Who Had First Discovered America?

Christopher Columbus who discovered America in 1492 was preceded by the Vikings who had discovered the land almost five centuries before Columbus.  It was in the year 1000 that Vikings reached America, more than four centuries before Christopher Columbus was even born.  By profession, they were sea adventurers who were from the state of Scandinavia.  Being valiant adventurers by nature, they had left their native homeland in the pursuit of conquests and plunder.  

The information about Vikings has been present in two sagas of narrative ballads namely, the Saga of Eric the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders.  Since both of these sagas differ divergently in their facts, it seems probable and possible that Bjarni Herjolfsson discovered North America in 986, when driven off course on a voyage from Iceland to Greenland.  Even the so-called Vinland Map that was discovered and published in 1965 espouses the theory that it was Bjarni Herjolfsson who had originally discovered America.