Leif Erikson
Born in 970 A.D. Iceland, the second of three sons of famed Viking explorer Erik the Red, Leif Erikson grew up in Greenland after his father’s expulsion from Iceland in 980 A.D. Earning the nickname “Leif the Lucky” due to his sailing prowess and miraculous survival through perilous storms at sea, much of what we know about Erikson’s 1000 A.D. voyage to the New World comes from 13th-century Icelandic sagas, including Eiriks saga, where he sailed to the Hebrides, before siring his son, Thorgils; the result of a love affair with the daughter of a local chief.
Spreading The Word
After converting to Christianity during a lengthy stay in Norway, Erikson was sent back to Greenland by King Olaf the 1st, with orders to spread the good word among Greenlanders. In the saga, Erikson sailed off course on his return trip to Greenland, landing in North America at a place he called Vinland, due to its fertile soil and abundance of wild grapes.
Settles Vinland
A much more widely-accepted account comes from the Groenlendinga saga, which recounts how Erikson heard about North America from Icelandic trader Bjarni Herjulfsson, who sighted North America 14 years before Erikson’s voyage, although Herjulfsson never set foot on the North American continent. The saga also claims that Erikson made three landfalls, possibly on Labrador and southern Newfoundland before establishing a settlement at Vinland, which many believe to be at the northernmost tip of Newfoundland.
Bitter Clashes with Native Americans
In a foreshadow of the violence to come, Erikson, and on a later Norse expedition to Vinland by his brother Thorvald, both groups of explorers experienced bitter clashes with Native Americans, leading to Thorvald’s death in battle that ended all Viking attempts to settle in North America. After his return to Greenland—never to set foot in North America again—his father resisted his son’s attempts at a Christian conversion, although Erikson’s mother Thjodhild converted to the faith before building Greenland’s first Christian church at Brattahild.
Celebrated Explorer
Beginning in the late 1800s, many Scandinavian Americans began to celebrate Erikson as the first European explorer to discover North America, while in 1925, President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed in a speech to a mostly Scandinavian audience in Minnesota that Erikson had been the first European to discover the Americas, while in September of 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared October 9th to be Leif Erikson Day, making Leif Erikson, an early maritime standout, many centuries before the Age of Exploration.