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  • BBC History Magazine

    Founding fathers?

    Apr 15, 2021 4 minutes

    Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth by Gordon Campbell OUR, 272 pages, £20

    Around the year 1000, the Icelander Leif Eirikson set sail from Norway for Greenland. Encountering severe weather, he was blown off course and landed on an unknown shore farther to the west. Here he found wild grapes, wheat and plenty of trees. Leif named the new territory Vinland – and, so the story goes, became the first European to set foot in North America, five centuries before Christopher Columbus was credited with its discovery.

    This well-known narrative about the western reach of the Vikings –

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