By most accounts, it was written by Jon Thorharson in 1387, almost four centuries after the events in it, which were almost certainly handed down by oral tradition.
In the saga, the events that led Eric the Red's banishment to Greenland are chronicled, as well as Leif Ericson's discovery of Wineland the Good, a place where wheat and grapes grew naturally, after his longboat was blown off-course. By geographical details, this place is surmised to be present-day Newfoundland, and is likely the first European discovery of the American mainland, some five centuries before Christopher Columbus's journey.
Eric the Red (also Erik Thorvaldson, Eirik Raude or Eirik Torvaldsson) was a native of Norway and the founder of the first European settlement in Greenland.
Eric the Red's son was Leif Ericsson, who went on to become one of the first Europeans to sail to North America.
Erik the Red (950–1003; old Icelandic: Eiríkr Rauði; Norwegian; Eirik Raude; sometimes Eric the Red), so-called because of his red hair, was the founder of the first Nordic settlement in Greenland (long before it had been named Greenland, it had perhaps been inhabited by the Dorset people) and father of Leif Ericson (Leiv Eiriksson).
According to the Saga of Eric the Red, his ship first stopped in the Hebrides Isles, Scotland, where he was a guest of the lord of the island and married his daughter, Thorgunna.
The discovery of new lands on the eastern coast of North America is recorded in the Saga of Eric the Red and in the Saga of the Greenlanders, written in Iceland around the year 1200.
Eric the Red explores and colonizes Greenland in 985 and North America is explored by Leif Ericsson in 1000.
Feeds |
Contact