c. 986–1010
Vinland, c. 986–1010
Grænlendinga saga tells that in 986 Bjarni Herjólfsson, sailing from Iceland to join his father in Greenland, is driven off course by wind and fog. He sights three unknown coasts, the first covered with forest, and sails on to Greenland without landing on any of them. The historian Tryggvi J. Oleson took the three lands to be Newfoundland, Labrador and Baffin Island.
Leif Erikson sights land, a painting by Christian Krohg of 1893, National Museum, OsloWikimedia Commons, Christian Krohg, Public domain (Christian Krohg - Leiv Eirikson discovering America - NG.M.00558 - National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design.jpg)
About fifteen years later, by the same saga, Leif Erikson buys Bjarni’s ship and sails with 35 men. He names a land of flat rocks Helluland, a wooded land Markland and a land with grapes and timber Vinland, where he builds houses and spends the winter before sailing home with timber and grapes. In Eiríks saga rauða Leif comes upon Vinland by chance on his way from Norway to Greenland, sent by King Olaf Tryggvason to bring Christianity to the Greenlanders.
Reconstructed Norse sod house at L’Anse aux Meadows, NewfoundlandWikimedia Commons, D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY-SA 3.0 (L'Anse aux Meadows, recreated long house.jpg)
Thorfinn Karlsefni, an Icelandic merchant, sails to Vinland with his wife Gudrid, with 60 men and five women by Grænlendinga saga and with three ships and 140 to 160 men by Eiríks saga rauða. Their son Snorri is born there. They trade with the people whom the sagas call skrælings until fighting breaks out. In Eiríks saga Freydís, Erik’s daughter, drives off an attack by striking her bare breast with a sword, while in Grænlendinga saga she leads a voyage of her own and has her partners Helgi and Finnbogi and their crew killed.
In 1960 Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad find the remains of Norse buildings at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland and excavate them from 1961 to 1968. They uncover eight buildings of sod over wooden frames, among them a smithy, and tree rings later date timber cut there to 1021. Butternuts found at the site grow only as far north as New Brunswick, so the Norse sailed on into the Gulf of St Lawrence. The site may be Leif’s houses or the Straumfjörð of Eiríks saga, and it serves as a base for voyages farther south.
Outline of the largest Norse building at L’Anse aux Meadows, excavated in the 1960sWikimedia Commons, Clinton Pierce, CC BY-SA 3.0 (LanseAuxMeadows LargeBuilding.JPG)
Sources
- Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson (trans.), The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America (1965).
- Margot Kuitems and others, "Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021", Nature (2021).
- Eleanor Barraclough, Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas (2016).
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