Lief Ericson
Did He Discover America?
The year was 1000 A.D. when the son of Eric the Red, Lief Ericson, came to America. This intrepid adventurer planted a settlement in what is now Newfoundland, and named it Vinland. Unfortunately, his father died within a year or so of this discovery, and forced him to return to Greenland and oversee the government of the well established settlements there. The Vinland settlements received few settlers, although Lief sent a brother and a sister with parties to try and settle there they eventually died out, or perhaps became friendly with the natives and moved inland. Whatever happened to them, Lief’s colony in America did not last, although archeological evidence of a Norse presence has been found in Newfoundland. There is also evidence of wooden ships built on a Viking design in modern day Minnesota. Samuel de Champlain brought back a few reports of light skinned and fair haired “Indians” using wooden boats.
A little known fact is that Lief Ericson was Christian. He had traveled to Norway where the King had been converted, and he served the King there for several years becoming Christian himself. He then brought missionaries back to Greenland before his Vinland voyage. His mother was converted, and a church was built near her home. The Greenland settlement lasted 500 years, and became fully Christian. If you count Greenland as part of North America (which most maps do) the Norse lived in America until within a century of Columbus's voyage.
On the way back from Vinland, Lief came across a party of shipwrecked Norsemen, and rescued them gaining the nickname of Lief the Lucky. The grapes of Vinland may have actually been a native berry known as a squash berry that still grows there today, and from which the Indians are known to have made a type of wine. Another school of thought points out that in Norse “vin” does not mean grape, but rather meadow, and thus it is the land of the meadows, not grapes, although talk of grapes and wine does exist in the old sagas that tell us about Lief.
That he is the true discoverer of mainland America, before Columbus, can be clearly documented not only in Old Norse sources, but also by the so called “Vinland Map” which actually comes to us by way of a Papal emissary to the Tartars around 1300. It clearly shows Vinland and mentions Lief’s name. This seems astonishing until one remembers that there were Vikings in Kiev which the Tartars fought their way through on their way to Europe. Other scattered references can be found elsewhere in both English and German sources. Of course, it is possible that both a Welsh Prince and an Irish Monk visited America even before Lief, but the evidence is scanty in both cases.
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