The Vikings of Vinland

Five hundred years before Columbus, Norse sailors from Greenland landed in North America and built a settlement of turf houses at what is now L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. It was long only a saga story, until a Norwegian couple, Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad, found and excavated the real thing in 1960: hearths, a smithy, a bronze pin, butternuts carried from further south. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the only confirmed Norse site in the Americas. Legend proven true by digging.