Surviving the first ever voyage to America
Many people have heard the names of the famous explorers who were the first people to reach the American continent, like Christopher Columbus and Sir Francis Drake, but few know the name Leif Erikson, a Viking explorer from Iceland who beat everyone else to it. The captain of those challenged with surviving the first-ever voyage to America, but whose name is almost unknown.
(An artist’s impression of Leif Erikson, the first European to land on the American continent)
The first official landing on the American continent was by Christopher Columbus in October of 1492 when he reached the island of what is now known as the Bahamas, but he wasn’t the first European to visit the Americas.
During the late 10th century, a Viking named Erik the Red was banished from his homeland of Norway and traveled to Iceland where he had several children, one of which was called Leif Erikson. After staying in Iceland for a while, Erik killed someone he shouldn’t have and was again banished from the Island, so he took a boat and a few people with him and left. This journey led him to Greenland, which he named himself and it still retains the same name to this day.
(A re-created Viking longship based on the same design as those found during archaeological excavations)
In 986, he established the first colony there and is recognized as being the first European to find and settle Greenland. As for the voyage to America, the history records start to tell different stories. There are two main sources that talk about a voyage and both were written around the year 1200 AD, they are called the “Saga of Erik the Red” and “Saga of the Greenlanders“, but it wasn’t Erik himself who actually made it to America.
Erik the Red had several children and one of these was called Leif Erikson, who would often travel between Iceland and Greenland. It is Leif who is credited with being the first European to reach the shores of North America, but how he did this is unknown.
One claim says that Leif found America by accident after getting badly blown off course during a storm when he was trying to travel between Iceland and Greenland, but the other claims that the voyage set out from Greenland and was planned. There are no records of how long the voyage took or what happened along the way, but both books talk a great deal about the things they did after they arrived like trading and fighting with the Native American tribes they encountered.
How could Leif and his men survive the voyage?
The most likely place they could have landed was on the island of Newfoundland, an 850-mile trip from the southern point of Greenland. A Viking longship has an average speed of 5–10 knots (9.3–18.5 km/h), and can even get up to 15 knots if the winds are kind, so assuming they had an average speed of 8 knots (9.2mph / 14.8 km/h) the journey would take 90 to 95 days.
Surviving the first ever voyage to America would require food, but Greenland isn’t great for growing crops and grain would be hard to come by. They also didn’t have pemmican and it’s unlikely they would have many preservable vegetables, which leaves only one choice, seafood. One of the most popular travel foods, before grain became more available, was called stockfish, which was nothing more than fish that had been dried for up to several weeks and would require being soaked before it could be eaten, but would last for months.
(Stockfish, may not look nice and is too tough to eat without soaking, but if dried properly can be safe to eat for months)
Due to the severe lack of preservable foods, they likely tried to fish along the way, but luckily for them, they had a selection of large sea mammals that would not only provide food but also large amounts of oil for their lamps and burn to keep warm. Seals, sharks, dolphins, and small whales are common in the Labrador Sea, each of which would provide a huge amount of meat and it may have even been possible to freeze some of it in the arctic air.
After landing on the island that is now known as Newfoundland, Leif, and his crew spent some time sailing around the coast and visiting some smaller surrounding islands before building a settlement to stay in over the winter. Exploring the countryside revealed a huge amount of wild grapes growing in the area, which led to the name of their settlement being called Vinland, which means wine land in Norse.
He returned to Greenland the next spring and brought with him a large amount of Timber and Grapes, but for some reason never managed to return. The last time he is mentioned in one of the books as being alive was in 1019, but nothing is recorded of his later activities or how he died, and no other Europeans managed to make it to mainland America for almost 500 years.
