The Vikings came first ...
At the start of the 21st century we celebrated the millennium of Leif Ericson's discovery of Vinland in 1000 AD, as recorded in Old Norse sagas. Vikings were the first Europeans to leave indisputable archaeological evidence of their presence in North America. Today, the Viking fame lives on in Minnesota.

...Then the immigrants
In the year 1825, descendants of the Vikings started a much larger mass migration from Norway to North America. A single-masted sloop sailed out of Stavanger harbor on July 4, 1825, with 52 passengers on board. It arrived in New York harbor on October 9, 1825, with 53 passengers — tiny Margaret Allen Larsen had been born on the high seas. The sloop Restauration was only half the size of the Puritans’ Mayflower. Her epic voyage was the beginning of Norwegian mass migration to America. In the next century, some 800,000 immigrants followed in sailing ships and transoceanic steamers. Today, their Norwegian-American descendents number an estimated 7 million.