Leif Erikson: A Captivating Guide to the Viking Explorer Who Beat Columbus to America and Established a Norse Settlement at Vinland by Captivating History

Author:Captivating History [History, Captivating]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6 – Voyage to Vinland

Around the year 1000, Leif gathered a small group of around 35 men, including his mentor, Thryker, and supplies and set off to search for and explore the mysterious forested land that Herjolfsson claimed lay in a westerly direction. Some of the sagas even suggest that Erikson bought or borrowed Bjarni Herjolfsson’s longboat to use on his epic voyage. When Leif Erikson set sail from Greenland, he earned his place in the history books as one of the greatest Norse explorers and the first European to set foot on the North American continent.

Even though Leif and his crew set sail in the summer, crossing the Atlantic Ocean so far north in an open longboat would have been a treacherous undertaking, and the crew would most likely have been plagued by high seas and ice flows. But these harsh conditions did not deter them. Leif and his crew were brave men and experienced seafarers, and they would not have turned back easily. It is uncertain how long the voyage took them, but the Saga of the Greenlanders claims that Leif and his crew made landfall at three different sites. The first place that they are believed to have landed was an icy and inhospitable region Erikson named “Helluland.” This was a place of flat stone and ice. From there, they sailed on until they came to a heavily forested stretch of coastline that they called “Markland.” They did not, however, choose to establish any sort of settlement there and sailed further south along the coast, quite possibly looking for a more suitable place to build a base camp. Approximately two days later, they came to a headland with an island just offshore. This appeared to be a more hospitable area than Helluland and Markland, and Leif decided to build his camp there and named the area Vinland.

The most common explanation for the name is apparently due to the abundance of wild grapes that the Vikings found growing in the area. But even this is open to interpretation and is still being debated by historians and scholars around the world. Some historians argue that the name cannot refer to grapes because if the settlement was far north then there would not have been wild grapes growing in abundance. Others claim that the grapes that are referred to in the name and apparently grew wild in Vinland may have been redcurrants or berries. In Scandinavian countries, there is a tradition of making wine by fermenting berries. However, if the Norsemen had traveled as far south as the St. Lawrence River and parts of New Brunswick, then they may indeed have found wild grapes. Another suggestion is that the name actually means “land of meadows” or “land of pastures.”

There is also much debate as to exactly where Helluland, Markland, and Vinland were. Helluland means “Land of the Stones” or “Flat-Stone Land,” and many historians now believe that this was most likely Baffin Island. The second place Leif and his

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