ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the North Atlantic where incontrovertible proof of Norse discovery at 1000 CE raises the probability that sites in the Canadian Northeast Arctic may represent Norse hunting furbearers and walrus. The myth of Columbus focuses on the Atlantic, the theater of that Admiral's exploits and suffering, portrayed as bordered on the east by progressive civilizations and on the west by savages in wildernesses. Transoceanic contacts across the Atlantic before 1492 could happen across the North Atlantic where island-hopping shortens open-sea distances, across the middle Atlantic where Columbus sailed with prevailing winds westward and returned on the Gulf Stream current, or between West Africa and Brazil, where the distance across is shortest. The most secure proof of transoceanic voyages to America before 1492 is in the Northeast: the Canadian Maritimes and New England. Here we have a well-excavated Norse settlement radiocarbon dated to 1000 CE, conforming in many details of buildings and artifacts to Scandinavian settlements of that date.
