Bjarni Herjólfsson, the Man Who Got Lost and Found America

History Revealed

For years many of us were taught that Christopher Columbus was the first European to find the Americas. Then more recently Leif Erikson the Viking has found fame as the first European to settle the Americas.

But someone came before them, Bjarni Herjólfsson, a Norse explorer whose inadvertent journey led to the first European sighting of North America. While his legacy remains less celebrated, the story of Bjarni Herjólfsson unveils a pivotal chapter in the early encounters between Europe and the New World.

How did he stumble across the Americas? What did he do with his discovery? And why do we not remember him as the first European to travel to the Americas today?

The First European to See the Americas?

Bjarni Herjólfsson was a legendary Norse-Icelandic explorer who some believe was the first European to lay eyes on the Americas. Most of what we know about him comes from The Saga of the Greenlanders, a 14th-century Icelandic narrative that covers the apparent Icelandic discovery of the Americas around 1000 AD.

Outside of his time as an explorer little was recorded about Bjarni Herjólfsson. According to the text he was born in the 10th century AD to Herjólfr Bárdarson and his wife, Thorgerdr.