LEGEND: VINLAND, THE VIKING AMERICA

Almost 500 years before Columbus, the Norse crossed the Atlantic and set foot in America. Two Icelandic sagas tell it, Erik the Red's saga and the Greenlanders' saga, and archaeology confirms it: at L'Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland, lie the remains of the only Viking settlement on the American continent.

Erik the Red, exiled from Iceland, colonized Greenland around 985. His son Leif Eriksson, guided by merchant Bjarni Herjolfsson's tales (who had sighted lands westward without landing), sailed west around 1000: he touched Helluland (land of stones, likely Baffin), Markland (land of forests, likely Labrador) and finally Vinland (land of wine or of meadows), where he wintered.

Voyages continued with Thorfinn Karlsefni, who attempted colonization with families and livestock, but clashes with the natives (the sagas' skraelingjar) and Greenland's remoteness made the enterprise unsustainable. The settlement was abandoned within a few years, forgotten by Europe for centuries until explorer Helge Ingstad rediscovered it in 1960. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage site.