10 THE VINLAND VOYAGES 



we are now, yet it might have been worse.' " He had 

 been very reluctant to join the expedition. 



According to the Saga, this voyage was undertaken 

 in a vessel that Thorbjorn Vifilsson, of Laugabrekka 

 in Snsefellsness, had bought in Iceland the previous 

 summer and emigrated in to Greenland. Therefore, 

 they did not use Leif 's ship, and there is no reference 

 to Leif in connection with the above expedition. The 

 inference might be that he had left previously in his 

 own ship for Norway and that he had possibly not 

 returned home for several years. He is not mentioned 

 further in the Saga, although he lived some twenty 

 years after his epoch-making voyage and died about 

 1020, then around fifty years of age. One is never- 

 theless justified in assuming that among the twenty 

 men who accompanied Thorstein and Eric on their 

 expedition were some who had been with Leif on his 

 voyage the preceding summery they presumably acted 

 as guides. Unfortunately for this enterprise of Thor- 

 stein and Eric, they must have taken a too easterly 

 direction. Contrary winds were doubtless responsible 

 for the fact that they went so far to the northeast that 

 they saw Iceland and then again so far to the south- 

 east that they approached the Irish coast. 



When Thorstein Ericsson returned to Greenland, 

 he married Gudrid, only daughter of Thorbjorn, the 

 owner of the ship on which the voyage of exploration 



