Carbon Dating Pinpoints Viking Landfall In Canada In 1021 A.D.

Norse seafarers lived — and specifically cut trees — in what is North America today. A new study published Wednesday in Nature reveals that they actually landed in Newfoundland, Canada around 1021 A.D. for a brief stay.

More precise dating methods and a study of the L’Anse aux Meadows UNESCO World Heritage site confirm the date of around 1,000 years ago. Any previous dating on this subject relied on Icelandic sagas, architectural remains, and artifacts. However, both archaeological and written records reveal it was a brief occupation, according to the study.

According to National Geographic, the dating method was so precise because “in A.D. 993, a storm on the sun released an enormous pulse of radiation that was absorbed and stored by trees all over the Earth.”

Previously the exact date of the Europeans’ arrival in North America was never pinned down precisely. Carbon dating is a much newer technology that is only getting more advanced and precise. It was only 50 years ago that the artifacts in L’Anse Aux Meadows were discovered and proved that Vikings (Norse) were the first European settlers in the Americas.

The arrival of Vikings (Norse) is exactly 471 years before Columbus set foot in the Caribbean and began brutally subjugating the Taino people. How much contact Viking (Norse) populations had with the Indigenous populations of what is now Canada and the United States — the first peoples to arrive on the land — is unclear.