The Viking explorer named in the Vinland Sagas as the first European to land in North America is Leif Erikson.
The sagas describe Leif, son of Erik the Red, sailing west from Greenland around the year 1000. They give names such as Helluland, Markland and Vinland to lands encountered during Norse voyages. The accounts differ in details, and they were written centuries after the events, but archaeology confirms that Norse people reached North America.
The site at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada, contains remains of a Norse settlement dated to around AD 1000. It is the earliest confirmed European site in the Americas. Leif Erikson is sometimes incorrectly called the discoverer of the entire continent; Indigenous peoples had lived throughout North America for thousands of years before the Norse arrival.