[00:03.20]Unit 7 The Sea
[00:05.84]Lesson 1 The Spirit of Explorers
[00:11.27]VIKING VOYAGES TO AMERICA
[00:15.18]The Vikings were the first Europeans
[00:17.89]to reach America.
[00:19.97]They achieved this long before Columbus
[00:22.72]ever set sail.
[00:24.67]The Vikings were a group of people
[00:27.19]whose ancestors came from Scandinavia.
[00:31.11]They controlled the seas
[00:32.85]and coasts of Northern Europe
[00:35.56]between the 8th and 10th centuries AD.
[00:39.55]BY around 900 AD,
[00:42.15]there were many places in Northern Europe
[00:45.06]where the Vikings chose to live.
[00:48.24]In 982 AD, when a man called Eric the Red
[00:54.09]decided to set sail further west,
[00:57.05]there were as many as 10,000 Vikings
[01:00.39]living in Iceland.
[01:03.10]According to the old stories of Iceland
[01:06.08]and Norway, Eric the Red
[01:08.37]was forced to leave Iceland
[01:10.61]because he had committed a murder,
[01:13.14]for which he got into trouble.
[01:15.34]Eric reached Greenland and discovered
[01:18.33]that people could live in the place
[01:20.63]where he landed.
[01:22.98]He returned to Iceland and told people there
[01:26.32]about Greenland.
[01:28.34]He persuaded some people to go back
[01:30.56]with him to Greenland.
[01:32.90]Eric set sail once again,
[01:35.32]this time with 25 ships,
[01:38.37]of which only 14 made it to Greenland.
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