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Finding New Land

Leif Eriksson’s voyage to Vinland

“So they followed this plan, and it is said that they loaded up the afterboat with grapes, and the ship itself with a cargo of timber. When spring came, they made the ship ready and sailed away. Leif gave this country a name to suit its resources: he called it Vinland.

As recorded in the thirteenth-century Greenlanders’ Saga

WHEN

C. AD 1000

ENDEAVOUR

Leif Eriksson sailed from Iceland to Newfoundland, and overwintered there, the first European to reach North America.

HARDSHIPS & DANGERS

Sailing in unknown waters and surviving winter (albeit surprisingly warm) in Newfoundland.

LEGACY

Limited, as no permanent Viking settlements were established in North America and it was another 500 years before Cabot reached Newfoundland.

While there will always be speculation about who was the first European to land on the North American continent (was it St Brendan in the sixth century, for example?), there is clear evidence that Leif Eriksson did reach Newfoundland at the start of the eleventh century, both from accounts in two Icelandic sagas and from the discovery of a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in northwestern Newfoundland.

The naming of Greenland

The story starts with Erik the Red, one of the Vikings who had come from Norway to settle Iceland. He did not get on well with the other Vikings, and on a voyage in 982, landed on Greenland. It was summer, and he had found a land of green pastures by the coast, and so gave it the name ‘Greenland’, then unaware that beyond that southern coastal fringe it was covered in ice all year around. Erik saw great potential here, and his plans to colonize it came to fruition in 986, when he sailed with twenty-five ships and around 700 people from Iceland to Greenland.

One Viking arrived back on Iceland after a trading trip to discover that his father had already sailed to Greenland and he wished to follow as soon as possible, even though it was getting late in the season. So it was that Bjarni Herjolfsson set off from Iceland, but soon the wind dropped and the fog descended so that he could no longer navigate. Once the fog lifted after a few days, he sailed on and then sighted land. The sailors asked Bjarni whether it was Greenland, but he replied that it was not, for when they sailed close by they found that the land was ‘not mountainous but covered with small wooded knolls’. They sailed on for another two days and saw more land, but Bjarni declined to land, much to the anger of his crew. After another three days they saw a country with high mountains and glaciers. Bjarni regarded it as pretty worthless, and set sail again, this time reaching Greenland, where he was reunited with his father. He and his crew are the first recorded Europeans to see North America (most likely Labrador and Baffin Island) but Bjarni was much criticized for not landing. Thereafter he stayed with his father and did not go sailing again.

‘They saw no grass, the mountain tops were covered with glaciers.....’

The Greenlanders’ Saga

Leif Eriksson sailing down the Labrador coast, as imagined in a nineteenth-century illustration.

An unpromising land

Now Leif Eriksson, the son of Erik the Red, heard the tale of Bjarni and thought he would like to visit such lands. He visited Bjarni and purchased his boat and recruited a crew of thirty five. The first land they reached was most likely Baffin Island, an inhospitable place according the Saga’s description: ‘They saw no grass, the mountain tops were covered with glaciers, and from sea to mountain the country was like one slab of rock. It looked to be a barren, unprofitable country.’ He called it Helluland (Land of Flat Stones).

They sailed on and saw more land, most likely Labrador, with gently sloping forested land along its coast. This he called Markland (Forest Land). Then they sailed on again and reached more land, first landing on an island, where the Saga recounts that ‘they discovered dew on the grass. It so happened that they picked up some of the dew in their hands and tasted of it, and it seemed to them that they had never tasted anything so sweet.’

The outside of a recreated long house at L’Anse aux Meadows the Viking settlement in north-western Newfoundland, discovered by the Norwegian archaeologist Helge Ingstad in 1960.

A winter of content

They then beached their boat and landed on the mainland. Given the time of year they decided that they would settle here for the winter and return home in the spring. They built turf huts, ate the plentiful salmon from the rivers and lakes, and had a remarkably mild winter (‘there was no frost by night, and the grass hardly withered’). Leif sent out groups to explore the area round about, and on one occasion, a German member of the crew called Tyrkir, was separated and returned later than the rest of his party with the news that he had found grapes and vines. Come spring they loaded the boat with wood and grapes and sailed away from the land Leif called Vinland.

‘There was no lack of salmon in the river or lake, bigger salmon than they had ever seen.’

The Greenlanders’ Saga

Leif ’s brother, Thorvald, then made a trip back to Vinland and settled at the camp Leif had made. For the next two summers they explored the land, only towards the end meeting the native inhabitants. The first they met, they captured and killed and they were then attacked by larger numbers. All survived apart from Thorvald, who died of an arrow wound and was buried in Vinland. The remaining Vikings sailed away the following spring and did not return.

Evidence of the Viking expeditions

In 1960, at the tip of the Great Northern peninsula in the far northwest of Newfoundland, the remains of a Viking settlement was discovered at L’Anse aux Meadows. From their excavations, archaeologists have been able to recreate the turf huts, of typical Viking design, and to date the active life of the settlement from 990 to 1030, which links well with the account of the trips of Leif and Thorvald, as recorded in the Greenlanders’ Saga. Combined, there is sufficient evidence to establish that the Vikings were the first Europeans to reach North America.

Inside of a recreated long house.

Cabot comes in second

This discovery punctured the long-held belief that John Cabot was the first European to reach North America. Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) was born in Italy in 1450, probably in or near Genoa. Like his fellow Genoese, Christopher Columbus, Cabot considered that the best way to get to China and the Spice Islands would be by sailing west, and he became interested in a more northerly route than Columbus. Known to be living in Bristol by 1495, he received a Royal charter from Henry VII to claim any land discovered for England, and was commissioned by the merchants of Bristol. He set sail in a small boat, the Matthew, from Bristol, along with his crew of eighteen. On 24 June 1497, they made landfall on Newfoundland, probably at Cape Bonavista. He reported that ‘the natives of it go about dressed in skins of animals; in their wars they use bows and arrows, lances and darts, and clubs of wood, and slings. This land is very sterile. There are in it many white bears, and very large stags, like horses, and many other animals. And in like manner there are immense quantities of fish — soles, salmon, very large cods, and many other kinds of fish.’ He named the land ‘New Founde Lands’ and by tradition he also named one sheltered harbour St John’s, now the provincial capital, because he first landed on Newfoundland on St John’s Day.

He returned to Bristol, firmly believing that he had discovered a new route to China, and was enthusiastically welcome back to the Royal Court. He was quickly given permission to make another trip, with five boats. He left in spring 1498, but neither he nor his ships returned.