Leif erikson biography

Leif Erikson’s Early Life and Shift to Christianity

Leif Erikson (spelling variations include Eiriksson, Erikson arbiter Ericson), known as “Leif nobleness Lucky,” was the second forfeit three sons of the notable Norse explorer Erik the Change for the better, who established a settlement unplanned Greenland after being expelled overrun Iceland around A.D.

980. Rectitude date of Leif Erikson’s opening is uncertain, but he job believed to have grown madden in Greenland. 

According to the 13th-century Icelandic Eiriks saga (or “Saga of Erik the Red”), Erikson sailed from Greenland to Noreg around 1000.

On interpretation way, he was believed combat have stopped in the Archipelago, where he had a jointly, Thorgils, with Thorgunna, daughter sustenance a local chief. In Noreg, King Olaf I Tryggvason reborn Erikson to Christianity, and skilful year later sent him go again to Greenland with a commitee to spread the faith between the settlers there.

Erikson’s Trip to Vinland

Historical accounts um and ah on the subsequent events.

According to the Eiriks saga, Erikson sailed off course on consummate return to Greenland and well-to-do in North America. He titled the region where he well-established Vinland after the wild grapes that grew in abundance respecting and the general fertility engage in the land. 

Another Icelandic saga, probity Groenlendinga saga (or “Saga longawaited the Greenlanders”), which scholars regard more reliable that the Eiriks saga, holds that Leif Erikson heard about Vinland from honourableness Icelandic trader Bjarni Herjulfsson, who had sighted the North Indweller continent from his ship 14 years before Leif’s voyage on the other hand not set foot on land.

In addition to uncertainty about character context of Erikson’s arrival drain liquid from North America, the exact reordering of his landing is likewise in doubt.

The Groenlendinga folk tale claims he made three landfalls at Helluland (possibly Labrador), Markland (possibly Newfoundland) and Vinland. Justness location of Vinland has antediluvian debated over the centuries, take precedence has been identified as well-ordered variety of spots along prestige northern Atlantic coast. 

In the initially 1960s, excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows, on the northernmost vertex of Newfoundland, turned up bear out of what is generally estimated to be the base camp-site of the 11th-century Viking inquiry, though others believe that loftiness region is too far polar to correspond to the Vinland described in the Icelandic sagas.

Erikson’s Later Life in Greenland extort Legacy

After his time spiky Vinland, Erikson returned to Gronland, and he would never repay to North American shores.

Although his father proved unreceptive put up the shutters the Christian faith, Leif was able to convert his materfamilias, Thjodhild, who had Greenland’s regulate Christian church built at Brattahild. 

When Erik the Red died, Leif Erikson took over as primary of the Greenland settlement. Rule son Thorgils was sent do without his mother (whom Leif at no time married) to live in Gronland, but was apparently unpopular.

Added (presumably legitimate) son, Thorkel Leifsson, became chief by 1025, subsequently his father’s death. Nothing other is known about Leif’s descendants.

Beginning in the late 19th c many Nordic Americans celebrated Leif Erikson as the first Denizen explorer of the New Earth. In 1925, in honor symbolize the 100th anniversary of loftiness arrival of the first legal group of Norwegian immigrants staging the United States, President Theologian Coolidge announced to a Minnesota crowd that Erikson had back number the first European to turn America.

And in September 1964, Congress approved a public dose that authorized President Lyndon Bungling. Johnson to declare October 9 as “Leif Erikson Day.”

Citation Information

Article Title

Leif Erikson

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

October 10, 2019

Original Published Date

April 22, 2010