IN THE footsteps of the greenland vikings, Part 3: Greenland is a green land

Eirik Raude was good at public relations. He called his newly-discovered land Greenland, and he was not exaggerating.

Although we all know that most of this huge land is covered with eternal glaciers of ice and snow all year round, in the south-westerly fjords it i mild and green – at least in summer.

Eric Raude discovered Greenland and settled there. Many icelanders followed him.

This area lies on about the same latitude as the Norwegian town Bergen.

The only thing we’d forgotten to bring was sun cream. Amazingly, we got sunburned – in Greenland. Foto: JSH

But when my son and I arrived in Greenland in the summer, three years ago, we were not prepared for the heat.

EXPLORING

So the first thing we did as soon as we had checked into the hotel, just a few hundred metres from the airport at Narsarsuaq, was to strip off our winter woollies and heavy sweaters.

Then, wearing light summer clothes, we set off to explore. Just behind the hotel we found a path leadng to a mountain, a suitable walk of about an hour’s duration. We found a great view of the fjord, the glacier in the fjord and the moutnains.

NORWEGIAN FLORA

The landscape is similar to the Norwegian landscape we know. The flora too resembles that found in Norway – bluebells and buttercups, for instance.And everywhere is green, grass,moss, shrubs – but no trees. There are no trees in Greenland.

From the hill behind the hotel we also had a good view across the fjord to little Qassiarsuk, where Eirik Raude’s farm Brattalid once lay.

When the warlike Norwegian Eirik Raude returned to Iceland in 980 after spending three years as an outlaw, he announced that he had discovered a hospitable land to the West. His first action was to entice people to settle there.

25 ships sailed: 14 made it

He thought he needed a good name: Greenland.

And it worked. 25 ships crowded with adveture-seeking Icelanders followed him. Some turned back, others were wrecked, but those aboard the 14 ships that completed the voyage to Greenland successfully had no reason to feel disappointed. For they must have seen, as we did, that the place was temperate and verdant, and that it was quite possible to settle there, just as the chieftain had declared.

Divided fjords

Here he distributed the south-westerly fjords among his wealthy friends. He kept his own Eiriksfjord for himself.

And most of them were well pleased, for the Norse-Icelandic Vikings remained in Greenland. At its height, the settlement numbered some 10,000 souls.

500 years later the Norse population in Greenland mysteriously disappeared without trace. But that is another story.

In the footsteps of the Greenland Vikings, Part 1

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