These sagas also bring us the first written accounts of Native North Americans, making the Viking millennium at the year 2000 also a millennial celebration of the first known encounter of Europeans and Native North Americans. Humanity for the first time had come full-circle around the globe.
History reveals that human beings possess an extraordinary drive to explore and settle new lands.
The Vikings did not record their own history in books, and the image of them recorded by their literate European neighbors to the south was, however well-deserved, not flattering. But in spite of it, or because of it, the lives and the times of the Vikings have proven to be endlessly fascinating. Working with William W. Fitzhugh and the Smithsonian's Arctic Studies Center, an international team of Nordic, American, and Canadian archaeologists, literary historians, curators, and educators has compiled an engaging new exhibition which brings together all the latest information for a new, untold chapter in North American history. Digs at trade sites have revealed a complex Viking trade network, and studies of settlements have contributed new insights into Viking daily economy. These archeological investigations began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when excavations of boat burials revealed startling new evidence for Viking ship technology, fine arts, and social status.