14 DAY TRIAL // From the end of the 8th century till the end of the 10th, the Norsemen caused tremendous terror among those living on the shores of Western Europe, from Baltic Sea to Scotland, Ireland and northwestern France. Their ships went to Spain, North Africa, Black Sea, Caspian Sea and by the 11th century, Vikings detained large areas of the British Islands, southern Italy and Sicily (where they founded a Viking kingdom). But suddenly, the pirate attacks stopped. Many Vikings were converted to Christianity but this did not match with their plundering undefended Christian monasteries on the coasts and other such deeds.
Starting with the middle of the 9th century, they started to head the prows of their ships to the west, starting to adventure into the Atlantic. The reason is not clear: population growth and the need for new lands, political turmoil, the search for exotic merchandises.
What's sure is that they took advantage when crossing the waters of the North Atlantic of a mild clime change which toned down the temperatures, decreasing the barrier of Arctic ice and turning areas which had been covered before by snow into green vast ones.
In 860 the Vikings discovered the Faeroe Islands, in northwestern Scotland and ten years later they started to colonize Iceland. 12,000 Norwegians definitively settled there, bringing with them their livestock and farming tools.
Despite the harsh Iceland's clime, the colony flourished and in 930, the most prosperous families instituted the general assembly (Althing), when representatives from all the population gathered to debate the most important issues and solve legal disputes. This was the first republic and the first democratic assembly in medieval Europe, which still functions today, one thousand years later. Vikings also colonized the British islands of Orkney, Shetland, Hebrides.
In 882 AD, Vikings stepped on Svalbard.
In 982, the Althing investigated the case of an immigrant with a very bad reputation, named Erik the Red, who had arrived to the island few years before and had been expelled from Norway for crime.
He had killed a neighbor in a dispute over a cow and the Althing decided he was to be exiled for three years. As he could not turn back to Norway, Erik decided to navigate to the west, looking for the lands described by sailors misled by the strong winds of the Atlantic.
Accompanied by his family and friends, he reached a rough and barren coast, but he kept navigating till encountering some magnificent fjords, sided by lash pastures and dwarf willows and birches.
In 985, he turned back to Iceland and described the "green land", as it would be called. His stories attracted many colonists which founded the first Viking settlements in Greenland in the south of the island. In 986, Bjarni Herjolfsson experimented navigator and adventurer, left Norway to reach Iceland close to the winter. He found that his father had left with a fleet led by Erik the Red to colonize Greenland.
So he tried to reach Greenland, but he lost his way due to the wind and fog for many days. When they finally spotted land, it was very different from the description of Greenland: it was a land of hills and mighty forests. But after a few days the landscape turned more mountainous and glacial and going east they found Greenland and Erik's colony.
These people did not land in North America, but they were the first to find it.
One of Erik's sons got very interested in the story related by Bjarni, especially as in the frozen Greenland wood was hard to achieve and Bjarni was talking about a forested country.
Around 1000, Leif Eriksson took Bjarni's boat and together with 35 men left in search of the land spotted by Bjarni.
Leif came across the Baffin Island (in present-day northeastern Canada), covered by glaciers and without pastures. Going south, they found a forested plain, with beaches of white sand they named Marklandia (The Forested Land), in today's Labrador. Few days later, the Vikings found an even better territory.
They built houses and wintered there. One man discovered vines and the land was named Vinlandia (The Wine Land). They could have reached the Great Lakes area navigating on the Saint Laurent River. At least 3 Viking ships reached America, transporting Viking families and domestic animals. In spring they returned to Greenland with the cellars filled with products of the area. Till today, all these lands remain a mystery.
In the '60s and '70s, near L'Anse Aux Meadows village (Newfoundland), archaeologists found the ruins of some houses with distinguishable northern features, like an iron oven and other objects dating from the year 1000. In the '90s a Danish researcher found in southern Newfoundland a well-polished stone piece coming from a Viking craft. In Labrador a road paved with stone slabs that could have been made by Vikings was found.
Leif spoke to the Norwegian king about his journey.
In 1070, the German historian Adam of Bremen traveled to Denmark to collect information about northern countries and the Danish king Sweyn told him about Vinlandia and its excellent wine. Because of the chronicle of Bremen, many erudite people found about the western lands.
The Iceland chronicles from the 12th-14th centuries mention other journeys made from Greenland to Markland and Vinlandia.
Still, a mystery remains: why didn't the Vikings remain definitively in America? Maybe they tried to, but were unsuccessful, due to the difficult conditions and "skraelings" (Native Americans), whose forces were superior.
The houses at L'Anse Aux Meadows harbored no more than 500 people and this number was enough for an uninhabited zone, not for one where they had to face Indians. How could they face an Iroquois unit, when French and British troops, armed with fire guns, had problems with them 700-800 years later?
The configuration of the buildings, the shortage of artifacts and garbage, of graveyards and stalls, showed that it was not a stable settlement and Vikings lived there less than 10 years. It could have been a camp for various coastal expeditions, perhaps till the Saint Lawrence Gulf, as the archaeologists found walnuts in the settlement and that is the closest place where walnut trees grew.
On the other side, the Greenland colony faced huge problems: the climate got colder (the Medieval "Little Ice Age", started around 1,350 AD), the colons could no longer practice agriculture and survive and they completely disappeared: the last record on them is a wedding from 1408.
Five centuries after the Viking discovery of the America, Columbus stepped on the Antilles in 1493. It is said he had traveled to Iceland in 1470-1480. He might have heard about the stories about Leif Eriksson and had known he would encounter land on the other side of the Atlantic.