Five centuries before Christopher Columbus set foot in America, the Vikings had already crossed the Atlantic. Using new dating techniques, scientists studying timber buildings at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Canada’s Newfoundland, have established the Norse settled in AD 1021, 471 years before Columbus’s first voyage. While it’s already known the Vikings landed in North America, exactly when they settled has remained an estimate, until now. Cat Jarman, world-leading Vikings expert and host of History Hit's sister podcast, Gone Medieval, joins Dan to speak to archaeologist Birgitta Wallace about this breakthrough research. Discover how a long-ago Solar storm provided vital information for the study, the significance of the date, and what's left to be discovered in the future.
Up Next in Archive of Dan Snow's History Hit 🎧
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🎧 Glasgow's Roman Remains & the Build...
In the second century Ad, the Antonine Wall was built as the northwestern border of the Roman Empire. It had long been known that the wall ran through Bearsden, a town a short journey from Glasgow. But in the 1970s archaeologists, among them David Breeze, were asked to run trial excavations in th...
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🎧 WWII's Battle for London
At the start of the Second World War London was one of the largest and most important cities in the world, a centre of industry, finance and the heart of Britain's empire. It was also an irresistible target for the Luftwaffe and between 1940 and 1945 London would be mercilessly attacked by German...
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🎧 The History of Money
It is said that money makes the world goes round and has done for millennia, but what exactly is money and where does it come from? To find out Dan is joined by Jacob Goldstein, American journalist, writer, and podcast host. Author of: Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. They explore the co...
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