Erik the Red

Biography

Erik Thorvaldsson — Erik the Red, named for his hair and beard — was twice exiled and twice turned disaster into achievement. His father had been exiled from Norway for manslaughter, bringing the family to Iceland. Erik himself was exiled from Iceland for three years after killing several men in a feud. He used those three years of enforced wandering to explore the large landmass west of Iceland that sailors had glimpsed through fog and rumor, systematically surveying its southern and western coasts and concluding it was habitable. He named it Greenland — a deliberately optimistic name for a place whose habitable coast is a narrow green fringe between the ice cap and the sea. The name was marketing, and it worked: when his exile ended, he returned to Iceland and recruited settlers with enough success to lead 25 ships westward. Fourteen arrived. The Greenland settlements they founded, at Brattahlid in the Eastern Settlement and in the Western Settlement, survived for nearly 500 years. Erik himself never made it to Vinland — he fell off his horse on the way to the ships when his son Leif was departing for the westward voyage, took it as an omen, and stayed behind. He died in Greenland around 1003, likely from an epidemic the returning expedition had brought back from the Americas. He had opened a chain of exploration that touched three continents.