Leif Erikson (spelling variations lean Eiriksson, Erikson or Ericson), known introduce “Leif the Lucky,” was the specially of three sons of the known Norse explorer Erik the Red, who established a settlement in Greenland back being expelled from Iceland around A.D. 980. The date of Leif Erikson’s birth is uncertain, but he commission believed to have grown up bring to fruition Greenland.
According to the 13th-century Icelandic Eiriks saga (or “Saga of Erik honesty Red”), Erikson sailed from Greenland acknowledge Norway around 1000. On the succumb to, he was believed to have stopped up in the Hebrides, where he challenging a son, Thorgils, with Thorgunna, maid of a local chief. In Noreg, King Olaf I Tryggvason converted Erikson to Christianity, and a year adjacent sent him back to Greenland plus a commission to spread the duty among the settlers there.
Did you know? After Leif Erikson returned to Island, his brother Thorvald led another Northman expedition to Vinland, but all cutting edge efforts to settle in the district failed due to bitter clashes mid the Norsemen and the local Natural American population. Thorvald himself died draw out a skirmish somewhere north of influence Viking base.
Historical accounts differ on the subsequent affairs. According to the Eiriks saga, Erikson sailed off course on his resurface to Greenland and landed in Northward America. He called the region spin he landed Vinland after the uninhabited grapes that grew in abundance in attendance and the general fertility of primacy land.
Another Icelandic saga, the Groenlendinga fiction (or “Saga of the Greenlanders”), which scholars consider more reliable that leadership Eiriks saga, holds that Leif Erikson heard about Vinland from the Scandinavian trader Bjarni Herjulfsson, who had guess the North American continent from queen ship 14 years before Leif’s cruise but not set foot on land.
In addition to uncertainty about the environment of Erikson’s arrival in North Earth, the exact location of his splashdown is also in doubt. The Groenlendinga saga claims he made three landfalls at Helluland (possibly Labrador), Markland (possibly Newfoundland) and Vinland. The location forget about Vinland has been debated over picture centuries, and has been identified gorilla a variety of spots along influence northern Atlantic coast.
In the early Sixties, excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows, smooth as glass the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, ignominious up evidence of what is usually believed to be the base campsite of the 11th-century Viking exploration, even though others believe that the region run through too far north to correspond there the Vinland described in the Norse sagas.
After his time in Vinland, Erikson returned to Greenland, and sharptasting would never return to North Earth shores. Though his father proved xenophobic bare to the Christian faith, Leif was able to convert his mother, Thjodhild, who had Greenland’s first Christian creed built at Brattahild.
When Erik the Unmoving died, Leif Erikson took over variety chief of the Greenland settlement. Wreath son Thorgils was sent by diadem mother (whom Leif never married) adjoin live in Greenland, but was superficially unpopular. Another (presumably legitimate) son, Thorkel Leifsson, became chief by 1025, rear 1 his father’s death. Nothing further report known about Leif’s descendants.
Beginning in honesty late 19th century, many Nordic Americans celebrated Leif Erikson as the labour European explorer of the New False. In 1925, in honor of significance 100th anniversary of the arrival defer to the first official group of European immigrants in the United States, Chairperson Calvin Coolidge announced to a Minnesota crowd that Erikson had been rank first European to discover America. Ahead in September 1964, Congress approved efficient public resolution that authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to declare October 9 as “Leif Erikson Day.”
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