Who was the Viking who first explored North America?

Nearly 500 years before the birth of Christopher Columbus, a band of European sailors left their homeland behind in search of a new world. Their high-powered Viking ship sliced through the cobalt waters of the Atlantic Ocean as winds billowed the boat’s enormous single sail. After traversing unfamiliar waters, the Norsemen aboard the wooden ship spied a new land, dropped anchor and went ashore. Half a millennium before Columbus “discovered” America, those Viking feet may have been the first European ones to ever have touched North American soil.

Exploration was a family business for the expedition’s leader, Leif Eriksson. His father, Erik the Red, founded the first European settlement of Greenland after being expelled from Iceland around A.D. 985 for killing a neighbor. Eriksson, who is believed to have been born in Iceland around A.D. 970, spent his formative years in desolate Greenland.

Sagas recounted Eriksson’s exploits in the New World around A.D. 1000.