In 1000 CE the indigenous people of eastern North America faced the first attempt at European immigration. The Vikings, originally clans of north European farmers and fishermen, emerged from the Iron age. Their stable Viking long ships allowed them to trade with and invade the British Isles and lands as far east as Constantinople, Baghdad and Kiev. In 793, the Viking Age began when they pillaged the monastery of Lindisfarne in Britain. By 981 they had also settled in Iceland and Greenland.

Leif Erikson sailed further west and discovered a new land rich with fish, game, and berries. In 1002 his brother, Thorvald Erikson, left Greenland to explore what they now called Vinland. He was surprised to discover inhabitants whom they called Skraelings, meaning barbarians. The Viking swords and shields were met by the bows and arrows of the greater numbers of mobile Skraelings, and the Norse fled back to Greenland. The Skraelings had defeated the first European invasion of North America.  These successful warriors may have been Thule (descendants of the Dorset and ancestors of today’s Inuit) or perhaps were Mi’kmaq, Maliseet or Beothuk.

In 1010 Thorfinn Karlsefni led a new expedition of farmers, tradesmen, livestock, and slaves to Vinland, to establish a Norse outpost. They traded metal weapons for furs with the Skraelings. Norse sagas, a mixture of history and fiction, say the Skraelings fled when they were attacked by a Viking bull but returned to fight and defeat the Norse who abandoned their colony. The determined and resourceful Skraelings succeeded where kingdoms and warlords across Europe had failed. They turned back the Viking tide, delaying European colonization by five centuries.