Leif Ericson

From New World Encyclopedia

Leif Ericson (Old Norse: Leifr Eiríksson)[1] (c. 970 – c. 1020) was a Norse/Icelandic explorer known to be the first European to have landed in North America (presumably in Newfoundland, Canada).

Although Christopher Columbus is commonly accepted as being the first European to discover the New World, he didn't reach the New World until 1492, some 500 years after Leif Ericson's arrival. Although the Vikings only made a few voyages to the New World after Ericson, his remarkable discovery to what is now North America remained virtually unknown to most of Europe, which had been caught up in the Crusades during this period.

Born around 970, Leif Ericson was the son of Eric the Red, who started the first European settlement of Greenland in 985. He sailed from Norway with his father to Greenland and lived there until 1000, when he returned to his homeland. While he was in Norway, Ericson may have become a Christian, at which point King Olaf I of Norway asked him to return to Greenland and teach the Vikings there about Christianity.

As Ericson was sailing back to Greenland, he was blown off course and instead ended up in North America. A different version of the saga cites another Viking, Bjarni Herjolfsson, reaching North America first. Ericson bought his boat wanting to retrace Herjolfsson's route, sailing to North America not by mistake, but by design.

Regardless of his motivation, Ericson ended up in a place he called Vinland, which was probably the part of Canada now referred to as Newfoundland. Later, Ericson returned to Greenland, and may have helped with the conversion of Greenlanders to Christianity. Surprisingly, few people ever returned to Vinland, only Ericson's sister and a small group of settlers who were killed by Indians. Lief Ericson died around 1020. While Europe remained almost totally in the dark about the discovery of this new world, the only references to it are in the Norse sagas where most of the information concerning Leif Ericson's exploits are recorded.

File:Viking at Minnesota Capitol.jpg
A statue near the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul dedicated on October 9, 1949.
File:Leif Ericson.jpg
A statue of Leif outside Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík, Iceland. It was a gift from the United States government.

Early life in Iceland

It is believed that Ericson was born about 970 in Iceland. In both Eiríks saga rauða and Landnáma, Ericson's father is said to have met and married his mother Þjóðhildur in Iceland, so Ericson was in all likelihood born there. Ericson was the son of Erik the Red (Old Norse: Eiríkr inn rauði), a Norwegian explorer and outlaw and himself the son of another Norwegian outlaw, Þorvaldr Ásvaldsson. Ericson's mother was Thjodhild (Þjóðhildr). Erik the Red had founded two Norse colonies in Greenland, the Western Settlement and the Eastern Settlement, as he had named them.

Apparently, Leif Ericson had two brothers, Þorvaldr and Þorsteinn, and one sister, Freydís. Ericson married a woman named Thorgunna, and they had one son, Þorkell Leifsson.

Settlement in Vinland

Exploring west of Greenland

During a stay in Norway, Leif Erikson converted to Christianity, like many Norse of that time. He also went to Norway to serve the King of Norway, Olaf Tryggvason. When Ericson returned to Greenland, he bought the boat of Bjarni Herjólfsson and set out to explore the land that Herjólfsson had found (located west of Greenland), which was, in fact, Newfoundland, in Canada.

The Saga of the Greenlanders tells that Leif set out around the year 1000 to follow Herjólfsson's route with 15 crew members, but going north.[2]

Sagas of Vinland

The main source of information about the Viking voyages to Vinland can be derived from two Icelandic sagas, The Saga of Eric the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders. These sagas were written down approximately 250 years after the settlement of Greenland and are open to considerable breadth of interpretation. Combining those two, it seems that there were a few separate attempts to establish a Norse settlement in Vinland, including one led by Thorfinn Karlsefni, none of which lasted for more than two years. The disbandment of the small Viking colony probably had several causes. Disagreements among the men about the few women that followed on the trip, and fighting with the skrælingar (Native Americans) already living in the area, are both indicated in the written sources.

He then afterwards told the story and sold the ships to Leif Ericson, who, according to the stories, sailed back to those areas many times. With wood being in very short supply in Greenland, the settlers there were eager to explore the riches of this new land. Some years later, Ericson explored this coast, and established a short-lived, coastal colony that he called Vinland. They found the area pleasant: there were plenty of large salmon in the river and the climate was mild, with little frost in the winter and green grass year-round. They remained at this place over the winter.

The story tells that after the settlement of Greenland by the Vikings, a merchant by the name of Bjarni Herjólfsson set sail from Iceland to Greenland to visit his father, a new settler in Greenland. His ship was blown off course by a storm and thus accidentally discovered the east coast of America in 985 or 986. It was late in the summer, and he did not want to stay over winter in this new land, which he noted was covered with forests, so he did not land and managed to reach Greenland before winter fell.

New World discoveries

According to the storiesn Helluland ("flatstone land"), the first discovery made by Ericson was possibly Baffin Island. Markland ("wood land") - which is now Labrador - was discovered next (there is some evidence that the tree line in northern Labrador has been diminished or eroded since circa 1000), and lastly Vinland (commonly interpreted as "wine land", but interpreted as "pasture land" by others. "Wine land" is now what we call L'Anse aux Meadows.

The expedition included both families and livestocks, with the aim of beginning new settlements. Straumfjörðr was the name of the northern settlement and Hóp was the name for the southern settlement. Only two Viking leaders actually overwintered in Vinland, the second being Thorvald Eiríksson, Ericson's brother, who was killed the second summer. However, according to the stories, the idea was soon abandoned due to conflicts with the skrælingar (possibly the later Beothuks, or Dorset people). New voyages for woodcutting, etc., seem to have been discussed even as late as the 1300s.

Aboriginal conflict, diverse economy

However, when the Vikings settled, they did not have good relationships with the aboriginal people. The Vikings raided nearby villages and killed whoever failed to escape into the woods, but despite hostilities, furs, cloth and other goods were traded between the Vikings and aboriginals. When war was finally settled, the Vikings built houses out of sod with clay floors, since the sod provided good insulation and stopped rainwater going into the home.

The Vikings caught fish, hunted game animals, picked berries, and had brought meat, cattle, and poultry from Iceland. The cattle not only provided food, but some also produced milk (and eventually dairy products). The chickens not only provided meat but also eggs, and their chicks maintained the poultry system.



In 1008 C.E., Thorfinn Karlsefni brought sixty people (including five women) to Vinland. He continued the practice of bringing cattle and sheep from Europe, and traded furs, skins, etc. with the aboriginal people.

On the return voyage, Ericson rescued an Icelandic castaway named Þórir and his crew — an incident that earned him the nickname Leif the Lucky (Old Norse: Leifr hinn heppni).


Vinland was first recorded by Adam of Bremen, a geographer and historian, in his book Descriptio insularum Aquilonis, c. 1075. To write it, he visited Danish king Svend Estridson, who had knowledge of the northern lands.


Until the nineteenth century, the idea of Viking settlement in North America was considered by historians to be the product of mere folk tales. The first scholarly theory for the idea was put forth in 1837 by Danish literary historian and antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn in his book Antiquitates Americanæ. Rafn had made an exhaustive examination of the sagas, as well as potential settlement sites on the North American coast, and concluded that Vinland was a real place in North America that had been settled by the Norse.

The L'Anse aux Meadows discovery

Research done in the 1950s and 1960s by explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine, strongly suggests that the settlement of Leif Ericson and his party in Vínland was located at the northern tip of Newfoundland, later known as L'Anse aux Meadows.

Leif Erikson Day

The Congress of the United States of America, by joint resolution (Public Law 88-566) approved on September 2, 1964, authorized and requested the President to proclaim October 9 of each year as "Leif Erikson Day."

Since then, Presidents have accordingly proceeded to call upon "all Americans to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs to honor our rich Nordic-American heritage".

Map

Speculation

  • A few have speculated that Norsemen may have penetrated as far as Minnesota, either coming down from Hudson Bay or going west through the Great Lakes. Some suggested that the Mandan showed evidence of pre-Columbian explorers from Europe, A runestone with carvings of a Scandanavian nature was discovered near Kensington, Minnesota, aptly titled the Kensington Runestone, this stone dates back to aproximately 1030.
  • In the nineteenth century, the theory that Ericson and his men visited New England gained in popularity. The statue of Ericson on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston, Massachusetts and the Norumbega Tower in Weston, Massachusetts were both created as monuments to this supposed Viking presence.
  • There is only one piece of hard evidence that suggests Vikings may have visited the area now called the United States: an eleventh-century Norse coin, the Maine Penny, found in Brooklin, Maine along with thousands of other artifacts during an excavation of a former Native American trading center. However, it is noted that this coin may have made it from Newfoundland via trade or may have even been brought to North America centuries later by the English or Portuguese.
  • Although there have been numerous attempts over the decades to show Viking presence in United States, such as fanciful translations of mysterious stone carvings, there has been no evidence accepted by the professional archaeological community.

Notes

  1. In modern Icelandic the first name is Leifur and in modern Norwegian Leiv. The patronym is Anglicized in various ways, such as Ericson, Eriksson, Ericsson, Erickson, Erikson and Eiriksson.
  2. Another saga, The Saga of Eric the Red, relates that Ericson discovered the American mainland while returning from Norway to Greenland in 1000 (or possibly 1001), but does not mention any attempts to settle there. However, the Saga of the Greenlanders is usually considered the more reliable of the two.
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References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Burgan, Michael. Leif Eriksson (Groundbreakers, Explorers), Heinemann, 2002. ISBN 978-1588105967
  • Kimmel, Elizabeth Cody. Before Columbus: The Leif Eriksson Expedition, Random House Books for Young Readers, 2003. ISBN 978-0375813474
  • Sanderson, Jeanette. Explorers, Teaching Resources/Scholastic, 2002. ISBN 0-439-25181-8
  • Steele, William O. The Life of Leif Ericson, Grosset & Dunlap, 1954. ASIN B000JFAN8U
  • Weir, Ruth Cromer. Leif Ericson, explorer, Abingdon Press, 1951. B0007DW32U

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