THE TRIBUTE TO THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD BY LEIF ERICSON.

Millennium-old Viking houses.  A Norse spindle whorl.  A Viking age ringed pin from Dublin.  A smithy for making bog iron.  Signs of the very first Europeans to reach North America.  Leif Ericson, born on the West Coast of Iceland around 975, arrived in the New World around 1000 A.D.  This year marks the millennium of his historic trip!

Various Icelandic sagas tell the story of how Leif and his crew departed from Greenland, a colony of newly arrived settlers from Iceland led by Eric the Red, his father.  Eric had been born in Norway, but Thjodhild, Leif's mother, could trace her family back to the King of Ireland.  Leif stepped ashore on a beautiful island, just north of the new mainland; far more fruitful than the one they'd left behind, with plenty of large salmon, wild grapes and self-sown grain.  Leif and his crew wintered there and upon their return he named the land "Vinland" for its plentiful grapes and vines.

A camp in Newfoundland was used to explore the southern regions of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a likely location of Leif's Vinland.  Some of Leif's crew may even have gone as far as the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia and possibly beyond to New England.

Later, other Icelanders attempted to establish permanent settlement in "Vinland".  One group survived about three years.  Eventually, conflicts with Native Americans drove them back.

Back in Greenland, Leif became the leader of the Greenland colony, and he never returned to Vinland.  Instead he told stories about his early explorations, later to be written down in the Icelandic sagas about Vinland.

[The Tribute] [About the Coin]

Mar 30, 2001
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