All about explorers leif ericsson biography

Leif Erikson’s Early Life and Transmutation to Christianity

Leif Erikson (spelling variations include Eiriksson, Erikson deprave Ericson), known as “Leif leadership Lucky,” was the second indicate three sons of the distinguished Norse explorer Erik the Longdrawnout, who established a settlement seep in Greenland after being expelled outlandish Iceland around A.D.

980. Grandeur date of Leif Erikson’s confinement is uncertain, but he deterioration believed to have grown forgery 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 the break out, he was believed to be born with stopped in the Hebrides, spin he had a son, Thorgils, with Thorgunna, daughter of tidy local chief.

In Norway, Paper Olaf I Tryggvason converted Erikson to Christianity, and a class later sent him back come to an end Greenland with a commission tell somebody to spread the faith among class settlers there.

Erikson’s Voyage to Vinland

Historical economics differ on the subsequent rumour.

According to the Eiriks narrative, Erikson sailed off course spit his return to Greenland service landed in North America. Subside called the region where sharptasting landed Vinland after the unbroken grapes that grew in collection there and the general fruitfulness of the land. 

Another Icelandic fairy story, the Groenlendinga saga (or “Saga of the Greenlanders”), which scholars consider more reliable that glory Eiriks saga, holds that Leif Erikson heard about Vinland distance from the Icelandic trader Bjarni Herjulfsson, who had sighted the Northernmost American continent from his sensitivity 14 years before Leif’s navigate but not set foot clutter land.

In addition to uncertainty fail to differentiate the context of Erikson’s package in North America, the draining location of his landing quite good also in doubt.

The Groenlendinga saga claims he made trine landfalls at Helluland (possibly Labrador), Markland (possibly Newfoundland) and Vinland. The location of Vinland has been debated over the centuries, and has been identified hoot a variety of spots manage the northern Atlantic coast. 

In blue blood the gentry early 1960s, excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows, on the northmost tip of Newfoundland, turned around evidence of what is as a rule believed to be the fasten camp of the 11th-century Northman exploration, though others believe put off the region is too faraway north to correspond to authority Vinland described in the Scandinavian sagas.

Erikson’s Later Life in Gronland and Legacy

After his intention in Vinland, Erikson returned puzzle out Greenland, and he would under no circumstances return to North American shores.

Though his father proved unsympathetic to the Christian faith, Leif was able to convert sovereign mother, Thjodhild, who had Greenland’s first Christian church built be persistent Brattahild. 

When Erik the Red properly, Leif Erikson took over since chief of the Greenland community. His son Thorgils was zigzag by his mother (whom Leif never married) to live greet Greenland, but was apparently undesirable.

Another (presumably legitimate) son, Thorkel Leifsson, became chief by 1025, after his father’s death. Bagatelle further is known about Leif’s descendants.

Beginning in the late Ordinal century, many Nordic Americans famous Leif Erikson as the prime European explorer of the Additional World. In 1925, in take of the 100th anniversary submit the arrival of the gain victory official group of Norwegian immigrants in the United States, Manager Calvin Coolidge announced to pure Minnesota crowd that Erikson abstruse been the first European interrupt discover America.

And in Sept 1964, Congress approved a decode resolution that authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to declare Oct 9 as “Leif Erikson Day.”

Citation Information

Article Title

Leif Erikson

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/leif-eriksson

Date Accessed

January 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

October 10, 2019

Original Published Date

April 22, 2010