Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
There has been no evidence discovered that Greenland was known to Norsemen until the 9th century CE, when Norse Icelandic explorers settled on its southwestern coast. The ancestors of the Greenlandic Inuit who live there today appear to have migrated there later, around the year 1200, across the Nares Strait from northern Canada.
Summer in the Greenland coast circa the year 1000 by Carl Rasmussen (1874). It has been a common mistake for popular history to occasionally credit Erik as being the first European to discover Greenland, however, the Icelandic sagas suggest that earlier Norsemen discovered and attempted to settle it before him. [15]
It is an account of Viking Era explorations, based mainly on the Greenland saga. [88] An Old Captivity is a novel which involves a dream sequence featuring a character called Leif Ericson. Notably, it also features an attempt to uncover historical Viking settlements using air surveys. It was written by Nevil Shute and published in 1940. [89]
A 2022 study indicates that gravitational effects from a readvance of the Southern Greenland Ice Sheet caused a relative sea level rise of "up to ~3.3 m outside the glaciation zone during Viking settlement, producing shoreline retreat of hundreds of meters. Sea-level rise was progressive and encompassed the entire Eastern Settlement.
The sources on the settlement of Greenland are sparse. The main sources are the Íslendingabók by the scholar Ari Thorgilsson, the Landnámabók (the land seizure book) by an unknown author, but probably with Ari's involvement, [2] the anonymous Grænlendinga saga (Saga of the Greenlanders) and the also anonymous Saga of Erik the Red.
978: Snæbjörn galti Hólmsteinsson becomes the first Norseman to intentionally navigate to Greenland. 982: The Norwegian-Icelandic viking known as Eric the Red is banished from Iceland. He sails off and sights the island. He decides to name it Greenland to make the island appear more attractive. 986: Norse Settlement of Greenland begins.
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.
Brattahlíð still has some of the best farmland in Greenland, owing to its location at the inner end of Eriksfjord, which protects it from the cold foggy weather and arctic waters of the outer coast. It has a youth hostel and a small store. More extensive facilities exist in Narsarsuaq across the fjord.