Leif Erikson
Research done in the early 1960s by Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, identified a Norse site located at the northern tip of Newfoundland. It has been suggested that this site, known as L'Anse aux Meadows, is "Leifsbúðir". The Ingstads demonstrated that Norsemen had reached America about 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Later archaeological evidence suggests that "Vinland" may have been the areas around the Gulf of St. Lawrence and that the L'Anse aux Meadows site was a ship repair station and waypoint for voyages there. That does not necessarily contradict the identification of L'Anse aux Meadows with "Leifsbúðir" since the two sagas appear to describe "Vinland" as a wider region which included several settlements. The "Saga of Erik the Red" mentions two other settlements in "Vinland": a settlement called "Straumfjǫrðr", which lay beyond "Kjalarnes" promontory and the Wonderstrands, and one called "Hóp", which was located even farther south.
Leif was described as a wise, considerate, and strong man of striking appearance. During his stay in the Hebrides, he fell in love with a noblewoman, Thorgunna, who gave birth to their son Thorgils. Thorgils was later sent to Leif in Greenland, but he did not become popular.
New World
The Italian-born Spanish chronicler Peter Martyr d'Anghiera often shares credit with Vespucci for designating the Americas as a new world. Peter Martyr used the term "Orbe Novo" (literally, "New Globe", but often translated as "New World") in the title of his history of the discovery of the Americas as a whole, which began to appear in 1511 (cosmologically, "orbis" as used here refers to the whole hemisphere, while "mundus" refers to the land within it). Peter Martyr had been writing and circulating private letters commenting on Columbus's discoveries since 1493 and, from the start, doubted Columbus's claims to have reached East Asia ("the Indies"), and consequently came up with alternative names to refer to them. Only a few weeks after Columbus's return from his first voyage, Peter Martyr wrote letters referring to Columbus's discovered lands as the "western antipodes" ("antipodibus occiduis", letter of May 14, 1493), the "new hemisphere of the earth" ("novo terrarum hemisphaerio", September 13, 1493), and in a letter dated November 1, 1493, refers to Columbus as the "discoverer of the new globe" ("Colonus ille novi orbis repertor"). A year later (October 20, 1494), Peter Martyr again refers to the marvels of the New Globe ("Novo Orbe") and the "Western hemisphere."("ab occidente hemisphero").