Leif Erikson: the Viking who reached America first

A few days ago, on October 9th, the United States celebrated Leif Erikson Day. It’s a good excuse to tell one of the greatest voyage stories of the entire Viking age — and, as it happens, one with a direct line into our own books.

An exile’s family

Leif Erikson was born around 980 AD in Iceland, into a culture of exploration — and into a family with a habit of getting thrown out of places. His grandfather Thorvald Åsvaldsson had been exiled from Norway to Iceland. His father, Erik the Red, was then exiled from Iceland to Greenland, where he established the first Norse colonies. When your family tree reads like that, sailing towards the horizon starts to look like a tradition.

As a young man, Leif sailed from Greenland to Norway, where he served at the court of King Olaf Tryggvason. Under the king’s influence he converted to Christianity, and Olaf commissioned him to return to Greenland as a missionary — to spread the new faith among the settlers, including his own family.

Blown off course

What happened next depends on which source you trust. According to one account, Leif’s ship was blown off course on the return voyage, and he sighted unknown lands to the west. According to the Saga of the Greenlanders, he instead heard tales from a trader named Bjarni Herjólfsson, who had glimpsed land west of Greenland but never gone ashore. Intrigued, Leif bought Bjarni’s ship and assembled a crew of 35 men to go and look.

Sailing westward, they first reached a rocky, barren land Leif named Helluland — “Flat Stone Land” — believed to be present-day Baffin Island. Continuing south, they came to a forested coast he called Markland, “Forest Land”, likely modern Labrador. Venturing further still, they arrived somewhere with a milder climate and abundant resources, including wild grapes or berries. Leif named it Vinland.

A winter in the new world

Leif and his men built a small settlement in Vinland and spent the winter there, harvesting timber and grapes — both scarce back in Greenland. Many historians connect Vinland to the region of Newfoundland, where the remains of a real Norse settlement have been found at L’Anse aux Meadows. The Norsemen encountered the indigenous peoples, whom they called Skrælings, though relations were tentative and sometimes hostile.

After overwintering, Leif returned to Greenland with a valuable cargo and stories that set the colony talking. His brother Thorvald led later expeditions to establish a more permanent presence, but conflicts prevented any lasting settlement.

The Norse presence in North America was brief. But Leif Erikson stands as the first known European to set foot on the continent, nearly 500 years before Columbus.

The legacy of our Ulv

So what’s the relation to our stories? Quite substantial, actually.

Erik the Red — Eirik Raude, as we call him — should be a familiar name if you’ve read The Shieldmaiden’s Daughter. There you meet a young and impulsive Eirik. One of the subplots in that book and in Shieldmaiden is how Thorvald, Eirik’s father, was outlawed from Norway. Thorvald also features in Haakon the Good as one of King Haakon’s closest men.

Thorvald’s father was Åsvald Ulvsson. He’s not prominent in any of our stories, but he is indirectly mentioned in Harald Fairhair — and this brings us full circle, because Åsvald’s father is our own Ulv, the main character of the entire Viking Ventures series.

In other words: the boy who goes on his first raid in Viking is the great-great-grandfather of the man who reached America.

Maybe we’ll end up writing Leif Erikson’s story some day. Either way, that is the legacy of our Ulv. Pretty cool, right?