|
|
|
North and South
Stories and Genealogy of Theodore Charles Anderson and Sara Carlene Shuttleworth
Leif the Lucky
|
|
|
Leif Erikson
|
|
Christopher Columbus was not the first European to discover the New World! This commonly held belief is wrong. Columbus didn't reach the New World until 1492, 490 years after Leif Erikson's arrival in 1001 AD.
Ted’s distant ancestor Leif Erikson was the first European to set foot in the New World, opening a new land rich with resources for the Vikings to explore. But for some unknown reason, the Vikings only made a few voyages to the New World after Leif. Unfortunately, this caused his discovery to remain unknown to nearly all of Europe, which was in the midst of the Crusades.
Leif was born in Iceland in about 960 AD, son of Eric the Red. Erik had come to Iceland from Southern Norway, from the region, which is now known as Aust-Agder (visit Risor).
|
As was tradition with the Vikings, Leif did not grow up with his family. Instead, when he was eight he moved in with a man named Thyrker. Thyrker was from Germany where Eric the Red had captured him, taken him to Iceland, but had not enslaved him. Thyrker taught Leif everything he needed to know, including reading and writing runes, the Celtic and Russian tongue, and the ways of trade. Leif was also taught the old sagas, plant studies, and the use of weapons. When Leif was not learning, he and his friends would watch the ships come into the harbor; then he would listen to the tales of the sailors.
At the age of 12, Leif was considered a man and traveled back to his father's house. Eric's household had grown since Leif had left. The herds had multiplied and there were new houses and more slaves. The spring after Leif arrival, Eric was summoned to a Thingvellir or lawmaking assembly. Eric took Leif along with him. The next day, among the crowds, Eric met a man with whom he had been feuding. They started to fight and Eric killed the other man.
Because of this, the Thingvellir council banished Eric from Iceland for three years.
Eric, not being able to go back to Norway (he had been previously banished from there too) decided to investigate rumors of lands to the west. So, Eric took his wife and kids, some slaves, ample supplies and traveled west. A few days later they landed on a new land, which he named Greenland and started to build a camp. It was on this voyage that Leif is believed to have learned how to be a deep-sea sailor.
|
Life in Greenland
During the years Eric spent on Greenland, he explored the new land and taught Leif many things. After three years, Eric traveled back to Iceland and told the people there about the wonderful new land he had discovered. Many decided to return to Greenland with him because times had not been so good in Iceland. There had been a famine, the lands were overgrazed, and there were almost no trees left.
Leif was probably 15 or 17 when he saw a young polar bear on an ice flow. He decided to capture the bear but there was a strong current between the ice flow and land. So, using his knowledge of the sea, he went upstream from the polar bear and let the current carry his boat into the ice flow. After capturing the bear he used the same tactic to get back to land, impressing the people on shore.
One day, when Leif was watching the boats, he saw an old tattered ship rowing very slowly in the harbor. He became very excited because he recognized the ship as belonging to Bjarni Hergelfson, who had been gone for over a year. After the ship landed, Leif followed Bjarni into a hall where Bjarni told the story of how mist had covered the North Star so they couldn't navigate. They sailed for many days and finally spotted land, but it wasn't Greenland, where they had been heading. Glaciers did not cover the coast they had seen, but instead it was green with trees.
They did not go ashore though, because they wanted to get to Greenland. They kept sailing and found another land. This one was flat and forest covered, but they did not land there either. They had to get back to Greenland.
|
|
Leif’s First Voyage
|
|
At the age of 24, Leif was asked to captain his first voyage. This was to bring gifts to King Olaf in Norway. Many preparations were made and Leif was very excited. He took along a crew of 14 and Thyrker.
The wind Leif was sailing on was fair at the beginning, but after their first day it slowed only to a gentle breeze. It was five days before they sighted Iceland. Most voyages at that time made it in two.
The crew wanted to go ashore but Leif would not let them, so they kept sailing. They sailed for many days and Leif thought they would run out of food. Finally they sighted several small islands, the Hebrides; they realized they had sailed farther south than intended.
|
The day they arrived, a storm came in and didn't allow them to leave for a month. During this time Leif stayed in the house of the lord of the islands. There lived the lord's daughter who was named Thorgunna. She was known to embroider tapestries and was believed to be learned in witchcraft.
When the storm had cleared, Leif set off for Norway. The wind was good and they got there in a few days.
Before he left for Norway, Thorgunna told Leif she was going to have his baby and she foresaw that it would be a boy. She had her child and named him Thorgils. Later Thorgils traveled to Greenland and Leif accepted him as his son. This is the only child known to be Leif's.
|
|
King Olav of Norway
|
|
When he arrived, many people came to greet him and a messenger came to take him to King Olav's court. When the messenger told the king who he was he replied, "Leif Erikson, I knew your father well!"
The king was so impressed with Leif that he invited him to stay in Norway. Leif decided there was no reason to rush back home to Greenland, so he accepted the offer. While in Norway, he marveled at all the wonderful things there and rested in the lap of luxury.
One day, while playing chess with Leif, King Olaf told him of how he used to also worship the gods Leif did. He also told him of how a plague had struck Norway and how many people had died. Then he told Leif of how he turned away from those old gods and began to worship the living Christ. He was baptized along with thousands of Norwegians, and then the plague stopped.
|
Leif, not being very faithful to the Viking gods anyway, became very interested in Christianity. He agreed to be baptized and accepted this new faith. On his return voyage, he brought along a priest to spread the Christian faith to Greenland.
|
|
Discovering the New World
|
|
Sometime after Leif had returned to Greenland, he became restless. He decided to find the lands to the west of which Bjarni had spoken. So he bought Bjarni’s boat and set off with Thyrker and some men towards the north, following Bjarni’s course. After sailing up the western coast of Greenland, he sailed west for 600 miles and found a land with high glaciers and rock.
|
They landed, but were disappointed because the land seemed to be one huge slab of rock. Because of this he named it Hell land (Slab Land or Flat Rock Land), which is now believed to be Baffin Island. Leif then sailed south and found another land. When he went ashore he found it to be flat with white beaches and some trees. He named this land Markland (Woodland) that today is believed to be the eastern coast of Canada.
Then Leif sailed southeast for two days and came to an island with a mainland behind it. On this land the dew on the grasses seemed as sweet as honey. Here Leif had some booths or temporary shelters built. But, the land here was so rich that he decided to build at least one large house for the winter. On this land there were salmon bigger than any the Vikings had ever seen before, there were also very rich pastures there for their cattle (they had brought a few), and there were rich forests covering this land.
After the houses were built, Leif sent out an exploration group to explore the land. After one of these expeditions, Thyrker didn't return. The men searched for him all day and finally found him the next morning. When they found him he was very excited and blabbering in German. After he calmed down he explained to the men that he had found grapes on this land.
Leif ordered his men to load the grapes and as much timber as they could onto the boat, and then they settled in for the winter. But the winter here was very peculiar. No frost came to the grasses. They also noticed that the days and nights were of more equal length.
When spring came and the men were ready to go, Leif gave this land a name, Vinland, which either means Wine land or Pasture land. We now know Leif's Vinland to be L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
Surprisingly, few Vikings ever returned to Vinland, only Leif's sister and a small group of settlers who were killed by Indians. Because of this, Europe remained almost totally in the dark about the discovery of this new world. The only references to it are in the ancient Norse sagas where most of the information concerning Leif Erikson is recorded.
|
|
Tune "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen"
|
The introductory tune used on this page is Edvard Grieg's "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen".
Edvard Grieg was a romantic, Norwegian composer. He studied composition at the Leipzig Conservatory where he learned the German style of romantic music. After his collegiate years, Grieg returned to Norway to develop a nationalistic style his homeland. He connected with many folk-song composers of Norway to help develop this style. Success was not easy for Grieg; he composed mainly on his vacations until he received a stipend from the country for his compositions. Grieg was a conductor and traveling ambassador throughout Europe. Edvard married a woman named Nina and they moved to the countryside to the town of Bergen. While in the countryside, his compositional output flourished as he concentrated on his goal to create a Norwegian form of music; however his music is more than just related to the country of Norway as it is played all over the world.
Grieg built a villa in the countryside outside of Bergen, Norway for him and his wife to reside. He named this villa “Troldhaugen,” which translates to “The Troll’s Hill.” “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen” was written after Grieg moved to the countryside with his wife to celebrate their marriage. Photographs of this area depict rolling hills and pastoral scenes, which Grieg portrays throughout his piece, “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.” This piece is a member of Grieg’s collection of Norwegian nationalist music.
|
References:
|
The Vineland Map
The Vineland map claims to be a map created, about 80 years before Columbus sailed for Cathy, from the Viking explorations of the North Atlantic. The debate over the authenticity of this map has been an interesting one and if in fact it is a forgery then it is one which has resisted all attempts to prove it a fake. It is in fact one of the great milestones in exploration and stands as a very important historic document.
The map was first uncovered in 1965 and published by Skelton et al. The Vinland Map and Tartar Relation. In 1972, a scientific team headed by Dr. Walter McCrone reported that its ink contained anatase, a form of titanium which first appeared in ink during the 1920s. Twenty years later, in 1992, Dr. Thomas Cahill of UC Davis found anatase in a variety of medieval manuscripts and the question was reopened. In 1995 Yale released a second edition of the book, together with further articles in support of the map, even as scholarly opinion outside of Yale increasingly turned against it. Most recently, two studies, one on the parchment and another on the ink, seemed to many to point in different directions.
|
|
This page and all genealogical data contained on it are Copyrighted © 2007
by Theodore C. Anderson
|
|
|
|