigenous tribes lived around the area as far back as 6,000 years ago.

A 2019 study found evidence that the Indigenous tribes and the Viking settlers at L’Anse aux Meadows might have had more interactions than previously believed.