Beyond the vivid, and sometimes lurid, modern-day depictions of the Vikings is the history of a formidable medieval Scandinavian people, the Norse. While it’s true that they could be warlike, the story of the Norse is not all broil and battle. As seafarers, they had the means to roam in search of new lands, which they boldly did, transforming the world as they went. The Vikings eventually ventured West, across oceans that washed the coasts of Vinland—what we now call Canada.

In this special edition

Introduction

Who were the Vikings?

Viking was a term of particular piratical art in the Old Norse language: víkingr meaning raider. As a people, the Norse were also prodigious farmers, traders and colonizers. For roughly 300 medieval years, the audacious Norse dominated the Northern Hemisphere, widely known as the Viking Age.

Part 1

To Vinland (and back again)

The sagas tell a story of a Norse merchant and his crew who got lost on their way to Greenland and stumbled on the shores of what scholars believe is now Canada and the U.S. Later, Leif Erikson and others voyaged further, to what they called Vinland—and beyond.

Part 2

Vinland: Discovery and excavation

Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad had an inkling. His dogged dedication to following clues and searching out answers led to the top of Newfoundland’s northern peninsula in the 1960s. There, at L’Anse aux Meadows, Ingstad and his wife were able to pinpoint the location of the oldest known Norse settlement in the New World.

Conclusion

The Vikings are (still) coming

For all that modern-day exploration, archeology and science have revealed about the Vikings and their thousand-year-old doings, we’re left to speculate about why they didn’t remain in the bountiful lands they had happened upon. Sagas, settlements, broils, battles and all, their legacy endures.

Plus: Sidebars on the sagas, Viking ships and maps, how Vinland got its name, and more!