Were the Vikings interested in colonizing North America?
An illustration of Leif Erikssen and his crew off the coast of Vínland (modern-day Newfoundland, Canada) in a Viking landing boat. (Image credit: North Wind Picture Archives via Alamy Stock Photo)
"The Vikings may not have had much interest in colonizing North America,
Birgitta Wallace, a senior archaeologist emerita with Parks Canada who has done extensive research on the Vikings in North America, told Live Science in an email. "The Norse were not interested in colonizing North America at this time as the Greenland colony was new and expanding, but still very small."
"When the Vikings explored south of Newfoundland, in an area they named "Vínland" (which translates as "Wine Land"), they were more interested in finding natural resources they could exploit. "Their real interest was in finding resources that might sustain the new Greenlandic colony," Wallace said. "Vinland was explored because it had been discovered and offered potential resources."
"Kevin P. Smith, a research associate at the Smithsonian Institute who specializes in the Vikings, had a somewhat different opinion. He said that Norse texts indicate "there was interest in the first decades of the 11th century A.D. in establishing a colony in the area known as Vínland."
The texts indicate that some Vikings believed it offered "opportunities for 'second sons' of the chieftain who had established the Greenland colony to carve out their own areas where they could be leaders/chiefs rather than 'second sons,'" Smith told Live Science in an email."
"Christopher Crocker, a research grant facilitation officer at Memorial University in Newfoundland who has researched the Vikings extensively, said that he doesn't think there's sufficient evidence to indicate whether the Vikings wanted to establish permanent settlements in North America."