Vikings' Early Presence in America Revealed by Timber Find.
A recent study published in the journal "Antiquity" revealed that Vikings arrived in the Americas 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Archaeologists from the University of Iceland examined wood samples from five northern sites in western Greenland and found that the Vikings who occupied Greenland between 985 and 1450 relied upon timber and other materials imported from Europe and the Americas. The findings corroborated historical Viking sagas and confirmed that the Vikings had established multiple trade routes across the Northwest Atlantic possibly a half-millennium before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.