Circa 980: The Conquest of Paradise

Archaeological fragments combined with passages from the Norse sagas have long suggested that the Vikings reached the Americas centuries before Christopher Columbus. Now there's genetic evidence for this early contact:

Researchers said today that a woman from the Americas probably arrived in Iceland 1,000 years ago, leaving behind genes that are reflected in about 80 Icelanders today....

"As the island was practically isolated from the 10th century onwards, the most probable hypothesis is that these genes correspond to an Amerindian woman who was taken from America by the Vikings some time around the year 1000," Carles Lalueza-Fox, of the Pompeu Fabra university in Spain, said.

As reported in The Guardian (via). At least, that's the simplified version. As Discover points out, it's actually a bit more complicated than that:

The core of the article [A new subclade of mtDNA haplogroup C1 found in icelanders: Evidence of pre-columbian contact?] treads the confusing gray zone between rock-hard precise science and the more vague and intuitive truths of history. One the rock-hard part, there is a huge literature on maternal genetic lineages, the mtDNA....But synthesizing this clarity with human history is more difficult, because we are dependent on the bias of text, and even more tendentious clues from oral history and archaeology.

For example, it's certain that there were Viking settlements in Greenland, which eventually perished, probably because of the arrival of harsher conditions in the shape of a "mini ice age" which the Viking settlers, unlike the native Inuit, lacked the survival skills to cope with. Maybe there were some Amerindian genes in the Greenlandic population when the Vikings arrived - after all, via the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Greenland isn't far from the North American mainland.

Anyway, eventually the Discovery article gets fed up with such speculation and asks the big question on everyone's lips:

Finally, does this explain Bjork?

If it does, they could go on to have a shot at the following queries (humanity's Top 10 "unanswerable" questions, according to Ask Jeeves):

1. What is the meaning of life?

2. Is there a God?

3. Do blondes have more fun?

4. What is the best diet?

5. Is there anybody out there?

6. Who is the most famous person in the world?

7. What is love?

8. What is the secret to happiness?

9. Did Tony Soprano die?

10. How long will I live?