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.

 

(A artists 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 Leif was old enough to swing an axe, he killed the wrong person and was banished from the island, forcing him to travel west to discover somewhere new to live. This journey led him to Greenland, which he named himself and it still retains the same name to this day.

 

viking ship

(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 his voyage and both were written around the year 1200 AD, they are called the “Saga of Erik the Red” and “Saga of the Greenlanders“.

 

One claims 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 being kind, so assuming they had an average speed of 8 knots (9.2mph / 14.8kmh) the journey would take 90 to 95 days.

 

Surviving the voyage 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 its unlikely they would many preservable vegetables, which leaves only one choice, seafood. One of the most popular travel foods before grain became more available was called stock fish, 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, it 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, it’s highly likely they 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 to 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 main land America for almost 500 years.