Over 1000 years ago, Eirik Thorvaldsson, or Erik the Red, a Viking Explorer traveled westward from the Viking territory of Iceland and discovered Greenland (Grønland; still Scandinavian to this day). His son Lief Erikson also traveled towards the west and 'discovered' North America.
Lief was raised in Greenland. It is believed that he went to Norway to serve for the King of Norway for a term before he returned to his home in Greenland. Some say he missed Greenland on his way back and landed in North America but the usual story states that he had heard the tales of another Icelandic explorer, Bjarni Herjulfsson, who had been put of course, fifteen years earlier, by a storm and had seen green hills further west. He did not set foot on land and returned to Greenland.
Lief landed on the American Continent three times. He landed first on what is believed to be the shores of Labrador which he named Helluland (which means flat-stone land) then went to Newfoundland Island named Markland (woodland) and Vinland (so called because Tyrkir the German, who had walked around found grapes growing in the wild. The Land was called Vine Land) which was on the mainland somewhere between the Hudson's bay and Cape Cod (US) artefacts have been found in the northeast states as well as in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
After a winter in Vinland, Eriksson said it was even too cold for even Vikings and only insane people would live there and decided to go back to Greenland. Actually he just returned for some unknown reason and never came back to America. Many others came to America including Thorfinn Karlsefni who tried to settle there with about 135 men and 15 women, livestock, and three or more ships. But then there was friction between the Icelandics and the Skraelings (native inhabitants of the New Continent). And so they all went back to Greenland or Iceland.
So that's the story.
The most famous Vikings settlement is L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. L'Anse aux Meadows is believed to be the oldest known settlement in North America. Nobody knows who settled there Eriksson or anybody else as there were many voyages to the new lands. The details of their time in L'Anse aux Meadows which, is, by the way, located on the great Pininsula of Newfoundland. They built a few buildings, a forge where iron was melted. When the Vikings left Markland, the habitations decayed and were not found until 1960. During the 60s and the 70s excavations were made first by Anne Stine Ingstad then by Parks Canada. L'Anse aux Meadows is now a National Historic Site (since 1977) and is protected by UNESCO World Heritage Site (Since 1978)
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