The first Europeans known to have reached North America were the Norse, often called Vikings, who established a settlement on the northern tip of Newfoundland around 1,000 years ago. This predates Christopher Columbus by nearly 500 years. The site, called L’Anse aux Meadows, remains the only confirmed Viking settlement in the Americas and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Norse Settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows
In 1960, archaeologists discovered the remains of a Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, located at the tip of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula on the shore of Epaves Bay in the Strait of Belle Isle. The site consists of eight timber-framed structures covered with turf cut from the surrounding peat bog, built in the same gabled style found in Norse Greenland and Iceland from the same period. The buildings include three dwellings, a forge, and four workshops, all arranged on a narrow terrace overlooking a small brook and the bay.
For decades, researchers knew the settlement dated to roughly 1,000 years ago but couldn’t pin down an exact year. That changed in 2021, when a team published findings in the journal Nature showing the Norse were present at the site in AD 1021. They achieved this precision by analyzing tree rings in wooden artifacts found at the site. A known spike in atmospheric radiocarbon caused by a cosmic radiation event in AD 993 left a detectable signature in the wood. By locating that signature in the tree rings and counting outward to the bark edge, researchers determined the exact year the trees were felled. This date marks the earliest known point at which humans had encircled the entire globe.
Butternut wood and butternut fragments found at the site tell an additional story. Butternuts have never grown as far north as Newfoundland, which means the Norse must have traveled farther south along the coast. Exactly how far remains unknown, but the Icelandic sagas describe regions they called Markland and Vinland, likely corresponding to areas in Labrador and the Gulf of St. Lawrence region or beyond.
Norse Contact With Indigenous Peoples
The Norse did not arrive on an empty continent. They encountered Indigenous peoples they called Skrælings, a term that likely referred to several distinct groups depending on the location. Archaeological and historical evidence suggests the Norse probably came into contact with Indigenous populations in southern Labrador and Newfoundland, Dorset Palaeoeskimos in northern Labrador, and Thule peoples in Greenland and possibly the eastern Canadian Arctic. These interactions appear to have involved both trade and conflict, occurring sporadically over several centuries rather than as a single episode. The Norse presence in North America was ultimately short-lived, likely lasting only a few years at L’Anse aux Meadows itself, though voyages to collect timber and other resources may have continued for some time after.
Columbus and the Caribbean
Christopher Columbus is the figure most commonly associated with European arrival in the Americas, but his 1492 voyage didn’t actually reach the North American mainland. On October 12, 1492, Columbus landed on an island he named San Salvador, now part of the Bahamas. He made three more voyages after that, exploring parts of the Caribbean and the coasts of Central and South America, but he died believing he had found a new route to Asia. Columbus never set foot on what is now the United States or Canada.
His voyages were nonetheless pivotal because they opened sustained European contact with the Western Hemisphere. Unlike the Norse settlement, which left little lasting impact on European awareness of the continent, Columbus’s arrival triggered a wave of exploration, colonization, and transatlantic exchange that reshaped the world.
The English and Portuguese Arrivals
The first documented English voyage to North America came in 1497, when John Cabot sailed west under a commission from King Henry VII. On June 24, he made landfall somewhere on the east coast of Canada. The exact spot is debated, but local tradition holds it was Cape Bonavista in Newfoundland. Cabot’s voyage became the legal basis for England’s territorial claims in the New World and the foundation of what would eventually become the British overseas empire.
The Portuguese were close behind. In 1501, Gaspar Corte-Real sailed with three ships and reached “Terra Verde” (Greenland), named for its tall trees. Like the Cabots, the Corte-Real brothers left no written descriptions of their voyages, but they reached the shores of eastern Newfoundland and possibly Labrador. Their most lasting contribution was cartographic: the “Cantino” chart, one of the earliest maps to depict the coastline they explored.
Basque Whalers in Labrador
While explorers like Cabot and Corte-Real made brief landfalls, the Basques from the border region of Spain and France established something more permanent. In the 1530s, Basque mariners founded a whaling station at Red Bay on the Labrador shore of the Strait of Belle Isle, not far from L’Anse aux Meadows. This was no small outpost. Red Bay became a proto-industrial operation where crews hunted whales along the coast, butchered them, and rendered the fat into oil in large ovens called tryworks. The oil was shipped back to Europe, where it was used primarily for lighting.
The station operated for roughly 70 years before the local whale population was depleted. Today, Red Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site recognized as the earliest, most complete, and best-preserved example of the European whaling tradition. It represents a bridge between the age of exploration and the age of commercial exploitation, when European interest in North America shifted from finding new sea routes to extracting resources on a massive scale.
A Timeline of European Firsts
- AD 1021: Norse settlers occupy L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, the earliest confirmed European presence in North America.
- 1492: Columbus lands on San Salvador in the Bahamas, opening sustained European contact with the Western Hemisphere but not reaching the North American mainland.
- 1497: John Cabot makes landfall on the east coast of Canada, establishing England’s first claim in the New World.
- 1501: Gaspar Corte-Real reaches Newfoundland and possibly Labrador for Portugal.
- 1530s: Basque whalers establish a large-scale industrial station at Red Bay, Labrador.
The gap between the Norse arrival and the next wave of European exploration spans nearly five centuries. During that time, knowledge of the Norse voyages faded into saga and legend in Scandinavia, and the rest of Europe remained unaware that a vast landmass lay across the Atlantic. It took Columbus’s voyage and the rapid succession of English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French expeditions that followed to make European presence in North America permanent.