Erik the Red: The Life and Legacy of the Viking Explorer Who Settled Greenland

The Vikings’ reputation for ferocious seaborne attacks along the coasts of Northern Europe is no exaggeration, but the Norsemen were also medieval Europe’s greatest explorers, moving across the North Atlantic to settle in Iceland, Greenland, and even North America. The first step in this epic journey was Iceland, a rugged island in the North Atlantic about 400 miles from the Faroe Islands and about 700 miles from the north coast of Scotland. Iceland has been called “the land of ice and fire,” and the name is an apt one. Rugged fjords lead to towering glaciers. In spots, hot springs and geysers give a little warmth to green meadows and patches of bare, exposed bedrock. Active volcanoes loom over the landscape, sending plumes of smoke into the air and sometimes streams of lava far and wide. It’s a land guaranteed to capture the imagination of an adventurous and pagan people who saw spirits in every hill and stream.

Their settlements in Greenland were perhaps the most impressive, given that the bleak and unforgiving land was mostly uninhabited when they first made it there. Greenland is huge, measuring almost 840,000 square miles (1.35 million square kilometers). The interior is uninhabitable glacier and mountain, but the periphery is cut by countless fjords that shelter the inhabitants from some of the worst of the winds. The fjords in the western part of the island, especially the southwestern part, are made more temperate by relatively warm sea currents and can support grass and a diverse amount of wildlife. Even so, winters are harsh even in the southern latitudes, and ice clogs the northern reaches for much of the year.
Remote, and subject to long winters during which pack ice would cut it off from the rest of the world, Greenland seemed an unlikely place to found a colony. In fact, Greenland was only circumnavigated in the early 20th century, and many of its further reaches were unmapped until the modern day. Nonetheless, the Norse managed to live there for about 450 years among some of their most remote outposts, and Greenland would maintain strong ties with the rest of Europe.

The Viking settlements on Greenland also helped ensure that the explorer who first established a Viking presence there, Erik the Red, remains a household name over a millennium after his death. Erik the Red’s story comes from the two Vinland sagas, Icelandic texts written in the 13th century by two authors, based on oral storytelling passed down through the centuries. They both include many of the same stories, albeit with varying degrees of detail. The Saga of the Greenlanders is older and considered more historically accurate, covering Erik the Red’s life and stories of his sons. The Saga of Erik the Red is a romanticized version written by Icelandic monks that contains many of the same episodes in the lives of Erik and his children. In both sources, Erik the Red founded the “Eastern Settlement,” a colony just south of the Arctic Circle that lasted for nearly 500 years. It was a vital steppingstone for further westward exploration, and that exploration would be taken up by Erik the Red’s son, Leif Erikson, who later used Greenland as a launchpad to North America.

According to the sources, violence back in Europe had forced Erik the Red and his father Thorvald Asvaldsson to new horizons. After the court banished Thorvald from Norway for killing some men, the family sailed west to Iceland, where Erik’s own fiery temper escalated into fatal brawls, forcing him into a second exile. These circumstances led to his discovery, exploration, and colonization of Greenland, making his life story the almost perfect of the restless, pioneering, and brutal Viking spirit.