Vinding, Niels. The Viking Discovery of America, 985 to 1008: The Greenland Norse and Their Voyages to Newfoundland.

Lewiston, NY: Edward Mellen Press, 2005.

When I was a freshman in college, a friend gave me a copy of Michael Boland’s newly-published book, They All Discovered America. I’d read about the supposed voyage by Leif Erikson to the New World but Boland took the position that the Norse Icelandic Greenlanders (who were not “vikings,” a completely inaccurate label, being only a job description and not an ethnic or national designation) were only one group among many. He made interesting cases for the Phoenicians, Romans, Irish, Portuguese, Venetians, Chinese, Africans, and Arabs, not to mention English fishermen from Bristol. (I’ll ignore the Eurocentric issue of whether one can “discover” a continent already filled with native inhabitants.)

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