Columbus discovered the New World, this common sense must be all too familiar. From 1492 to 1502, with the support of the Spanish royal family, Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas four times, becoming the first navigator to discover the New World and this also made him become one of the greatest navigators in the world.
However, in fact, Columbus was not the first to “discover” the American continent.
According to research by historians, long before Columbus, people from the Old World “discovered” America through voyages. It is only for technical reasons that these trips have not been convincingly maintained and recorded.
And now history textbooks say that Columbus “discovered” the American continent. In effect, it means that Columbus’ voyage to the Americas had a different meaning from earlier European “exploration” voyages:
Columbus crossed the Atlantic for the first time from temperate rather than cold waters, and used relatively sophisticated technology to ensure continued colonization, completely breaking the isolation between the New World World and Old World in the Americas.
In continental Europe, there has long been a legend that there is a new continent on the other side of the boundless sea to the west of this continent. The first Europeans to discover the Americas were the Vikings, who arrived in North America 500 years before Columbus, according to research led by American archaeologist Sarah Parcak.
Viking is a general term for the Vikings of ancient Europe. Strictly speaking, the Vikings were, like the Huns, a nomadic group in ancient China, not from a country in the true sense of the word, but a fishing and hunting group in Northern Europe.
Similar to the nomads living on the harsh Mongolian highlands, the Vikings lived in Scandinavia with harsh natural conditions and frigid temperatures, which gave them strong physiques, brutal personalities, tough, and often commits robbery.
However, unlike the Huns who plundered on horseback, the Vikings plundered on ships crossing the seas from mainland Europe.
As a fisherman and hunter with a talent for rowing, the boats they design are often very efficient: they are agile, capable of riding the waves, sailing across the ocean, agile. can be upstream and into rivers from the sea.
The weapons used by the Vikings were also very powerful, they invented the giant Viking sword that could maximize their advantage in terms of height and physical strength. With just one sword, the Vikings could split a cow in half.
From the 8th to 11th centuries, they attacked and occupied the Baltic coast, inland Russia, Great Britain, and even crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, occupied the Mediterranean coast, and made Europe encompass covered with blood red is the fire of battle.
During this bloody “storm”, the Vikings made an unexpected discovery – Iceland.
Iceland has an area of only 100,000 square kilometers, true to its name, Iceland is located near the Arctic Circle, the latitude is probably comparable to Siberia, and one-eighth of the island is covered by glaciers.
Fortunately, the warm water of the North Atlantic Ocean passes through the island, so the island’s climate is not too cold and winters remain at minus 2 degrees Celsius.
Despite the acceptable climate, Iceland was not an island suitable for human existence at that time. The main reason is that it has glacial terrain, and there are quite a few volcanoes on the island: there are more than 100 volcanoes on the entire island, while most of the mainland on the island cannot be cultivated.
Because of its location in the Arctic Circle, Iceland has polar days and polar nights throughout the year, from June to August, the sun rises all day, and from December to February, it sets all day.
It is for these reasons that after 2,000 years of civilization on the European continent, after the glorious Greeks and Romans entered the “Dark Ages”, the island remained uninhabited until the 9th century. A.C.
In the existing historical data, Iceland was first discovered by the Vikings in AD 825. During this year, a group of Vikings from Northern Europe arrived on the island and began to use it as a stopover for sea voyages.
It was not until 874 that a Viking named Jason officially began to take the island’s “Smoky Land” (Reykjavik capital) as his home.
It was also from this time that the Vikings began to settle on the island. In 930, a population group was established in this seemingly small and impoverished land, which took the embryonic form of a modern civilized country.
The discovery of Iceland did not stop the Vikings from exploring new continents, they still enjoyed adventure and continued to set sail. In particular, the stories of the new continent in the West were circulated in folklore, stimulating them to move and search for new lands.
However, icebergs, strong winds and extreme cold hindered their footsteps. It was not until a century and a half after Iceland was discovered that people sailed to the New World west of Iceland. He is a Viking named Eric Torvaldsson.
Eric was found guilty of murder in Iceland in 982. To avoid persecution, he left Iceland with his family and sailed west to find the legendary New World, and eventually found Greenland.
Since the world was in a warm period at the time, there was an oasis on the south side of the island that was not covered by ice, and Eric’s family settled on this oasis.
After the prosecution period ended, in order to lure more people to Greenland to live, Eric immediately returned to Iceland and Norway to inform the local Vikings that he had discovered a paradise. uninhabited west of Iceland – an oasis of water and lush grass.
Certainly, the fictional name that Eric came up with – Greenland, misled a lot of people, all of whom were confused by the bright prospect he described. Thus, twenty years later, in 1003, Greenland had 5,000 inhabitants.
However, in reality Greenland is not a real oasis, it is just a larger and colder Iceland.
Iceland’s climate is relatively mild with a warm North Atlantic current passing through, while the Labrador current on the coast of Greenland is cold, so Greenland is much colder than Iceland.
In this harsh environment, Greenland’s limited survival resources were quickly depleted as the population grew. Thus, Eric’s son Leif Erickson led a group to the south, where the climate was warmer to find new survival territories, they sailed to the island of Newfoundland in Hudson Bay, Canada today. .
However, the Vikings living in Vinland faced a more difficult challenge than they did in Greenland, the native Indians.
Although the Indians were defeated by a large number of European colonists after the 15th century, at that time the Indians were strong enough to deal with the Vikings – only a few hundred in number. people. As a result, they abandoned their colony of Vinland and returned to Greenland. After that, they only dared to sneak to Vinland in the summer to cut wood and transport it back to Greenland.
This situation continued for more than 300 years. By the 14th century AD, the global climate became colder and entered a new Ice Age. The entire island of Greenland was covered with ice and snow, and the small oasis inhabited by the Vikings could not continue to exist, the Vikings began to die slowly in the ice and snow.
In 1424, Iceland received a letter from Greenland that hadn’t been mentioned for hundreds of years, but it became the last proof that the Vikings once settled in Greenland. Since then, the Vikings who once lived in Greenland also disappeared into the flow of history.
