After Leif Eiriksson’s original voyage to North American shores, the Greenland Vikings remained in “Vinland the Good” for a time—but for how long? A couple of decades, at least, according to new evidence reported in Nature.1,2
“The new evidence comes from old samples. Dozens of radiocarbon dates taken from wooden artifacts excavated at L’Anse aux Meadows [in Newfoundland] in the 1960s showed the site was about 1,000 years old. But radiocarbon dating was in its infancy at the time, and the margin of error was often measured in decades or even centuries.1
Now, it looks like Greenlanders migrated seasonally—if not settling for entire years—for at least 21 years after Leif’s historic voyage of discovery in A.D. 1000. Evidence for this comes from recent dendrochronology data that links to solar storm indicators.
