I will present new results regarding the first ~2 Gyrs of cosmic time using very wide-field Lyman-alpha (Lya) narrow-band surveys, including a large, matched Lya-Halpha survey to investigate how Lya and Lyman-continuum (LyC) photons escape from typical star-forming galaxies at high-redshift. We find that large Lya halos are ubiquitous in star-forming galaxies, and that the typical escape fraction of Lya and LyC photons is typically below a few percent.  Interestingly, we find a much higher space density of very luminous Lyman-alpha emitters all the way from z~2 to z~7 than previously assumed, which we confirm spectroscopically with Keck, VLT and WHT. At z~7 our sources (e.g. CR7) show signatures of PopIII-like stellar populations (hot & extremely metal poor) and/or direct collapse black holes and provide interesting challenges ahead of the launch of JWST. Our results also show that the steep drop in the Lya luminosity function into the epoch of re-ionisation happens only for the faint Lya emitters, while the bright ones likely ionise their own local bubbles very early on, and thus are visible at the earliest cosmic times.