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[Dino and Coop singing]

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At some point, someone’s probably told you that Christopher Columbus was the first European [Columbus on a boat]

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to discover North America.

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But guess what?

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The Vikings had already hit up North America 500 years earlier. [Vikings on the beach]

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Talk about showing up late to the party…

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The first European visitor to North America was actually this handsome devil, Leif

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Erikson.

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He was an explorer and a Viking.

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The Vikings were a diverse group of people from Scandinavia. [Coop pointing at a blackboard]

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They were particularly known for their brutal fighting, and for their long ships, which

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were lighter, faster, and more maneuverable than any other ship of the time period.

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Leif himself was the son of Eric the Red, founder of the first Norse colony here. [Location of the colony on a map]

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He called this barren place “Greenland”.

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Probably because “Cold, Barren Land” didn’t look super inviting on travel brochures. [Travel brochure]

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As for Leif, one day around 1000 AD, he was sailing back to Greenland after a trip to [Leif stood at the front of his boat]

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Norway, where he’d given up his Norse gods for Christianity…

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… when a storm blew his ship wildly off course. [Ship in rough waters]

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When his ship finally came to a rest – and the seasickness wore off – Leif saw something

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unexpected off to the west:

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Land!

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See, all the maps of the time said there would just be open water. [Old Norse map]

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So spotting land?

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Kind of a big deal.

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So Leif headed home, fired his mapmakers, and headed back out to explore this mysterious land. [Leif sets fire to a map shop]

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First, he came ashore on an island that was little more than a flat rock. [Leif's ship arrives]

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He named the place, “Flat-Rock Land”.

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Leif hit the seas again, and landed on present-day Newfoundland in Canada.

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There, Leif and his fellow Vikings discovered rivers full of salmon and – even better – grapes. [Leif at a waterfall]

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Lots and lots of grapes.

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Which the Vikings put to good use…

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… making jelly!

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…Just kidding.

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C'mon, these were wild, party-hardy Vikings. [A glass of red wine being poured]

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They made wine.

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Leif was so excited about the of all these grape vines that he named the place – wait

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for it – “Vinland” or “Vineland.”

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So, if Leif Eriksson and the Vikings discovered North America five hundred years before Columbus,

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why does Chris get all the credit?

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Turns out, while the Vikings were great at ship-building, pillaging, wine making, and [Picture of Vikings fighting]

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marauding, one thing they weren’t so good at was record-keeping.

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It wasn’t until a few hundred years after Leif’s travels that anyone bothered to write

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them down.

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And even then, the authors didn’t give much in the way of details. [Vikings at a BBQ]

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So the well-documented Columbus story became the popular one.

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Then, in the 1960s, two archaeologists discovered the remains of a Norse settlement dating back [Dino pointing at a blackboard]

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to the time Leif was rumored to have discovered Vinland.

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This discovery seemed to prove that it was Leif, not Christopher,

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who got to North America first.

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Well… first among the Europeans, that is. [Native Americans looking annoyed]

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Evidence of the Vikings in Newfoundland continues to grow.

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In fact, in 2015, satellite imaging picked up evidence of a possible Norse settlement

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here in Point Rosé.

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And as archaeology becomes more advanced, who knows where the next discovery of Viking [Astronaut on the moon]

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exploration will be?

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Uh… that might be pushing it…

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