Over thousand years ago, a Nordic seafarer, carried off course on the North Atlantic, caught a chance glimpse of land in the far west. The story of the Norse discovery of America, named “Vínland” by discoverers, around the year AD 1000 has been preserved for a millenium in medieval Icelandic manuscripts, the Saga of Eiríkur the Red and the Saga of Greenlanders.

Was Vínland first seen by Leifur Eiríksson or by Bjarni Herjólfsson? Was Leifur “the lucky” a Christian missionary, and where was he from? Who was the first European born in the New World? In her informative and accessible book, Anna Yates tells the story of the Norsemen in America, how they found a new continent, and why they did not stay.

Anna Yates is a writer and translator of mixed English and Icelandic descent. A graduate in history from the University of Bristol and in Icelandic for Foreign Students from the University of Iceland, she lives and works in Reykjavík and London.