A recreated Viking ship off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Newfoundland = Reuters
There is clear evidence that the Nordic Vikings set foot on the American continent just 1,000 years ago. This means that the Vikings arrived on the North American continent at least 471 years before the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus discovered the new continent in ‘1492’. The idea that ‘Vikings preceded Columbus’ has now become an orthodoxy to some extent, but this is the first time that it has been scientifically confirmed to a specific year.
According to the New York Times on the 20th (local time), a research team at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands analyzed the wood found at the Viking ruins ‘Lance Omedoz’ on Newfoundland Island in northeastern Canada. said to have been confirmed. The research team explained, “It is known that the Vikings first settled in North America (before Columbus), but the exact time has not been revealed. This paper was published in the international scientific journal ‘Nature’.
28 tree rings are clearly visible on a piece of wood from 993 discovered at the Viking ruins of Lance Omedoz in Canada. Reuters Yonhap News
The team derived these results from timber from Viking sites discovered in the 1960s. First, it was confirmed that the radiocarbon extracted from wood chips was a cosmic radiation component that was poured into the earth between 992 and 993. After analyzing 28 tree rings formed before logging, it is estimated that this tree was felled in 1021.
The pieces of wood were cut with an ‘iron blade’, which is believed to be an axe, and the fact that the natives living in North America at the time did not use iron was an important clue. Therefore, the research team concludes that the person who cut off the wood is a Viking who crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the North American continent.
Vikings with excellent boating skills expanded their stage by plundering and conquering the North Atlantic in the 8th and 11th centuries. It is estimated that they entered Greenland in 982, and it is known that they discovered the Americas before Christopher Columbus. So far, various hypotheses have been raised about the timing of the Vikings’ entry into the Americas based on historical sites, artifacts, and legends, but the specific date has not been specified.
Intern reporter Kim Ji-woo
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