viking who discovered america

The Viking explorer Leif Erikson is widely believed to have been the first European to discover America, around the year 1000 AD, approximately 500 years before Christopher Columbus. He established a Norse settlement called Vinland, thought to be located in present-day coastal North America, likely Newfoundland, Canada, at a site known as L'Anse aux Meadows. Erikson's voyages and the Viking presence in North America are confirmed by both Icelandic sagas and archaeological evidence from the 1960s.