In the year 1001, an Icelander named Biorn, sailing to Greenland to visit his father, was driven to the south-west, and came to a country which they called Vinland, inhabited by dwarfs, and having a shortest day of eight hours, which would correspond roughly to 50 deg.

north latitude.

The Norsemen settled there, and as late as 1121 the Bishop of Greenland visited them, in order to convert them to Christianity.

There is little reason to doubt that this Vinland was on the mainland of North America, and the Norsemen were therefore the first Europeans to discover America.

As late as 1380, two Venetians, named Zeno, visited Iceland, and reported that there was a tradition there of a land named Estotiland, a thousand miles west of the Faroe Islands, and south of Greenland.