High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Snæbjörn Galti was the first Norseman to navigate to Greenland in 978 AD, following the accidental discovery of lands west of Iceland by Gunnbjörn Ulfsson some years earlier (probably early 10th Century). Eiríkr Rauði also reached Greenland at about the same time and established the first permanent Norse settlements. Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who speak one of the North Germanic languages as their native language. ("Norse", in particular, refers to the Old Norse language belonging to the North Germanic branch of Indo-European languages, especially Norwegian, Icelandic, Swedish and Danish in their ea