How To Get Away With Murder: The Tale of Erik the Red’s Discovery of Greenland

You know the Sagas. They’re about Icelanders, right? Well, there’s also the Grænlendinga saga (the Saga of the Greenlanders), which tells the tales of the Viking settlement of — you guessed it — Greenland. Let’s see what that’s all about.

Though Leif Erikson’s likeness occupies prime real estate in front of Hallgrímskirkja, in many ways his old man was more of a Viking. Erik the Red stuck to the old gods rather than dabbling in that newfangled Christian stuff and he was prone to killing people. Oh, and he also discovered Greenland.

It was actually murder that set Erik’s travels in motion. His father, Þorvaldur Ásvaldsson, was banished from Norway circa 960 “because of some killings” (the Sagas don’t go into specifics). There was nothing to do but to move to Iceland, which he did with his roughly 10-year-old son in tow. By this time, Iceland was fully settled so their best option was to settle in Hornstrandir in the far northwest of the country, an area that is uninhabited today. It was probably the harshness of the conditions there that prepared Erik for his future in Greenland.

Time doesn’t heal all wounds

When he came of age, Erik married upwards, wedding Þjóðhildur Jörundsdóttir and settling in the far more pleasant Haukdalir in West Iceland. There he built a farm, which he called Eiríksstaðir (Erik’s Place) after himself. But the good times didn’t last long. Perhaps taking after his father’s murderous ways, Erik found himself in a dispute with his neighbours that ended with him killing two of them. As you might imagine, that didn’t go over well. In fact, Erik remains so disliked in those parts that when Eiríksstaðir was recreated as a tourist attraction in 2000, locals wanted nothing to do with it.

WATCH: The Last Viking Mystery: Introducing Erik The Red, the Worst Neighbour in History

Erik and some of his followers then moved to Öxney in Breiðafjörður bay. Bad luck followed and he had soon killed two of his neighbours’ sons as well as “some other men.” Again, the Sagas don’t really go into specifics.

Poor Erik was sentenced to banishment and he had exhausted the places he could run to in Iceland, so the only logical step was to head west into the unknown — well, not entirely unknown. West of Iceland were Gunnbjarnarsker (Gunnbjörn’s skerries), named after a certain Gunnbjörn who had discovered the group of small islands a century earlier. It was known that there was land there, but no one had been able to settle — yet.

Finding Greenland

Erik was undaunted. In the year 982 he took to the sea with some of his followers and, when his sentence expired three years later, he returned to Iceland as the bearer of good news. To the west, beyond Gunnbjarnarsker, he had discovered a whole new land so lush that he had no choice but to call it Greenland. Things were getting pretty cramped in Iceland and crops had been failing, so many considered Erik’s newfound earthly paradise to be a good option. And so Erik set off again with 25 ships. The crossing was so treacherous, however, that only 14 made it, with the others having turned back or sank on the way.

Nevertheless, although conditions may have been somewhat less than ideal, those who made it ashore spread out over two settlements The larger of the two, close to the present-day Narsarsuaq airport, was known as the Eastern Settlement. The smaller was further north, around present-day Nuuk, but was known somewhat confusingly as the Western Settlement.

Leif finds religion

Erik took up residency in Brattahlíð, just across the bay from Narsarsuaq. He called the fjord Eiríksfjörður (Erik’s Fjord). Considering his penchant for the possessive, it’s no small miracle that he called the country Greenland rather than designating it Eiríksland — it may not have appealed as much to prospective settlers in that case. Erik became a major chieftain in the new country but not all was idyll. His son Leif left for Norway and caught religion.

The new king of that land, Ólafur Tryggvason, was in the process of brutally converting his country to Christianity and Leif promised he would do the same in Greenland. No violence was required that we know of, the Greenlanders seem to have meekly submitted to the new god.

That is, except for Erik who stubbornly stuck to his old ways. His wife Þjóðhildur, however, became a fervent Christian and refused to let him into her bed unless he converted. Erik acquiesced — happy wife, happy life, and all that — but he was not overly fond of this new religion and demanded that the church be built away from his farm.

The end of Erik

Today, one can visit Erik’s rebuilt farm in Qassiarsuk, population 39. It’s about a 30-minute sail from Narsarsuaq. There is a plaque dedicated to Erik the Red on site, but more impressive is a statue of Leif Erikson atop an adjacent hill. Leif was probably born in Iceland, but Brattahlíð is where he grew up. He would be known as Leif the Lucky but would go on to commit many a folly, like ruining his parent’s marriage and discovering America.

Erik was almost a party to these further voyages, but he fell off his horse and broke a rib while heading to his boat. Bad luck. So he decided it was best to stay home, where he died around age 50 in the year 1003 or thereabouts.

Keep up with Valur Gunnarsson’s Greenland Ho! series and tune in to the podcast series over on YouTube.