The attention of the archaeologists was drawn to a large mound thought initially to have been a 'motte-and-bailey' construction used by the later Vikings on the French coasts, but is more likely have been a 'longphort' or ship-camp of a design found only in Ireland during the early Viking Age.Ī longphort was an enclosure or shore fortress probably used as a base for raids. However, during a storm in March 2014 several Viking anchors were washed ashore in Galicia on a beach whose location is as yet a closely guarded secret. As the Viking Age drew to its close and the Scandinavians were gradually converted to Christianity, it was not unusual for Norsemen and Normans to attack the Atlantic coast of Iberia on their way to the Holy Land for pilgrimage or the crusades.Īlthough the Vikings must have overwintered somewhere on the coasts of Iberia, until recently no evidence had been found of a temporary safe haven where they might have done so. Into the eleventh century there were many minor raids, such as against the Portuguese coast in 10, and Olaf Haraldsson, later King Olaf II of Norway, led a fleet to raid Asturias and Galicia while on his way round to Jerusalem in 1015 AD. Two examples of these raids are those which occurred in 966 AD when 28 Viking boats attacked Lisbon, and another in 968 AD according to Historia Silense, when Gundered sailed a fleet of one hundred ships of Norsemen and Flemings against the coast of Galicia, northern Spain. The evidence for Viking activities along the Atlantic coast of Iberia after 861 AD is sparse for the best part of the next hundred years until the raids picked up again from 960 AD. Viking Activities on the Iberian Atlantic Coast Accordingly, almost five hundred years before the voyage of Columbus, it would seem that Viking boats reached the farthest point south of their Atlantic explorations known to date by being 869 km (540 miles) south-west of Sagres, the southernmost tip of Portugal, and 876 km (545 miles) west of Casablanca. Such a voyage does not challenge the Columbus dogma directly. Science now accepts as reasonable the probability that Vikings from Denmark and Schleswig reached the Atlantic island of Madeira. Similarly, this present report highlights a strange new omission that is evidence of a Viking visit to Madeira.

I was proposed that this had been done in order to protect the academic dogma that Columbus was first to the Americas. In a recent article on the Vikings in South America, it was indicated how scientists had put forward an untenable theory to account for the presence in Chile of the Bundsö dogs from Denmark before Columbus.

Viking longphort