On a spring day around the year 1000, the explorer Leif Erikson and a crew of men were sailing on the North Atlantic, returning from a place they had only recently named Vinland, or Wineland. Located somewhere near Newfoundland in what we now call North America, it had earned its name from the profusion of wild grapes Erikson's men found growing there (when the French came to the area centuries later, they dubbed it ‘Île de Bacchus’). Erikson and his crew had spent the previous year there, gathering goods to sell as well as exploring its vast natural resources.
They were anxious to return home, but as they neared Greenland Leif saw a shipwreck on one of the small islands, or skerries, just off the coast. There they found a merchant named Thorir and fourteen others, including Thorir's wife, Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir. Leif took them on board and they continued on to Brattahlid (‘the steep slope’), a farm overlooking Eiriksfjord in Greenland's Eastern Settlement. The North Atlantic could be vicious to sailors
