6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. IO7 



STORY OF THE EXPEDITIONS 



In the year 982 Eric the Red was banished from Iceland for a 

 period of 3 years. About 900 (Fischer says 920) a Norwegian 

 named Gunnbiorn on the way from his own country to Iceland had 

 been blown out of his course, and he discovered some islands to the 

 west which were afterward called Gunnbiorn's Rocks (Brunn, 1918, 

 p. 4; Fischer, 1903, p. 6). Eric directed his course thither, reached 

 the coast of Greenland, and rounding its southernmost point, dis- 

 covered the more habitable parts on the western coast. When the 

 period of his exile was over, he returned to Iceland with such flat- 

 tering accounts of the new land that intending colonists flocked back 

 with him — in 25 vessels according to some, 35 according to others 

 (Brunn, 1918, p. 28; Fischer, 1903, p. 20; Olson, 1906, p. 16; Bab- 

 cock, 1913, p. 34). Only 14 actually arrived, the rest having been 

 lost or forced to return, but more soon followed and two main settle- 

 ments were formed, the East Settlement about the present Julianehaab 

 and the West Settlement, the smaller of the two, in the Godthaab 

 district. Eric himself settled in a fiord now called Tunugdliarfik 

 which took his name and was known as Ericsfiord, at a place called 

 Brattahlid. The next deep inlet to the south, now Igalikofiord, was 

 known as Einarsfiord, and at Gardar on a neck of land between the 

 two came to be located the Episcopal seat of the Bishop of Greenland. 

 In the small fiord now called Amitsuarsuk a prominent man named 

 Heriulf settled, and the inlet was in consequence known as Heriulfs- 

 fiord. The point Ikigeit just north of the entrance was called 

 Heriulf sness. These and numerous other points in the two Greenland 

 settlements have been carefully located by Danish scholars (Brunn, 

 1918, p. 28). 



Eric had three sons, Thorstein, Leif, and Thorvald, the last prob- 

 ably illegitimate, and an illegitimate daughter Freydis, married to a 

 man named Thorvard. 



In the summer of 999 Leif voyaged to Norway, where he spent the 

 following winter with King Olaf Tryggvason, and on his departure 

 he was commissioned by the king to carry Christianity to Greenland, 

 a charge which he accepted with some misgivings. Substantially the 

 same story is told by the Saga and the Flat Island Book. Of Leif's 

 return voyage to Greenland the latter says nothing, but according to 

 the former it was during this return voyage that he discovered 

 America. 



For a long time he was tossed about upon the ocean, and came upon lands of 

 which he had previously had no knowledge. There were self-sown wheat 



