Who were the Vikings?
The Vikings were sea-faring people from Scandinavia (present-day Norway, Sweden, and Denmark). Between 700 and 1100 AD, they travelled to other countries in Europe and other continents. Many of them were warrirors, who raided or conquered the places they visited. But a lot of others were also farmers and craftspeople.
- Vikings were the first Europeans to cross the Atlantic, settling at a site known as L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland. But the precise age of the settlement had yet to be determined.
- Researchers managed to pinpoint the precise date through radiocarbon dating of wooden artefacts found at L’Anse aux Meadows.
- The archaeologists are confident that these wooden artefacts were made by Vikings as the artefacts were modified using metal tools, which were not manufactured by the indigenous population at that time.
- According to 13th-Century Icelandic sagas, the Norse explorer Leif Erikson established a settlement at Vinland – in present-day eastern Canada – around the year 1000, five centuries before the voyages of Christopher Columbus.
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