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Leif was the son of Erik the Red and his wife Thjodhild (Old Norse: Þjóðhildur), and, through his paternal line, the grandson of Thorvald Ásvaldsson.When Erik the Red was young, his father was banished from Norway for manslaughter, and the family went into exile in Iceland (which, during the century preceding Leif's birth, had been colonized by Norsemen, mainly from Norway).
Although the idea of Norse voyages to, and a colony in, North America was discussed by Swiss scholar Paul Henri Mallet in his book Northern Antiquities (English translation 1770), [92] the sagas first gained widespread attention in 1837 when the Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn revived the idea of a Viking presence in North America. [93]
c. 1000: Erik the Red and Leif Ericson, Viking navigators, discovered and settled Greenland, Helluland (possibly Baffin Island), Markland (now called Labrador), and Vinland (now called Newfoundland). The Greenland colony lasted until the 15th century. c. 1350: The Norse Western Settlement in Greenland was abandoned.
Erik's son Leif Erikson became the first Norseman to explore the land of Vinland–part of North America, presumably near modern-day Newfoundland–and invited his father on the voyage. However, according to the sagas, Erik fell off his horse on the way to the ship and took this as a bad sign, leaving his son to continue without him. [ 10 ]
Viking expansion was the historical movement which led Norse explorers, traders and warriors, the latter known in modern scholarship as Vikings, to sail most of the North Atlantic, reaching south as far as North Africa and east as far as Russia, and through the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople and the Middle East, acting as looters, traders, colonists and mercenaries.
European powers employed sailors and geographers to map and explore North America with the goal of economic, religious and military expansion. The combative and rapid nature of this exploration is the result of a series of countering actions by neighboring European nations to ensure no single country had garnered enough wealth and power from ...
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Vinland was the name given to part of North America by the Icelandic Norseman Leif Eriksson, about 1000 AD. It was also spelled Winland, [4] as early as Adam of Bremen's Descriptio insularum Aquilonis ("Description of the Northern Islands", ch. 39, in the 4th part of Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum), written circa 1075.