Greenland Vikings
Greenland is said to have been discovered by a man called Gunnbjörn whose ship had gone off course. It was, however, Eiríkr Þorvaldsson (a.k.a Eric the Red) who explored and named the island, and ruled the first colony of settlers. He was born in Norway in the mid-10th century, but went to Iceland as a child after his father was banished from Norway. Greenland's attraction was that it had better pasture for sheep, goats and cows than Iceland, where the soil had already become poor after about a century of heavy exploitation. Farmers had never lived there, the climate was probably a bit milder than today, and some of the fertile lowlands which now have have disappeared under sea were above surface at that time. There was probably also quite a lot of driftwood in Greenland at that time.
A violent man as he was, Eiríkr himself was banished from Iceland, and set forth on an expedition westward from Iceland. In 982 he got to Greenland (a name he gave to encourage settlers to go there), and spent the next three years exploring it. After that he returned to Iceland and led an expedition of 25 ships to settle (circa 986) in southwestern Greenland. This settlement survived until the late 15th century. Eiríkr himself settled at Brattahlið (Tunigdliarfik) in Greenland, where he died sometime after the yeare 1000.
The Greenland Vikings lived mostly on dairy produce and meat, primarily from cows. The vegetable diet of Greenlanders included berries, edible grasses, and seaweed, but these were inadequate even during the best harvests. In 960, Thorvald Asvaldsson of Jaederen in Norway killed a man. He was forced to leave the country so he moved to northern Iceland, exiled from Norway during the reign of King Harald Fairhair. He had a ten yeare old son named Eric, later to be called Eric Röde, or Eric the Red. Eric too had a violent streak and in 982 he killed two men. Eric the Red was banished from Iceland for three years so he sailed west to find a land that Icelanders had discovered years before but knew little about. Eric searched the coast of this land and found the most hospitable area, a deep fiord on the southwestern coast. Warmer Atlantic currents met the island there and conditions were not much different than those in Iceland (trees and grasses.)
As recounted in the sagas, Leifur set forth from Greenland to search for the land Bjarni Herjólfsson had told him of. He found a land rich with grapes, salmon, and a frost free winter, and returned to harvest lumber to take back to tree-poor Greenland. L'Anse aux Meadows has been variously identified as: (a) the first camp made, (b) the camp made after fleeing hostile Skrælings, or (c) a camp not mentioned in the saga. The only authenticated Viking settlement in continental North America, it was the site of a multi-year archaeological dig that found dwellings, tools and implements that verified its time frame. The settlement, dating more than 500 years before Christopher Columbus, contains the earliest European structures in North America. L'Anse aux Meadows (from the French L'Anse-aux-Méduses (Jellyfish Cove)) is a site on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland, in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, where the remains of a Viking village were discovered in 1960 by the Norwegian explorer Dr. Helge Ingstad and his archaeologist wife, Dr. Anne Stine Ingstad.
L'Anse aux Meadows may also be connected to the Algonquin legend of a Kingdom of Saguenay populated by a race of blond men rich in furs and metals, but this is only conjecture. The settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows consisted of at least 8 buildings, including a forge and smelter, and a lumberyard that supported a shipyard. The saga describes a colonizing attempt led by Thorfinn Karlsefni, with as many as 135 men and 15 women, who used Leifur's camp as a base. Sewing and knitting tools found at the site indicate women were present at L'Anse aux Meadows. Among them was Freydís Eiríksdóttir, half-sister to Leif.
Before the yeare 1300, ships regularly sailed from Norway and other European countries to Greenland bringing with them timber, iron, corn, salt, and other needed items. Trade was by barter. Greenlanders offered butter, cheese, wool, and their frieze cloths, which were greatly sough after in Europe, as well as white and blue fox furs, polar bear skins, walrus and narwhal tusks, and walrus skins. In fact, two Greenland items in particular were prized by Europeans: white bears and the white falcon.
The most important written sources recounting the discovery and settlement of Greenland are Ari Þorgilsson's Íslendingabók and Landámabók. There are also two colorful sagas, Grænlendinga Saga (The Saga of the Greenlanders) and Eiríks saga rauða (The Saga of Eric the Red), but these were composed only in the early 13th century and are often fanciful and contradict each other in places.
The Danes went to England between York and London (Danelagen or Danelaw), Normandie, Holland and the southern coast of the Baltic sea between Jutland and Gdansk with Stettin/Szczecin (Jomsborg) as the main port to the continent. trade contacts with the Mediterian area - both indirect over the continent and direct through the Gibraltar. The area occupied by the Danelaw was roughly the area to the north of a line drawn between London and Chester. Five fortified towns became particularly important in the Danelaw: Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford and Derby, broadly covering the area of Ely now called the East Midlands. These strongholds became known as the Five Boroughs. Danish raiders first began to settle in England starting in 865, when brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless wintered in East Anglia. They soon moved north and in 867 captured Northumbria and its capital, York. The Danes then placed an Englishman, Ecgberht (Egbert), on the throne of Northumbria. In response to this Danish invasion, King Æthelred of Wessex and his brother, Alfred, led their army against the Danes at Nottingham, but the Danes refused to leave their fortifications. The Danes under Ivar the Boneless continued their invasion in 870 by defeating King Edmund at Hoxne and thereby conquering East Anglia. The Danes pursued, and on January 7, 871, Æthelred and Alfred defeated the Danes at Ashdown. The Danes retreated to Basing (Hampshire), where Æthelred attacked and was, in turn, defeated. The Danes had in ten years gained control over East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia, leaving only Wessex. The influence of this period of Scandinavian settlement can still be seen in the North of England and the East Midlands, most evidently in place names.
The Faroes are a group of Danish islands rising from the sea some four hundred miles west of Norway and almost as far south of Iceland. It embraces fourteen inhabited and several uninhabited islands with an area of 500 square miles. Of this one-third belongs to Strömö. This archipelago is divided by a number of small sounds and consists of dark grey rocks which form plateaux usually about 300 yards high.
The Svear went to Russia (Gårdarike) via the seas Ladoga and Onega to the river Volga and all the way over the Caspic Sea to the flourishing Islam Persia. via Riga and the river Dvina/Düna to Smolensk. via Petersburg and the rivers Neva and Volkhov to Novgorod (Holmgård). from Novgorod and Smolensk they followed the river Volga to Kiev (Könugård) and further over the Black Sea to Istanbul (Micklagård) in the Byzantian Empire where the first written source reports Varangians in the Emperor's guard yeare 837.
The Norwegians travelled to Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Like also the Danes they kept trade contacts with the cities of the Mediterian Sea. The Vikings had Norse names on a lot of towns and markets:
Vendland PommeraniaJomsborg Stettin
Haithabu Hedeby (near Slesvig)
Saxland between Rhine & Elbe
Dorestad Utrecht
Bretland Britanic islands
Valland Flanders
Norva sund Strait of Gibraltar
Sikelø Sicily
Särkland Persia
Miklagård Istanbul
Gårdarike between Volga & Black Sea
Könugård Kijev
Holmgård Novgorod