There were a lot of contenders for the L-spot in this series but I’d already written about most of them, like Landmannalaugar, the Laugavegur trail and Laki so I thought I’d go for one of Iceland’s best-known Vikings, Leifur Eiriksson. You may know him better as Leif Ericson or Lucky Leif. He was an explorer who discovered North America. I don’t say he was the first European by any means but I know for definite he beat Christopher Columbus by a good few centuries.
Let’s go back a little bit. First there was a Viking called Erik the Red. He was a pretty well-known explorer in his own right but what history seems to sort of gloss over is that he became an explorer because he was banished from Iceland for murder as his father before him was banished from Norway for murder. The Vikings had a slightly odd attitude to murder. Murder is fine, more or less, as long as you admit to it and pay compensation. But if you don’t, that’s not allowed. The punishment was being outlawed. If you survived twenty years as an outlaw, you could return to society. Of course, back in those days, very few did survive that time. One of the most notable outlaws from Icelandic history is Fjalla-Eyvindur, who survived twenty years in the Interior, living in tiny holes in the rock, surviving off horsemeat and such tiny plantlife as the harsh environment can support.
Erik the Red apparently decided he wasn’t going to sit in holes in the ground and wait to freeze to death. He took to the sea and discovered Greenland. I don’t know if he was the first. He’s the one who named it. You all know Greenland is icy and Iceland is green. Yes, Erik did name it Greenland to make it sound more attractive, that’s absolutely true. He spent his exile exploring Greenland and returned to Iceland to sell the stories of his new land, his wonderful green paradise and he grew two little communities there. They didn’t last but they lasted longer than I thought it did. You can read more about his adventures in the Sagas of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red.
His son Leifur (Leifur Eiriksson, as per Icelandic patronyms) was probably born in Iceland and spent formative parts of his life in Greenland. He made his way to Norway and befriended Olafur Tryggvason, my favourite Norwegian king (likely subject of the O in the A-Z of Iceland). Olafur, to cut a long story short, was a bit of a fan of Christianity and he tasked Leifur with introducing it to Greenland. Only, somehow, on his return to his teenage home, Leifur managed to get a bit lost and ended up in what we now call Canada.
The Vikings called it Vinland because there were vines. Historians and experts trying to find the exact location haven’t figured out what part of the Canadian coast was growing vines back then. Maybe it wasn’t Canada – maybe it was part of the northern US coast – but it was probably Newfoundland and Labrador. He formed a little community of his own but whereas the Greenland community lasted a few generations, the Vinland one disbanded pretty quickly. They had a few scuffles with the locals, the Native Americans, which was something the Greenland community didn’t have to worry about, and they ended up retreating back to Iceland and Greenland, although not before the first European baby had been born in Vinland, Snorri Thorfinnsson. Snorri later became quite a big figure in the Christianisation of Iceland and his descendants were among the first bishops of Iceland.
Knowing about Leifur Eiriksson, I was astonished to go along to a show of three of my favourite Canadian comedians a few years ago to discover them claiming ownership of “Lucky Leif”. Of all things, Leifur wasn’t Canadian. Was he? I had to go and check but no, he was every bit as Icelandic – or at least, as Norse – as I’d thought. But of course, he settled in Canada, most likely. More important is the battle between Iceland and Norway for ownership of Leif. There’s a big statue of Leifur outside Hallgrimskirkja in central Reykjavik, presented in 1930 by the US in commemoration of the 1000th anniversary of the Alþingi, the Icelandic parliament. The Alþingi is the oldest parliament in the world. I’m not quite sure why they went for Leifur to symbolise this, since Leifur’s entire life story revolves around him not being in Iceland, but Iceland apparently took the statue as tacit agreement from the US that Leifur belonged to them, not to Norway. There’s the slight confusion that back in those days, Iceland was itself a very new very young community, barely better-established than the ones in Greenland and Vinland and the Icelandic settlers probably hadn’t got as far as calling themselves as Icelandic. Most likely the whole lot of them, Norwegian, Icelandic, Greenlander, Vinlander and all, probably just called themselves Norse.
There’s a copy of the statue in Virginia, made by the Icelanders using the original casts, to celebrate Iceland’s participation in the 1939 World Fair in New York. And then of course, there are lots of other Leifur statues scattered around North America.
After Vinland and the return to Iceland, history loses track of him a bit. No one’s even sure when or how he died. It’s a bit of a disappointing end to an eventful life. While his father made it into two separate sagas, Leifur didn’t get even one of his own. If you want to read more about his life, you can read the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Eirik the Red and look for Leifur among it all. Anyway, Leifur got a hotel name after him in Reykjavik and Eirik only got a guesthouse.