Leif Eriksson
In 986, Norwegian-born Erik Thorvaldsson, known in history and legend as Erik the Red, explored and temporarily settled in the south west shore area of Greenland. It was his son, Leiv Eriksson, also spelt Eiriksson, and known as Leiv the Lucky, who became the first European to set foot on the shores of North America, and the first acknowledged inter-continental explorer of Norwegian birth.
The date and place of Leiv Eriksson's birth will probably never be definitely established, but it is believed that he grew up in Greenland. The Saga of Eric the Red relates that Eriksson set sail for Norway in 999, served King Olav Trygvasson for a term, and was sent back to Greenland one year later to bring Christianity to its people.
There are two schools of thought as to the subsequent course of events. One of these is that Eriksson, en route for Greenland, was blown off course or had a navigation failure, and arrived by sheer accident near the shoreline of north western America in the year 1000, thus preceding Columbus by nearly 500 years.
On the other hand, the Greenland Saga, which has been found to be trustworthy in many other aspects that were considered at one time to be mythical, claims Eriksson's discovery was not due to chance. This saga says that he fitted out an expedition and sailed west in a deliberate attempt to gather proof of the claims made by an Icelandic trader, who in 986 had been driven far off course in a fierce storm between Iceland and Greenland, and reported sighting hilly, heavily-wooded land in the distant west. Eriksson, encouraged by the discussion of potential discoveries, and fretting under the constant need of land to farm, bought the very ship from which the land had been sighted and set off on his quest for the new, unknown land.
Again the saga gives concrete details. Eriksson made great efforts to follow the original route in reverse, during which he made three landfalls. The first of these he named Helluland, or Flat-Stone Land, and this is now generally accepted as having been somewhere along the Labrador coast. The second was Markland, (also spelt Marklund) or Wood-Land, which is tentatively identified as Newfoundland. The exact location of the third, which was named Vinland – meaning pasture-land rather than wine-land - was for centuries a matter of scholastic controversy, but is now generally accepted to have been the location identified by Helge Marcus Ingstad, the great Norwegian explorer and archaeologist, on the Canadian coast.
Eriksson and his men spent the winter in Vinland, at a place they named Leifsbud-ir (literally, Leiv’s temporary hangout!) returning to Greenland the following year, 1001.
It was then left to Eriksson's brother, Thorvald to make subsequent voyages to the new-found territory, for strange as it may seem, Leiv Eriksson never returned – his fame and luck at discovering new lands made him popular at the Norwegian court, from which his father had been banished many years earlier and Leiv spent his time between Norway and Greenland, where his father’s people had settled, from then on.
It seems that attempts to settle Vinland on a permanent basis were unsuccessful, due to strong friction between the Viking settlers and the native North Americans whom the Vikings called Skraelings, a term they used equally for the Inuit or Eskimo peoples.
Though many still regard Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of the North Americas, Eriksson's right to this title received the stamp of official approval in the USA when in 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed October 9 ‘Leif Ericson Day’ in commemoration of the first arrival of a European on North American soil.
Other Great Explorers
tenzing, Vancouver, Almagro, Alvarado, Balboa, burton, clark, drake, eriksson, grant, heyerdahl, hillary, humboldt, ingstad, james cook, livingstone, magellan, Piccard, Raleigh, Scott, Shackleton