The Vikings were the first Europeans to reach America

高一英语课文

The Vikings were the first Europeans to reach America.They achieved this long before Columbus ever set sail. The Vikings were a group of people whose ancestors came from Scandinavia.They controlled the seas and coasts of Northern Europe between the 8th and 10th centuries AD.By around 900 AD,there were many places in Northern Europe where the Vikings chose to live.In 982 AD,when a man called Eric the Red decided to set sail further west,there were as many as 10,000 Vikings living in Iceland. According to the old stories of Iceland and Norway,Eric the Red was forced to leave Iceland because he dad committed a murder,for which he got into trouble.Eric reached Greenland and discovered that people could live in the place where he landed.He returned to Iceland and told people to go back with him to Greenland.Eric set sail once again,this time with 25 ships,of which only 14 made it to Greenland. Not long after Eric the Red had landed in greenland,a man called biarni set sail from Iceland in search of Eric's party.Biarni was hoping to join his father who was with Eric,but he was blown off course and found himself in an unknown land,from where he eventually reached Greenland. In the year 1002,when Eric the Red's son Leif was planning a trip further west,Biarni was the man with whom Leif discussed his plans.Leif followed Biarni's directions and sailed to what is believed to be the coast of present-day Canada.He then sailed futher south to an island which is now known as Newfoundland. We know about Eric the Red and Leif's deeds through stories which were written down centuries later in Norway and Iceland .They are the first records we have of Europeans sailing to the America.