Did a Native American travel with the Vikings and arrive in Iceland centuries before Columbus set sail?

Ancient Origins

Scientists have been searching for answers on the puzzles of history by sifting through the genetic code of certain Icelanders. They have been looking to see if a Native American woman from the New World accompanied the Vikings back to Europe, five centuries before Columbus arrived back in Spain with indigenous Native Americans.

It is well established through historical accounts and archaeological findings that Vikings set up initial colonies on the shores of North America just before 1000 A.D. But what is not known for certain is how a family of Icelanders came to have a genetic makeup which includes a surprising marker dating to 1000 A.D. — one which is found mostly in Native Americans.

In 2010, it was reported that the first Native Americans arrived on the continent of Europe sometime around the 11th century. The study, led by deCODE Genetics, a world-leading genome research lab in Iceland, discovered a unique gene that was present in only four distinct family lines. The DNA lineage, which was named C1e, is mitochondrial, meaning that the genes were introduced by and passed down through a female. Based on the evidence of the DNA, it has been suggested that a Native American, (voluntarily or involuntarily) accompanied the Vikings when they returned back to Iceland. The woman survived the voyage across the sea, and subsequently had children in her new home. As of today, there are 80 Icelanders who have the distinct gene passed down by this woman.

Nevertheless, there is another explanation for the presence of the C1e in these 80 Icelanders. It is possible that the Native American genes appeared in Iceland after the discovery of the New World by Columbus. It has been suggested that a Native American woman might have been brought back to mainland Europe by European explorers, who then found her way to Iceland. Researchers believe that this scenario is unlikely, however, given the fact that Iceland was pretty isolated at that point of time.

Nevertheless, the only way to effectively eliminate this possibility is for scientists to find the remains of a pre-Columbian Icelander whose genes can be analyzed and shown to contain the C1e lineage.

The Skálholt Map made by the Icelandic teacher Sigurd Stefansson in the year 1570. Helleland ('Stone Land' = Baffin island), Markland ('forest land' = Labrador), Skrælinge Land ('land of the foreigners’ = Labrador), Promontorium Vinlandiæ (the of Vinland = Newfoundland). Public Domain

Another problem facing the researchers is that the C1e genes might not have come from Native Americans, but from some other part of the world. For instance, no living Native American group has the exact DNA lineage as the one found in the 80 Icelanders. However, it may be that the Native American people who carried that lineage eventually went extinct.

One suggestion, which was proposed early in the research, was that the genes came from Asia. This was eventually ruled out, as the researchers managed to work out that the C1e lineage had been present in Iceland as early as the 18th century. This was long before the appearance of Asian genes in Icelanders.

Did a Native American travel to Iceland and leave behind a telltale genetic marker? A man helms replica Viking vessels. Wikimedia Commons

If the discovery does prove ultimately that the Vikings took a Native American woman back to Iceland, then history would indeed have to be rewritten. Although encounters with the Native Americans, known as Skraelings (or foreigners), were recorded by the Viking sagas, there is no mention whatsoever about the Vikings bringing a Native American woman home to Iceland with them. Furthermore, the available archaeological record does not show any presence of a Native American woman in Iceland.

 The more digging is done into the history of the Vikings, the more our perceptions are changing as to how they lived, travelled, and traded.

Hopefully more light will be shed on this mystery over time, and the goings-on of the historic world can be unequivocally established, giving us a clearer understanding of our ancient past.

Featured image: Replica of 9th century Viking ship docked in Norway. Juanjo Marin/Flickr

References
Firth, N., 2010. First American in Europe 'was native woman kidnapped by Vikings and hauled back to Iceland 1,000 years ago'.

Govan, F., 2010. First Americands 'reached Europe five centuries before Columbus voyages'.

Watson, T., 2010. American Indian Sailed to Europe With Vikings?.

Tremlett, G. 2010. First Americans 'reached Europe five centuries before Columbus discoveries'. [Online] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/nov/16/first-americans-europe-research

 By Ḏḥwty

Haiti shipwreck is not Columbus’s Santa Maria, says Unesco

UN researchers find proof that wreck initially believed to have been explorer’s flagship is actually from later period

Painting of the Santa Maria, part of the fleet of Christopher Columbus. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Claims that a wreck found off Haiti was Christopher Columbus’s flagship from his first voyage to the Americas have been scuttled after experts determined it was that of a ship from a later period.
The marine archaeologist Barry Clifford announced in May that he believed he had identified the wreck of the Santa Maria (video), one of three ships Columbus led on his first crossing of the Atlantic, which sank in 1492 off the northern coast of Haiti.
The UN cultural body Unesco dispatched a team of experts to the wreck, located off the town of Cap-Haitien, to examine the remains, which were found in the area where Columbus said the ship ran aground.
“There is now indisputable proof that the wreck is that of a ship from a much later period,” Unesco said on Monday.
“Although the site is located in the general area where one would expect to find the Santa Maria based on contemporary accounts of Columbus’s first voyage, it is further away from shore than one should expect,” experts said in a final report.
“Furthermore, and even more conclusively, the fasteners found on the site indicate a technique of ship construction that dates the ship to the late 17th or 18th century rather than the 15th or 16th century.”
They said an artefact recovered on site could be the remains of protective copper sheathing, and if it was, then “the ship could even not be dated to a time before the late 18th century”.
Columbus set sail on 3 August 1492 from Palos de la Frontera in southern Spain, with the Santa Maria, La Niña and La Pinta, searching for a shortcut to Asia. On 12 October of that year, he is believed to have landed in Guanahani, which historians have identified as an island in the Bahamas, in what is popularly called the “Discovery of the Americas”.
Columbus stopped in Cuba, and then Hispaniola – home to modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic – before the Santa Maria hit a reef and went down on 25 December 1492. The Spaniards built a fort near where the ship went down and then Columbus headed back to Spain to report to Queen Isabella on his trip. By the time he returned the next year, the fort had been burned down, and the crew left behind had died or disappeared.
The Unesco report said it was possible that, due to heavy sedimentation along the coast from rivers, the wreck had been buried over the past centuries. “The ship may also, however, have been slowly worn down by the waves, potentially leaving remains on a reef or sandbank in the bay,” it said, adding that Clifford had probably announced his discovery based on this second theory.
Unesco called for more exploration in the area, which was subject to heavy shipping traffic for centuries, to try to find the Santa Maria and draw up an inventory of other major wrecks there. It also called on Haiti – one of the world’s poorest countries – to enhance protection of its underwater heritage, which has been hit by looting.
The Guardian