Goodbye, Columbus: Vikings crossed the Atlantic 1000 years ago - Reuters

A wood fragment from the Norse layers at the L’Anse aux Meadows Viking settlement established 1,000 years ago near Hay Cove, Newfoundland, Canada is seen in an undated microscopic image.

But precisely when the Vikings journeyed to establish the L'Anse aux Meadows settlement had remained unclear - until now.

Scientists on Wednesday said a new type of dating technique using a long-ago solar storm as a reference point revealed that the settlement was occupied in 1021 AD, exactly a millennium ago and 471 years before the first voyage of Columbus.

The Vikings, or Norse people, were seafarers with Scandinavian homelands: Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

In all three pieces of wood examined, from three different trees, 29 growth rings were formed after the one that bore evidence of the solar storm, meaning the wood was cut in 1021, said University of Groningen archaeologist Margot Kuitems, the study's first author.

It was not local indigenous people who cut the wood because there is evidence of metal blades, which they did not possess, Dee said.