Possible Viking Settlement Discovered in Canada

A possible new Viking site has been discovered in Canada, which would be the farthest south the Vikings have ever been known to settle.

According to the New York Times, the new site in Newfoundland was picked up last summer by infrared satellite images, which saw manmade shapes under vegetation. The Washington Post describes the historic finds as “a fire-cracked stone and some mangled scraps of iron.”

If archaeologists determine that this site was, in fact, a Viking settlement, it would be only the second one ever found in North America. The first was discovered about 300 miles north in Canada in 1960.

“With just one site, it’s easy to explain it away,” a space archaeologist working with Canadian experts on the site told the Post. “But if there’s two, there might be more.”

Vikings were Norsemen from Scandinavia who lived from the eighth to 11th centuries.