Lief Erikson Research Paper

Lief Erikson

The date of Leif Eriksson’s birth is uncertain, but he is believed to have grown up in Greenland. Also known as “Lief the Lucky,” he was the second of three sons of a very famous Norse explorer known as “Eric the Red”. He established settlement in Greenland after being expelled from Iceland. According to the Icelandic Eiriks saga (or, “Saga of Eric the Great”), Eriksson sailed from Greenland to Norway around 1000. Historians believe that he stopped in Hebrides and had a child, whom he named Thorgils. The mother of this child was Thorgunna, daughter of the local chief in the area. While he was in Norway, King Olaf I Tryggvason, converted him to Christianity. One year later, King Olaf I Tryggvason sent him back to Greenland with a commision to convert all the settlers of Greenland to the Christian faith. According to Erikis saga, Eriksson sailed violently off course on his way back home (to attempt to convert the settlers in Greenland) and landed on the continent we know today as North America! The specific area he landed on he named Vinland after he saw all the wild
grapes that were growing in the area along with the great vastness of the natural fertility of the land itself. Another Icelandic saga, known as the Groenlendinga saga (AKA: “Saga of the Greenlanders”), states that Leif Eriksson heard about Vinland from an Icelandic trader named Bjarni Herjulfsson. Bjarni Herujulfsson claimed he had sighted the continent of North America a total of 14 years before Eriksson set sail from his ship. He never set foot on North American soil though. Most historians and scholars tend to believe this more than Eiriks saga. Not only are Historians and scholars very unsure about the context of how he got there, nobody is really sure as to where he landed either. The Groenlendinga saga says that he made a total of three landfalls which are Helluland( Labrador possibly ), Markland (possibly Newfoundland), and finally, Vinland. Excavations in the L’Anse aux Meadows, on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, turned up evidence of what is Historian generally believe to be the base camp of a certain 11th-century Viking exploration during the 1960s. Other historians believe that this region is too far north to have anything to do with the Vinland the Iclandic sagas described. After his time in Vinland, Eriksson finally returned to Greenland.
He had no idea whatsoever that he would never return to North American shores ever again. His father did not like this new religion and disapproved it. His mother,(named Thjodhild)however, he finally convinced to convert to Christianity. Erikssons mother also built the very first Christian church in Greenland which they build at Battahild. When Eric the Red died, Eriksson took the job of being the chief of the Greenland settlement. His son Thorgils was sent by Thjodhild(his mother) to live in Greenland, but was for some reason unpopular among the locals in the settlement. Fun fact: Leif Eriksson and Thjodhild never actually married! Another (apparently legitimate) son, named Thorkel Leifsson, became chief by 1025, after the death of Leif Eriksson. Nothing else is known about the descendants of Leif
Eriksson. Beginning in the late 19th century, many of the Nordic Americans celebrated Leif Eriksson as the first European explorer to set foot in the continental North America. During the year of 1925, it was the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the first official Norwegian immigrants in the United States of America, President Calvin Coolidge announced to a crowd in Minnesota that Leif Eriksson was the first European to set foot in continental North America. During the month of September in 1964, the United States Congress approved a public resolution to allow the President at the time,which was Lyndon B. Johnson, to declare the day of October 9th to be “Leif Eriksson Day”! Since this is true, that would mean that Leif Eriksson made it to the continental North America way before Christopher Columbus did! Christopher Columbus missed out by approximately 400 years!