[3] Archaeological evidence suggests the settlement served as a base camp for Norse exploration of North America, including regions to the south.

[7] Spanning 8,000 hectares (31 sq mi) of land and sea, the site contains the remains of eight buildings constructed of sod over a wood frame, with over 800 Norse objects unearthed,[8] including bronze, bone, and stone artifacts, and evidence of iron production.

[17] Before the Norse arrived in Newfoundland, there is evidence of occupations by five Indigenous groups at the site of L'Anse aux Meadows, the oldest dated to roughly 6,000 years ago.

[2][1] A 2021 Nature study, using radiocarbon analysis of three separate tree ring samples and evidence from the anomaly in atmospheric 14C concentrations in the year 993, pinpointed 1021 as a date of Norse activity at L'Anse aux Meadows.

"[26] Today, the area mostly consists of open, grassy lands, but, 1000 years ago, there were forests that were convenient for boatbuilding, housebuilding and iron extraction.

Other things found at the site consisted of common everyday Norse items, including a stone oil lamp, a whetstone, a bronze fastening pin, a bone knitting needle and part of a spindle.

[28] Food remains included butternuts, which do not grow naturally north of New Brunswick, which suggests that the Norse inhabitants travelled farther south to obtain them.

[29] There is evidence that the Norse hunted caribou, wolf, fox, bear, lynx, marten, many types of birds and fish, seal, whale and walrus.

[30] The common hypothesis before the Ingstads was that Vinland could not be north of the Massachusetts coast, the northern limit of wild grapes,[30] though they are also found in New Brunswick and the St. Lawrence River valley.

[31]) In 1960, George Decker, a resident of the fishing hamlet of L'Anse aux Meadows, led Helge Ingstad to a group of mounds near the village that the locals called the "old Indian camp".

L'Anse aux Meadows is the only confirmed Norse site in North America outside Greenland,[32] and represents the farthest known extent of European exploration and settlement of the New World before the voyages of Christopher Columbus almost 500 years later.

After L'Anse aux Meadows was named a national historic site, the area, and its related tourist programs, have been managed by Parks Canada.

In 1073, the German cleric Adam of Bremen wrote the oldest known document mentioning Vinland, a history of the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, who held ecclesiastical authority over Norse Scandinavia at the time.

[41] The settlements of Vinland mentioned in these two sagas, Leifsbudir (founded by Leif Erikson) and Hóp (Norse Greenlanders), have both been claimed to be the L'Anse aux Meadows site.