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The Norse exploration of North America began in the late 10th century, when Norsemen explored areas of the North Atlantic colonizing Greenland and creating a short term settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland. This is known now as L'Anse aux Meadows where the remains of buildings were found in 1960 dating to approximately 1,000 years ago.
The Vinland Sagas are two Icelandic texts written independently of each other in the early 13th century—The Saga of the Greenlanders (Grænlendinga Saga) and The Saga of Erik the Red (Eiríks Saga Rauða). The sagas were written down between 1220 and 1280 and describe events occurring around 970–1030. [1]
c. 1000: Erik the Red and Leif Ericson, Viking navigators, discovered and settled Greenland, Helluland (possibly Baffin Island), Markland (now called Labrador), and Vinland (now called Newfoundland). The Greenland colony lasted until the 15th century. c. 1350: The Norse Western Settlement in Greenland was abandoned.
The Saga of Erik the Red, in Old Norse: Eiríks saga rauða (listen ⓘ), is an Icelandic saga on the Norse exploration of North America. The original saga is thought to have been written in the 13th century. It is preserved in somewhat different versions in two manuscripts: Hauksbók (14th century) and Skálholtsbók (15th century).
Like the Saga of Erik the Red, it is one of the two main sources on the Norse colonization of North America. The saga recounts events that purportedly happened around 1000 [1] and is preserved only in the late 14th century Flateyjarbók manuscript. The Saga of the Greenlanders starts with Erik the Red, who leaves Norway and colonizes Greenland.
North of Mexico the only settlements were Saint Augustine and the isolated outpost in northern New Mexico. Exploration of the interior was largely abandoned after the 1540s. Around Newfoundland 500 or more boats annually were fishing for cod and some fishermen were trading for furs, especially at Tadoussac on the Saint Lawrence.
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Viking expansion was the historical movement which led Norse explorers, traders and warriors, the latter known in modern scholarship as Vikings, to sail most of the North Atlantic, reaching south as far as North Africa and east as far as Russia, and through the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople and the Middle East, acting as looters, traders, colonists and mercenaries.