Vikings came to North America nearly 500 years before Columbus, study of wood reveals

Viking sailors landed on the shores of North America nearly half a millennium before Christopher Columbus, new research reveals.

Archaeologists from the University of Iceland came to this conclusion after analyzing wood recovered from five Norse farmsteads in Greenland, according to a study published on April 17 in the journal Antiquity.

Norse settlers colonized Greenland around 985 A.D. and occupied the farms between 1000 and 1400 A.D.

“Journeys were being made from Greenland to North America throughout the entirety of the period of Norse settlement in Greenland, and resources were being acquired by the Norse from North America for far longer than previously thought,” researchers wrote.

As part of the study, 8,552 pieces of wood were examined to determine their origin.

Only 26 pieces, or 0.27 percent of the total assemblage, belonged to trees that were definitively imported. These were oak, hemlock, beech and Jack pine.

Interestingly, driftwood made up a large percentage of the collected wood, indicating it was an important resource for the island dwellers. Despite the vegetative abundance implied by the name Greenland, the island only had a few tree species, which were mostly low-growing or twisted.

Of the 26 imported pieces found, eight definitively originated from North America, the researchers said. Seven were Jack pine — a species that grows in Nova Scotia and New England — and one was hemlock.

“The wood taxa identified in this study show, without doubt, that the Norse harvested timber resources in North America,” researchers said, adding that the trees could have been felled near the Gulf of St. Lawrence in far eastern Canada.

The few pieces of American wood were only found at one farm known as Garðar, the most prominent of the group.

“This suggests that high-status farms such as Garðar were probably the only settlements that had both the need and the means to acquire North American timber,” researchers said.

The findings in the study seem to corroborate medieval texts that claim wood was shipped to Europe from the New World, researchers said.

This story was originally published April 20, 2023 at 12:06 PM with the headline "Vikings came to North America nearly 500 years before Columbus, study of wood reveals."