47 Fun Facts About Leif Erikson

Which animated series features its hero celebrating Leif Erikson Day?

SpongeBob SquarePants. In the episode 'Bubble Buddy' he wakes up thrilled that it is Leif Erikson Day, finds no friend free to celebrate, and makes himself a friend out of a soap bubble.

According to one saga, how did Leif Erikson's father, Erik the Red, die?

In a winter epidemic. The Saga of the Greenlanders says sickness struck the winter after Leif came home from Vinland, and Erik's death left his son to lead the colony.

By what nickname is Erikson also known?

Leif the Lucky. The sagas give him the name for a rescue he made on the voyage home from Vinland, not for finding a new land.

Vinland, the name Leif Erikson gave the land he found, is usually translated as the land of what?

Wine. The sagas say his crew found grapevines there, and wine was a luxury that Norse chieftains prized; some scholars read the name as 'meadow-land' instead.

In which modern country is L'Anse aux Meadows, the Norse site often linked to Leif Erikson's settlement?

Canada. It sits on Newfoundland's northern tip, and the 'Meadows' is thought to be an English reshaping of an older French name for the cove, from the French fishing era centuries after the Norse.

On which family estate in Greenland's Eastern Settlement did Leif Erikson grow up?

Brattahlid. The name means 'steep slope'; Erik the Red built it at the head of his fjord, and Leif later took it over as his own seat.

Leif Erikson's paternal grandfather was banished from Norway for what crime?

Manslaughter. The family fled to Iceland, and the pattern repeated: his son Erik the Red was later outlawed there for killings too.

Leif Erikson's father Erik was nicknamed 'the Red' most likely for what?

His red hair and beard. He is said to have had the name from his youth, long before the feud killings that got him outlawed from Iceland and sent him exploring Greenland.

What was the name of Leif Erikson's sister, who reaches Vinland in both sagas?

Freydis. In one saga she is pregnant when she scares off attackers by slapping a sword against her bared breast; in the other she leads her own voyage and has her partners killed.

Which member of Leif Erikson's Vinland crew did Leif call his foster father?

Tyrker. A southerner, probably German, he wandered off one evening and came back babbling in his own tongue about the grapevines he had found.

Whom did Leif Erikson rescue at sea on his way home from Vinland, according to the sagas?

A group of shipwrecked sailors. One saga counts fifteen people on the reef and says Leif spotted them long before his crew could.

At whose court did Leif Erikson convert to Christianity?

Olaf Tryggvason. The Norwegian king then sent Leif home to spread the faith in Greenland, a mission some historians suspect the saga writers invented.

In the Saga of the Greenlanders, which trader sighted North America before Leif Erikson but never went ashore?

Bjarni Herjolfsson. Blown off course on his way to join his father in Greenland, he was later mocked for his lack of curiosity; Leif bought his ship and retraced the route.

In the video game Civilization VI, Leif Erikson can be recruited as which kind of Great Person?

Great Admiral. Retiring him lets all of a player's ships cross open ocean without the usual technology, much as the Norse crossed the North Atlantic centuries before other Europeans.

Why did Erik the Red drop out of Leif Erikson's voyage just before it sailed?

He fell from his horse. In the saga, riding down to the ship, Erik was thrown and hurt his foot, took it as a sign he was not meant to find more lands, and went home.

Helluland, Leif Erikson's first landfall in one saga, is usually identified with which Arctic island?

Baffin Island. In that saga Leif found only glaciers and slabs of rock there, judged the country worthless, named it for its stones and sailed on south.

Markland, the second place Leif named, has a name meaning what?

Forest Land. 'This land shall have a name after its nature,' Leif says in the saga, looking at a flat wooded shore now usually placed in Labrador.

The Leif Erikson statue in Reykjavik was made by the father of which American sculptor?

Alexander Calder. His father, Stirling Calder, won a national competition in 1929 to make the bronze; the son became famous for inventing the mobile.

Which fish was plentiful in the mild, verdant land where Leif decided to winter?

Salmon. The saga says they were bigger than any the crew had seen; with no winter frost and grass for the cattle, Leif chose to build a house and stay.

Besides grapes, what cargo did Leif bring back to Greenland from Vinland in the spring?

Timber. Greenland had almost no trees of its own, so good wood was treasure there, and later Norse voyages kept sailing west to fetch more.

Which Norwegian husband-and-wife team identified the Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows in the early 1960s?

Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad. Locals led Helge to grass-covered mounds near the village in 1960, and Anne Stine, an archaeologist, ran the digs that proved them Norse.

A trace of what in tree rings dates Norse woodcutting at L'Anse aux Meadows to exactly 1021?

Cosmic rays. A burst of them in 993 left a radiocarbon spike in trees worldwide, so counting rings out from it gave the year the Norse cut three trees with metal tools.

Which nut found at L'Anse aux Meadows shows that the Norse sailed well to the south of it?

Butternut. The trees do not grow that far north, but they share their range with grapevines, so whoever gathered the nuts had probably come across the sagas' famous vines as well.

The Norse buildings at L'Anse aux Meadows were constructed of what material over a wooden frame?

Sod. The turf-walled halls match the Icelandic building style of the years around 1000, one of the clues that convinced archaeologists the site was Norse.

Which find suggests that women lived at the Norse camp at L'Anse aux Meadows?

A spindle whorl. The small weight for spinning thread is domestic textile gear, so archaeologists think women as well as men stayed at the camp.

Christian Krohg's painting of Leif Erikson sighting America was made for a world's fair in which city?

Chicago. A Norwegian-American association ran a contest for the picture, Krohg won, and in 1893 it hung at the fair alongside a replica Viking ship sailed over from Norway.

Which medieval chronicler wrote the oldest known mention of Vinland, long before the sagas were written down?

Adam of Bremen. The German cleric never went there: he heard of it at the Danish court from King Sweyn, and assured his readers the report was no fable.

Leif Erikson fell in love with a noblewoman named Thorgunna when his ship was driven to which islands?

The Hebrides. Thorgunna asked to sail on with him; Leif refused to carry off a high-born woman from her kin, and the son she bore him was later sent to Greenland.

Which text last mentions Leif Erikson alive, in 1018?

The Saga of St. Olaf. It has the king ship a conquered rival off to Leif in Greenland, hoping he would never return; by about 1025 another saga shows Leif's son as chieftain.

What archaic term did the Norse use for the Indigenous peoples they met in Vinland?

Skraelingi. Leif himself met none of them; it was the expeditions after his that traded with them, quarrelled, and were finally driven to give up Vinland.

Which of Leif Erikson's brothers was killed by an arrow in Vinland, according to both sagas?

Thorvald. In one saga he pulls the arrow out and jokes that the fat on his belly shows what a rich land they have found, though he will get little good of it.

Which US city put up America's first public statue of Leif Erikson?

Boston. A baking-powder magnate, Eben Horsford, commissioned it in 1887 because he was convinced Leif's Vinland lay on the nearby Charles River.

Which US president told the 1925 Minnesota State Fair that Leif Erikson had discovered America?

The occasion was the centenary of the first official Norwegian immigration to America.

The Leif Erikson statue in Reykjavik was a US gift marking 1,000 years of what?

The Althingi, Iceland's parliament. Congress voted the gift in 1929 for the assembly's thousandth anniversary the next year, though the bronze was not unveiled until 1932.

Which US state was first to make 9 October Leif Erikson Day, in 1929?

Wisconsin. Rasmus Anderson, whose 1874 book had argued that Norsemen reached America first, campaigned for it; Minnesota followed two years later.

Why does Leif Erikson Day fall on 9 October?

Norwegian emigrants reached New York. The sloop Restauration arrived that day in 1825 with the first organised party from Norway; the sagas give no date for Leif's landfall, only the season.

The manga Vinland Saga bases its hero on which historical Norseman?

Thorfinn Karlsefni. In the sagas the Icelandic trader tried to settle Vinland a few years after Leif's voyage, until fighting with the local people drove his party home.

Which Netflix drama features Leif Erikson as a main character, played by Sam Corlett?

Vikings: Valhalla. A sequel set more than a century after the original Vikings, it opens with the St. Brice's Day massacre of 1002, when tension between the English and the Norse among them boiled over.

Who has proclaimed Leif Erikson Day every year since 1964?

The US president. Congress asked for a yearly proclamation in 1964, Lyndon Johnson signed the first of them that September, and every president since has followed.

Which New York band closed its 2002 debut album with a song titled 'Leif Erikson'?

Interpol. It is the last track on Turn On the Bright Lights, the debut that helped launch New York's post-punk revival of the early 2000s.

The Viking, a 1928 American film with Leif Erikson as its hero, was shot entirely in which colour process?

Technicolor. It was the first feature made wholly in the company's new dye-transfer process, which at last let a colour print carry its own soundtrack.

Why did Erik the Red call his new land 'Greenland', according to the sagas?

To attract settlers. People would go there more readily if the land had a good name, he reasoned, and it worked: a whole fleet of colonists followed him out, though many of the ships never arrived.

For the 1,000th anniversary of Leif Erikson's voyage, in 2000, the US Mint issued which commemorative item?

A silver dollar. Congress ordered it struck alongside a matching coin for Iceland, whose version shows the Leif statue that stands in Reykjavik.

Who is credited with the first Norse sighting of Greenland, long before Erik the Red settled it?

Gunnbjörn Ulfsson. Blown off course, he only glimpsed land and never went ashore, yet Greenland's highest mountain, Gunnbjørn Fjeld, now carries his name.

Besides grapevines, which crop did the Saga of Erik the Red say Leif Erikson found growing wild in Vinland?

Wheat. The saga speaks of fields of 'self-sown wheat' and has Leif carry samples of it home to Greenland along with the vines.

Yale's Vinland Map, once hailed as the earliest depiction of the New World, turned out to be what?

A 20th-century forgery. Yale's own scientists found its ink full of a titanium compound first made in the 1920s; the map had been unveiled with fanfare in 1965.

One Norse building at L'Anse aux Meadows was a hut for smelting which metal?

Iron. They smelted it in a small clay-and-stone furnace from ore found in the nearby bog, and discarded nails show it went into repairing their boats.