III.

Early Exploration

The Arctic regions of North America and Siberia (a vast region in Asia) have been populated since ancient times by indigenous peoples such as the Inuit. The Greeks of the 4th century bc were aware of the Arctic. The first Europeans to explore and settle lands in the region were the Vikings, whose own lands in Scandinavia reached into the Arctic. The Vikings, skilled navigators at sea, discovered and began to settle Iceland, which borders the Arctic Circle, in about ad 860. (According to some accounts, a colony of Irish monks was established there first, in the early 800s.) Sailing from Iceland, Vikings discovered the large ice-covered island they named Greenland, situated between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Erik the Red established the first Viking settlement there in about 985. By the early 1400s, however, the settlements in Greenland had vanished, and all European contact with North America had been lost.