In the bitter-cold winter of 1477, a foreigner stayed for a while at the community around the site of this church at the tip of Iceland’s rugged Snaefells peninsula. The mission was to find and read the diaries and navigation logs of Leif Ericsson, Erik the Red, and others who had sailed centuries before to Vinland (now believed to be the coast of North America). The name of the foreigner was Christopher Columbus.