Alexmagnet Explains: Leif Erikson and His Sister Freydis · 6:20pm Sep 7th, 2014

Well, here we are again. Time for a new adventure through time to look at the semi-depressing fact that humans will probably never stop making stupid decisions, or even worse, decisions that seem smart enough on the surface, but end up having worldwide consequences. Today we’re going to talk about a piece of Viking history you probably haven’t heard about. You’ve likely heard of Erik the Red (or Bloody as is a more appropriate name) and probably his son Leif Erikson as well, but you may not have heard of Leif’s sister, Freydis. What you probably also weren’t aware of is how damn close the Vikings were to colonizing all of North America back in 1000 CE. But anyway, let’s jump into this thing already.

Not quite Viking ponies, but the beards make it close enough.

At the turn of the eleventh century, the Vikings were pretty much just wrecking shit wherever they went. They were feared all across Europe as “those guys who rape and pillage everything they get their dirty Scandinavian hands on”. Fortunately for most of Europe though, their greed for land and expansionist mentality didn’t cause them to take over all of Europe, which they probably wouldn’t have had that hard of a time doing back in 1000 CE. Europe was a shithole back then, and there was no country that could’ve stood up to the Vikings alone. Hell, for what basically amounted to a bunch of semi-civilized barbarians, these guys were doing pretty good. But this story isn’t about how great they were at violently murdering people, this story is about they fucked up and delayed the discovery of North America, by Europeans, by nearly 500 years all because Leif Erikson’s crazy-ass sister didn’t get the hut she wanted.

All right, take yourself back a thousand years and put yourself in Scandinavia. You’re probably living in some shitty village led by some shitty asshole with the biggest axe. That asshole is Erik the Red, or Erik the Bloody as he’s more accurately known. See, even in a culture where rape, murder, pillaging, and grand theft goat where the norm, Erik was a little too crazy even for the Vikings. His bloodlust—and regular lust—was legendary. Even the Viking warlords looked at him and said, “Dude, chill with the rape and murder for a sec, all right? We’re trying to have a society here.” But Erik didn’t give a shit about that. He just wanted to have things his way, and he’d brutally murder you if you disagreed… which he did, multiple times.

This doofy lookin’ motherfucker would’ve ripped your head off and played soccer with it had you even looked at him the wrong way.

The first time Erik murdered one of his neighbors over a minor squabble, he was banished to Iceland from Norway, because that’s basically where people were banished to at the time. However, Iceland wasn’t far enough, it seems, because after his son Leif was born, Erik got into another petty argument and ended up murdering the shit out of a handful of dudes. Now because there was really nowhere else to banish him to, Erik was sent to the far western edge of Iceland in the hopes that the lack of close neighbors would prevent him from brutally killing more people. That worked about as well as you’d expect, and Erik ended up killing again, this time earning him the name he’s now known by. At this point, people were pretty pissed at Erik being a murderous bastard, so they just banished him from Iceland altogether. Inexplicably, Erik had gained a small following of Vikings, presumably because they appreciated the fact that he could kill someone with his axe better than another guy, and so he and his contingent of men took some longships and sailed west.

For about 500 miles, they sailed without seeing anything. Then they spotted what we now know as Greenland. Erik gave it that name because he may have been a bloodthirsty barbarian, but he knew the value of good salesmanship. Erik figured, rightfully so, that if he gave this new land an enticing name, it would encourage people to emigrate. Sure, the land was mostly ice, and the weather was dismal, and the soil was even crappier than Norway’s admittedly crappy soil, but at least it had one thing going for it. It was free.

So, after returning to Iceland briefly to try his sales pitch, Erik managed to convince a few hundred Vikings that were either bored or stupid to join him and he set sail for Greenland. Surprisingly enough, things actually went pretty well, and after a few years the colony on Greenland had grown to a little over 1500 people. All in all, shit was looking up for once. It was at this point that Leif decided it was about time he set off and did some exploring, like his father before him. With news of an island ever further west, Leif used his father’s position as leader to gather some warriors and a few colonists to head out to this new island to do what Erik had done with Greenland. It was at this point that things started to go downhill.

Probably the most famous Viking of all time, Leif’s life is all but legend.