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Erik the Red (Old Norse Eiríkr rauði, after his hair colour) lived in the 10th century. His father had already been banished from Norway to Iceland – for manslaughter. Erik followed the pattern: after several bloody quarrels he too was banished from Iceland for three years. Rather than despair, he used the time to explore.
Erik sailed west, to a coast people in Iceland had heard of. For three years he explored the fjords of a huge island, found pasture at the sheltered bays, and then returned to recruit settlers. His selling point lay in the name: he called the land Greenland, because, the saga says, people would be more willing to go if the land had a fine name.
"He called the land Greenland, for he said people would be all the more eager to go there if the land had a good name."after the Grœnlendinga saga / Eiríks saga rauða (public domain, own translation)
Around 985/986 a fleet of settlers set out; part of it reached Greenland and founded the Eastern and Western Settlements. Erik's farm Brattahlíð became the centre. For centuries Norse farmers lived here from stock-raising, hunting and the trade in walrus ivory – at the very edge of the known world. From here his son Leif Erikson later set out to the west.
Erik the Red stands for the Viking Age as an age of discovery: a banished man became the founder of a society at the edge of the world – and paved the way to America.
Leif Erikson · Harald Hardrada · Cnut the Great · Rollo of Normandy · Hedeby.
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