Vikings: A Captivating Guide to the History of the Vikings, Erik the Red and Leif Erikson by History Captivating

Author:History, Captivating [History, Captivating]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4 – Murder Most Foul

By all accounts, life was good for Erik in Iceland until the 980s. After the death of his father, Erik married Thjodhild Jorundsdottir and together they moved to Haukadal. Thjodhild came from a wealthy family, and it is believed that the property where they settled after their marriage may have been part of the marriage dowry or an inheritance from her family.

Most Vikings married young. Brides could be as young as twelve, and by the age of twenty, most Viking men and women were already married. Marriages were usually arranged by the parents and a marriage was seen not only as a union between husband and wife, but as a contract between two families. When the parents agreed on a marriage, the groom’s family paid a bride price, and when the marriage took place, the bride’s father paid a dowry. This meant that both families had a financial interest in the marriage.

Erik had made a good marriage for himself and at Haukadal, with Thjodhild by his side, he prospered. He owned a number of thralls, built a farm called Eiriksstadir, and started a family. Erik and Thjodhild had four children who survived to adulthood: three sons, Thorvald, Leif, and Thorstein, and a daughter, Freydis. For a while the family was doing well and life was good, but unfortunately things were not destined to stay that way for long.

Erik was known to have a fiery temperament and he did not always get along well with his neighbors so it didn’t take long for an argument to develop between Erik the Red and one of his fellow settlers. By this time, Erik had become a prosperous man and he owned a number of thralls who worked for him on his farm. One day several of his thralls were working the land when they accidentally triggered a landslide that crushed his neighbor Valthjof’s house. One of Valthjof’s clansmen, Eyiolf the Foul, then killed Erik’s thralls. This is when Erik’s fiery temper got the better of him and in retaliation, Erik killed Eyiolf the Foul and another man named Holmgang-Hrafn. Eyiolf’s family demanded that Erik be outlawed from Haukadal. The Thing was held and a decision was made to banish Erik from Haukadal. Erik had to leave his prosperous farm and move his family farther north to the Icelandic island of Oxney.

But this altercation with Eyiolf the Foul and his kinsmen was only the beginning of Erik’s troubles in Iceland. Sometime around 982, Erik entrusted his setstokkr,3 that his father had bought from Norway and Erik had inherited from him, to his friend and fellow settler, Thorgest, for safekeeping while he built his new home. As the story goes, when Erik’s house was complete, he returned to claim his setstokkr but Thorgest refused to give them back. Erik then took the setstokkr by force (it is unclear whether the setstokkr he took were his own or ones that belonged to Thorgest) and set off back to his own farm.

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