The Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies, delivered at University College London on 5th March 2009. Richard Perkins, Emeritus Professor of Norse Studies in the University of London, reviews accounts in the so-called Vínland sagas of the explorations of the Vikings in North America, in the context of the celebration of the year 2000 as the millennium of the first visits of Norse travellers to the Continent, with particular reference to the verses incorporated in the Icelandic Saga of Erik the Red.