Did Viking Explorers Reach Heavener, Oklahoma?

Five hundred years before Columbus made landfall on San Salvador, the Norseman Leif Erikson set foot in North America, becoming the first European to do so.

Erikson’s travels took him to the coast of what is now Canada in the far northwest Atlantic. Eventually, around 1000 a.d., Erikson’s band established a settlement in Newfoundland, at L’Anse aux Meadows, which survived perhaps a decade on the far side of the world from European civilization. They named it “Vindland” for the grape-bearing vines the Vikings saw growing wild and free on the island. It’s an incredible story, much of it retold in the two Norse Vinland Sagas: Saga of the Greenlanders and The Saga of Erik the Red.

About the Author

Mark Antonio Wright

Mark Antonio Wright is the executive editor of National Review.

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Five hundred years before Columbus made landfall on San Salvador, the Norseman Leif Erikson set foot in North America, becoming the first European to do so.

Erikson’s travels took him to the coast of what is now Canada in the far northwest Atlantic. Eventually, around 1000 a.d., Erikson’s band established a settlement in Newfoundland, at L’Anse aux Meadows, which survived perhaps a decade on the far side of the world from European civilization. They named it “Vindland” for the grape-bearing vines the Vikings saw growing wild and free on the island. It’s an incredible story, much of it retold in the two Norse Vinland Sagas: Saga of the Greenlanders and The Saga of Erik the Red.