Leif Erikson

According to the sagas, Leif Erikson was a son of the Norse explorer Erik the Red and Thjodhild. His birthplace is nowhere mentioned and is assumed to have been in Iceland; his birth year is usually estimated at around 970 but cannot be established. Erik was banished from Iceland and subsequently sought land in the west.

Around 985–986 Erik settled on Greenland with family and followers, where the first lasting Norse settlement arose. Leif grew up at Brattahlíð, his father's estate in the Eastern Settlement, near present-day Qassiarsuk. The sagas also name brothers, a sister and a foster father; researchers doubt whether all persons in these stories are historical.

The Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red were written down several generations later, around 1200 or in the thirteenth century, and partly contradict each other. According to the Saga of Erik the Red, Leif was blown off course on the way from Norway to Greenland and so found Vinland. According to the Saga of the Greenlanders he sought the land deliberately, after Bjarni Herjólfsson had sighted it earlier.

According to the Greenlanders' saga Leif visited three regions: Helluland, Markland and Vinland, where he wintered in a camp, Leifsbúðir, and found wild grapes and timber. Which coasts these were is uncertain; Helluland is often identified with Baffin Island or Labrador, and Markland with Labrador. The location of Vinland is still debated.

According to both the Saga of Erik the Red and Olaf Tryggvason's saga in the Heimskringla, Leif stayed at the court of King Olaf Tryggvason, became a Christian and was commissioned to spread Christianity in Greenland. Whether that commission is historical is doubted. After his father's death Leif became head of the Greenland settlement.

Around the year 1000 Norse communities were expanding across the North Atlantic: Iceland had been settled since the late ninth century and Greenland since the 980s. Voyages were made in open sailing ships and depended on seasons and weather. Timber was scarce in Greenland; occasional voyages to Markland for timber and trade are possible.

Christianity was spreading across Scandinavia in this period. King Olaf Tryggvason (reigned 995–1000) is linked in the sources with attempts to convert Norway and the Norse lands overseas; in Iceland, Christianity was adopted, according to tradition, around the year 1000. This Christian framework colours the sagas, which were only written down later by Christian authors.

According to the sagas, Leif's voyages led to follow-up expeditions, such as that of Thorfinn Karlsefni, who tried to establish a settlement in Vinland. Tensions with the Indigenous inhabitants, called Skrælings by the Norse, led them, according to the sagas, to abandon the settlement. Leif himself, according to the sagas, had no contact with the inhabitants of Vinland.

Norse society in Greenland survived into the late Middle Ages. Knowledge of Vinland was preserved only to a limited extent in north-western Europe: Adam of Bremen mentions it around 1075 and Ari the Wise in the Íslendingabók (about 1122), both only in passing. How far that knowledge spread is uncertain.

Historians consider Leif almost certainly a historical figure, but many details are debated. In 1018 he is last mentioned alive in the Saga of St Olaf; around 1025 his son Thorkell was chieftain in Greenland. The sagas do not describe his death; he probably died between 1018 and 1025, most likely in Greenland.

In 1960 Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad discovered remains of Norse buildings at L'Anse aux Meadows on Newfoundland; the site has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1978 and is the only confirmed Norse site in North America outside Greenland. Radiocarbon dating gives about 990–1050; a 2021 study dated wood cutting by tree rings to 1021. Whether Leif was there is an inference based on the sagas.