Paper Topic:

The World of the Vikings

Vikings Exploration : The Vinland Voyages

Mapping the Voyage

The map below is meant to assist the reader in following the story of the Viking travel . The map is from the Smithsonian Institute . Taking into consideration that this travel took place on ships built more than 1000 years ago is a tribute to the skill and motivation of the Norwegian people and the Vikings that choose to come west

Introduction . The Vikings history refers to sagas , which are the old stories written in the Norwegian language that read more like fairy tales than

history books . The Vikings these sagas refer to are larger than life , more caricature or super hero than historical figure . This has left many people wondering if Vikings were real or if the stories are just fictional tales written by authors with wonderful imaginations Twentieth century historians began to recognize that this saga 's held valuable information about the history of the past and were more than simple stories (Brooks 1986

Americans celebrates Columbus Day and it is well accepted but the general population , that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492 . However , historical and archeological research shows clearly that there were explorers in America long before Columbus . Scholars agree that the Vikings were the first Europeans to arrive in North America and did so centuries before Christopher Columbus (Jones 2001

Half a century before Christopher Columbus is said to have discovered America , Viking sea captain and explorer , Leif Erickson and his crew landed is what is thought to be Newfoundland , Canada . Eriksson called the new land Vinland (Nichol 2003 . While there is some debate as to the meaning of the name , a quote form a saga indicates that the name is related to the native grapes ' So is said , that their aft-boat was filled with grapes . Now was hewn a lading for the ship . And when spring came , they made ready and sailed away and gave Leif name to the land after the lands products and called it Wineland (The Flatey Book Translation of the Saga of Eric the Rd

The first written documentation of Vinland was found in a work by historian Adam of Bremen and was written in the year 1075 (Bolls 1986 Another major source of information regarding Vinland comes from two well known sagas the Saga of Eric the Red and from the Saga of the Greenlanders . These works were not written until the 13th century hundreds of years after the actual events so there is some question of their reliability or accuracy (Jones 2001 . However , they are the main written documentation for this period and historians have relied on the saga 's to paint the picture of the Viking voyage to North America and discovery of Vinland (Jones 2001

Though the Vikings did not make Vinland a permanent home , the Viking influence is clearly documented in North America (Brooks 1986 . There has been substantial research into the Viking history and contribution to North America and it is surprising to learn of the discoveries...

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