On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed at one of the islands in the Bahamas, and it is often said that day marks the “discovery” of North America.

In fact, many different people had been living in North America for tens of thousands of years before his “discovery”, including the Tainos who greeted Columbus when he landed. 

Nevertheless, Columbus Day became a federal holiday in 1937 and is still celebrated on the second Monday in October of each year.

It turns out Christopher Columbus was not even the first European to set foot on North American soil.  It was Viking traders and adventurers who set sail from Greenland and first settled for a brief time in North America. 

 

The Vikings arrived in North America about 500 years before Columbus when the Viking explorer Leif Erikson landed in what is now the Canadian province of Newfoundland.  He found grapes to make wine and thus named the area “Vinland” or wineland.

While there have always been stories about Leif Erikson’s voyage, archeologists did not have evidence of the Vikings’ arrival and settlement in North America until 1960 when two Norwegians located and excavated an ancient Viking settlement that became known as L’Anse aux Meadows. 

 

At L'Anse aux Meadows, the Vikings built eight structures whose walls and roofs consisted of sod laid over a wooden frame. They are called sod longhouses.  It is estimated that 30 to 160 people could have lived in the settlement. The floor of the largest longhouse measured 28.8 meters by 15.6 meters.

You can visit the site of the settlement today – it is a Canadian National Park and has also been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site -- and see reconstructions of the longhouses.  These longhouses are just like buildings built in Iceland around the year 1000, C.E. 

In recognition of the Vikings’ arrival in North America, the United States Congress established October 9th as “Leif Erikson Day” in 1964.  

Dr. Parcak was not looking for ruins.  Instead, she was looking at plants on satellite photographs because any buildings the Vikings built would have changed the soil around the buildings and affected the plants growing in that area. The different plants are a clue that a Viking settlement may have been there and the next step is to investigate the site on the ground.

While people lived in North America long before the arrival of the Vikings and Christopher Columbus, the question of who arrived in North America and when is still interesting. 

According to Russell Freedman,  the author of the book “Who Was First? Discovering the Americas”, people “always want to know what happened before you.  It’s a human instinct to know where you came from and what preceded you.”

 

1.     By December 31, 2015, (a) how many times had the United States celebrated Columbus Day and

(b) how many times had it recognized Leif Eriksson Day? 

(c) If your Nordic-American classmate’s grandmother sent out one Leif Eriksson card each year starting in 1964 to 12 of her friends, how many Leif Erikson cards had she sent by December 31, 2015?

2. Take a look at the photo on page 7 and imagine standing inside a long house.

(a) If the ceiling in the largest long house at L’Anse aux Meadows was 2 meters  high, about how much space was in the building?  (b) If each person in the settlement needed at least 10 cubic meters of living space, would there have been enough living space for 160 people in the largest long house?

3. Take a look at the map on page 11. You are visiting the national park at L’Anse aux Meadows and then decide to drive to also visit Point Rossee to see the site Dr. Parcak is investigating. The distance between L’Anse aux Meadows and Point Rossee is 676.5 kilometers. If you stop for lunch at the Hägar the Horrible restaurant after 225 kilometers, about how much of the trip have you made?

Florida Mathematics Standards

1. MAFS.5.NBT.2.5 - Fluently multiply multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm.

2. MAFS.5.MD.3.5 - Relate volume to the operation of multiplication and addition and solve real world and mathematical problems involving volume.