The Vinland Mystery

Here is a short documentary that depicts the search, discovery and authentication of the only known Norse settlement in North America — Vinland. This is the Vinland Mystery.

No matter what your teachers may have taught you in school, it’s very probable that Columbus didn’t get here first in America. We’re referring of course to the Viking settlers at L’Anse aux Meadows, located on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland, in the Canadian province of Newfoundland.

There is the National Historic Site of Canada in L’Anse aux Meadows, a place where the reconstructions of three Norse buildings are the focal point of an archaeological site. Historians believe that the earliest known European settlement was in this part of the New World.

It was in 1960 that archaeological evidence pointed toward this settlement in America, and the Norsemen gave the name Vinland, “the place where wild grapes grow”. Dr. Helge Ingstad and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, uncovered some mysterious mounds at l’Anse aux Meadows. They were the first to attempt to prove the pre-Columbian discovery of North America.

It was around 1000 A.D. when Icelandic Viking Leif Eriksson was suspected to have graced the shores of Newfoundland. This was some 500 years prior to the first voyage of Christopher Columbus.