Settlement of Greenland
Erik the Red · 985 CE – 986 CE · Earth
Find and settle land west of Iceland.
Historical context
Iceland's crowded Norse community pushed some settlers further west, into seas already known to Arctic peoples. Erik's colony at Brattahlíð lasted some five centuries.
The voyage, step by step
Exiled from Iceland
985 CE
Outlawed for killings, Erik sails west in search of a new land.
Six days of open water
985 CE
A single knarr runs west across the Denmark Strait with no landmark between the two coasts.
Sighting Greenland
985 CE
He explores the coast and names the icy island Greenland to attract settlers.
Rounding the southern cape
985 CE
He works his ship round the ice-choked southern tip the Norse called Hvarf, the turning.
Twenty-five ships sail
986 CE
Erik returns to Iceland, sells the new country, and leads a colonising fleet west; only fourteen ships arrive.
Up Eiriksfjord
986 CE
The survivors sail sixty miles inland up a fjord where the ice ends and pasture begins.
Brattahlíð founded
986 CE
Erik establishes the Eastern Settlement, beginning five centuries of Norse Greenland.
Outcome
Founded the Eastern Settlement at Brattahlíð.
Erik the Red
Norse explorer exiled from Iceland who founded the first Norse settlement in Greenland.
Sources
Continue exploring
- Voyage to VinlandLeif Erikson · 1000 CE – 1001 CE
- Treasure fleet voyagesZheng He · 1405 CE – 1433 CE
- Voyage to the CapeBartolomeu Dias · 1487 CE – 1488 CE
- First Atlantic crossingChristopher Columbus · 1492 CE – 1493 CE