This story is a saga -- literally.

 The "Norse Sagas" are Viking histories of exploration, discovery and conquest which date back some 1,300 years.

 The derivation of the word "Viking" is still disputed today. Some claim it stems from the Old Norse "vik," meaning a bay or creek, while others believe the came from an Old English word for a fortified trade settlement, "wic."

 Despite the stereotypically fierce, horn-helmeted Viking most commonly found in popular culture today, the motives behind the "Viking Age" of expansion and invasion were far more complex than mere bloodlust or greed.

 For centuries the accepted theory was that a shortage of arable land in Scandinavia was the major cause of Viking exporation.

  Birgitta Wallace, a staff archeologist, emerita, with Parks Canada, says it wasn't so simple. "There were many factors behind the expansion of Vikings territories. The population increased, which spurred colonization and economic exporting... Secondly there was quite a bit of disarray on continental Europe, so the opportunity was there, especially in England and France. Thirdly, in Norway the kings and chieftans were competing. It was a bunch of disgruntled chieftans who preferred to emigrate to areas where the Viking influence was not established, such as Iceland the Scottish Isles. Perhaps most importantly was that they had the means. The had ships that were big enough and seaworthy enough to move many people, and their livestock and so on, across stretches of ocean."

 Sailing south from the fjords of Scandinavia in their knarrs and longships, Norse invaders aggressively spread their influence across the Atlantic, into Europe, and to a lesser degree, into Africa.

 And then, just over 1,000 years ago, these fearless traders, explorers, colonizers and warriors turned their attention, and their formidable navigational skills, towards the fabled land said to lie in the setting sun.

 The sagas tell of Norsemen leap-frogging their way across the islands of the turbulent North Atlantic, establishing colonies on Iceland and Greenland.

 For longer voyages of exploration, the knarr was the favoured vessel of the Viking. Often as long as 70 metres, the knarr were flexible and able to withstand heavy swells, according to curator Kevin McAleese of the Newfoundland and Labrador Museum.

 Though their boats were sturdy, Norse sailors did their best to avoid long stretches of open ocean, adds McAleese. "Their southern expansion from Scandinavia was coastal but coming west they 'island-hopped' across the North Atlantic. From Scandinavia to the Faeroe Islands, Ireland, Iceland and then Greenland.

 Around 986 AD, the sagas recount, a Norseman named Bjarni Herjolfsson was caught in a fierce gale while en route from Iceland to Greenland.

 He was blown due west for a number of days and finally found shelter among the bays of an uncharted, unnamed land. Herjolfsson apparently never touched shore, choosing instead to strike back for Greenland as soon as the weather allowed. Once he was back among his people, however, word spread of the new land he had seen to the west.

 Several years passed, and several attempts failed, according to the sagas, before the son of legendary Viking explorer Eric the Red, Leif Ericson, tasted sweet success and relocated the land Herjolfsson had seen.

 Comparing the sagas with modern charts, scholars believe Ericson sailed north along the west coast of Iceland, then across Davis Strait to Baffin Island, (which he called "Helluland") then across to Labrador, (naming that "Markland") and finally into the Gulf of St. Lawrence -- the entire region of which he named "Vinland" or "Wineland" for the profusion of wild grapes the Norse sailors found growing there.

 Having established a route and the presence of exportable trade goods such as timber, fish and fruit, Ericson had paved the way for colonization of the new land.

 It wasn't until almost a thousand years later, however, that proof of such settlement was found. But we now know that at least one Norse colony was established in Vinland, as evidenced by the complex of sod huts and Viking artifacts discovered at L'Anse aux Meadow on the tip of Newfoundland's northern penninsula.

 The archeological treasure, unearthed in 1961 by Norwegians Anne Stine Ingstad and her husband Helge Ingstad, has since been designated by Canada as a national historic site, and is the first such finding to be recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

 L'Anse aux Meadows remains the only authenticated Viking settlement in North America, but many historians believe that there were other outposts established on North American soil.

 Stone inscriptions containing characters resembling those found in the Norse alphabet ("runes" of Germanic origin) have been found at several locations scattered across the northeastern part of this continent. None, however, have been confirmed as having been created by turn-of-the-millenium Vikings.

  "Most scholars feel that most of these are hoaxes," says McAleese. "There was one find in Minnesota which used runic language that it turned out didn't even exist until the late 19th century."

  Adds Wallace, "We know now there were no more than 500 Norse people settled in Greenland at any one time, and that by A.D. 1000 most of them were old people or children, because the young, strong ones were off exploring. We also know the settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows was built to house about 90 people. If that's about ten per cent of your source population, it's not likely you'd send another ten per cent out to try and start a brand new settlement. It's almost certain they would have explored outwards from L'Anse aux Meadows. But they would have camped onshore while travelling, and left little evidence behind when they struck camp. After 1,000 years I certainly wouldn't send out an expedition to try and find the remains of a Viking camp."

 Whether the Norse explorers spread any settlements beyond the Gulf of St. Lawrence is an interesting but, to some people, secondary argument. For many the most captivating element of Norse settlement in the Americas is the fact that they had significant dealings with local native groups. So much so that the Vikings coined a term, "Skraelings," for these Aboriginal peoples.

 This meeting of east-coast Canadian natives and westward-exploring Europeans not only represents the first known contact between these two groups, but it completes what anthropologists are coming to describe as "the circle of humanity."

 McAleese sums it up; "About 100,000 years earlier their ancestors in North Africa had split up -- some turned left and became Europeans and Vikings and some turned right and became the Aboriginal peoples of the Arctic and Canada. So their meeting up again was a really significant event. It represented the crossing of a threshold. It meant humanity had come full circle and the exploration of the globe was complete. And it happened right here in Canada, in the Strait of Belle Isle."

 Now that's a saga, on even the grandest of scales.