The Vikings were the first Europeans to reach America. They achieved this long before Columbus ever set sail. The Vikings were a group of people whose ancestors came from Scandinavia. They controlled the seas and coasts of Northern Europe between the 8th and 10th centuries AD. BY around 900 AD, there were many places in Northern Europe where the Vikings chose to live. In 982 AD, when a man called Eric the Red decided to set sail further west, there were as many as 10,000 Vikings living in Iceland. According to the old stories of Iceland and Norway, Eric the Red was forced to leave Iceland because he had committed a murder, for which he got into trouble. Eric reached Greenland and discovered that people could live in the place where he landed. He returned to Iceland and told people there about Greenland. He persuaded some people to go back with him to Greenland. Eric set sail once again, this time with 25 ships, of which only 14 made it to Greenland.