'If the 20th century AD were dated at the same resolution as the 20th century BC, the two World Wars would be indistinguishable in time; and the Montgomery Bus Strike might post-date the release of Mandela." So wrote the Exact Chronology of Early Societies' (ECHOES) team of palaeohistorians at Groningen University in the northern Netherlands -- and then they fixed the problem.
Their new method for dating events in the distant past immediately got my attention, because the first problem they solved was the exact date of the first European settlement in the New World. It was the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows at the very northernmost tip of Newfoundland, and the year was 1021 AD.
I was always interested in the Norse, because I grew up in Newfoundland and that was already seen as the likeliest location of the region they called "Vinland". I read the sagas (Erik the Red and The Greenlanders), which were rip-roaring tales of triumph and treachery but distinctly short on geographical and chronological detail.
