Early Middle Ages

Who Was Leif Erikson?

The life of Leif Erikson, the Norse explorer of Vinland, son of Eirik the Red, and the first European to reach North America.

Question & answer

Short answer

Leif Erikson (Old Norse Leifr Eiríksson, c. 970 – c. 1020) was a Norse explorer from Greenland, son of Eirik the Red, who is generally credited as the first European to reach the mainland of North America, almost five centuries before Christopher Columbus. According to the Icelandic sagas, he was driven off course on a voyage from Norway to Greenland around the year 1000 and landed on a coast he named Vinland, identified by archaeologists with Newfoundland. For the wider story, see who discovered America before Columbus.

Family and background

Leif was the son of Eirik the Red (Eiríkr Þorvaldsson), the founder of the Norse colony in Greenland. Eirik had been outlawed from Iceland for manslaughter and had sailed west to explore and colonize the land he called Greenland around 985, in the hope of attracting settlers. The Greenland colonies were, by the time of Leif’s birth, established settlements on the southwestern coast, with two main areas of habitation: the Eastern Settlement and the Western Settlement. The population of the colonies was probably around 4,000 people at its peak, supported by farming, hunting, and the export of walrus ivory to Europe.

Leif grew up in Greenland in a wealthy chieftain’s household, and was probably educated in both the oral traditions of Norse culture and the new Christian learning that was beginning to enter the Norse world. His father Eirik, while not himself Christian, was closely connected to the Norwegian royal house, and his mother Þjódhildr was a Christian. According to the saga, Leif was sent to Norway as a young man, where he was converted to Christianity by King Olaf Tryggvason and charged with bringing the new religion back to Greenland. For the broader Norse world in which Leif was born, see the Viking society and culture.

The voyage to Vinland

The most famous event of Leif’s life was his voyage to a land he called Vinland. The story is told in two related Icelandic sagas, the Saga of the Greenlanders (Grænlendinga saga) and the Saga of Eirik the Red (Eiríks saga rauða), both written in the thirteenth century. According to the Saga of the Greenlanders, Leif set out from Greenland in the year 1000, intending to sail to Norway, and was driven far to the southwest by contrary winds. He and his crew made landfall on an unknown coast, which they explored in three separate journeys. They found a land with self-sown wheat, vines, and timber, and they named the three areas Helluland (“Flat-Stone Land,” identified with Baffin Island), Markland (“Forest Land,” identified with Labrador), and Vinland (“Vine Land,” identified with Newfoundland).

The Norse established a small settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, the only confirmed Norse site in North America. The remains of the settlement, which was occupied for perhaps a decade, were discovered in 1960 by the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife, the archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad. The site contains the foundations of several buildings, including a longhouse, a smithy, and a sauna, as well as Norse artifacts including a bronze pin, a spindle whorl, and evidence of iron working. For the maritime technology that made the voyage possible, see what was a Viking longship.

After Vinland

After his return to Greenland, Leif became a major figure in the Greenland colony and in the wider Norse world. According to the sagas, he was a great chieftain and a Christian. The traditional date of his death is around 1020, and he is said to have been buried at Brattahlíð, his father’s estate in the Eastern Settlement. His brothers and half-brothers, including Thorvald, Thorstein, and Freydis Eiriksdottir, all played roles in the Vinland story; Thorvald was killed in a fight with the indigenous inhabitants, and Freydis led a violent expedition that ended in murder and treachery. The Vinland settlement was eventually abandoned, probably because of conflict with the indigenous peoples and the difficulty of maintaining a colony so far from the main Norse settlements.

Leif is also credited in the sagas with bringing Christianity to Greenland. According to the Saga of Eirik the Red, Leif was sent to Norway as a young man, where he was converted to Christianity by King Olaf Tryggvason, and on his return he brought a priest to Greenland to baptize the people. Whether or not this is historically accurate, Christianity did become established in the Greenland colonies over the course of the eleventh century, and the Eastern Settlement had a church and a parish priest by the end of the century. Leif is, in this sense, a transitional figure between the pagan and the Christian Norse worlds, and he stands at the meeting point of the two halves of the Viking Age.

Historical assessment

Leif Erikson’s historicity is well established. He is mentioned in the Landnámabók, the medieval Icelandic book of settlements, and in several other contemporary or near-contemporary sources, including Adam of Bremen’s chronicle. The sagas of the Greenlanders and of Eirik the Red are later than the events they describe, but they are based on older oral tradition and they contain a strong core of historical fact. The discovery of L’Anse aux Meadows in 1960 confirmed that the Norse had reached North America, and the work of the Ingstads and subsequent archaeologists has provided a remarkable amount of detail about the settlement.

The significance of Leif’s voyage lies in its place in the long history of European engagement with the Americas. Leif Erikson was the first European known to have reached North America; the next confirmed contact was more than four centuries later, with the voyages of John Cabot and others in the late fifteenth century. The Norse settlements in Vinland were abandoned and were not the basis of a lasting Norse presence in the Americas, but they are an important part of the pre-Columbian history of the hemisphere. For the broader story of European contact with the Americas, see who discovered America before Columbus and the related Viking raids and expansion article.