Helge Marcus Ingstad was a Norwegian explorer. After mapping some Norse settlements, Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine, an archaeologist, in 1960 found remnants of a Viking settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows in the Province of Newfoundland in Canada. With that they were the first to prove conclusively that the Greenlandic Norsemen had found a way across the Atlantic Ocean to North America, roughly 500 years before Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. He also thought that the mysterious disappearance of the Greenland Viking settlement in the 14/15th century could be explained by their emigration... to North America. Helge Ingstad was born to Olav Ingstad and Olga Marie Qvam. His father was municipal engineer in Tromsø and held the title of factory supervisor. Helge grew up in Bergen, and after graduating cand. jur. in 1922 he took up a practice of lawyer in Levanger. Helge Ingstad was originally a lawyer by profession, but, ever an outdoorsman, he sold his successful law practice in Levanger and went to Canada's Northwest Territories as a trapper in 1926.
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| Birthdate: | December 30, 1899 |
| Birthplace: | Meråker |
| Date of death: | March 29, 2001 |