A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas
That was long before Christopher Columbus set sail
THAT VIKINGS crossed the Atlantic long before Christopher Columbus is well established. Their sagas told of expeditions to the coast of today’s Canada: to Helluland, which scholars have identified as Baffin Island or Labrador; Markland (Labrador or Newfoundland) and Vinland (Newfoundland or a territory farther south). In 1960 the remains of Norse buildings were found on Newfoundland.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Medieval mapping”
From the September 25th 2021 edition
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