Around 985, an Icelandic merchant ship was blown off course en route to Greenland, and the sailor on board was the first to report the new land to the west. 15 years later, Leif Eiriksson wintered at a settlement called Straumfiord, also known as Leif's Camp, located near what is now L'Anse aux Meadows, a grass terrace. In the years that followed, his family and a group of colonists visited the camp and may have ventured southwest to New Brunswick. But conflicts with the aborigines apparently forced them to withdraw from the area and return to Greenland within a decade.

In 1960, the Norwegian team Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad located the remains of Straumfiord, based on Viking legends recorded in medieval Icelandic manuscripts. Ingstad and later Parks Canada's excavations uncovered the remains of eight buildings and hundreds of Viking artifacts, mostly made of wood, but also iron, stone, copper and bone. Norwegian contact with the New World continued until at least the mid-14th century, and knowledge of the New World likely rested among European sailors, facilitating the reopening of the Atlantic Flyway in the 1490s.