Archaeologists believe that the 1,000-year-old Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, a province of Canada, is the oldest in North America.
Led by Leif Eriksson, the Vikings who settled there nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus reached America called it Vinland.
L’Anse aux Meadows is the only known Norse site in North America outside of Greenland, and represents the farthest known extent of European exploration and settlement of the New World.
The main sources of information about the Norse voyages to Vinland are two Icelandic sagas, The Saga of Eric the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders.
These stories were preserved by oral tradition until they were written down some 250 years after the events they describe.
The continent of North America technically includes Central America and the islands of the West Indies.
