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Erik the Red: life of the week
00:46:21
Eleanor Barraclough examines the life and legacy of Erik the Red, the outlaw Viking who settled Greenland and birthed a famous – and infamous – dynasty
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- [00:00]
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Eleanor Barraclough
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- [02:00]
James Osborne
Hello and welcome to Life of the Week, where leading historians delve into the lives of some of history's most intriguing and significant figures. From ancient Egyptian pharaohs and medieval warriors to daring 20th century spies, explorer, settler, leader and murderer. Leaving a trail of blood behind him, Erik the Red was the first European to land on Greenland, and from there his family would play a crucial role in the Norse world. As the Viking age drew to a close, historian, broadcaster and writer Eleanor Barraclough joined James Osborne to examine Eriks to turbulent life and legacy.
- [02:48]
Ryan Reynolds
Eleanor could you just give us the top line on Eric the Red. Why do we remember him?
- [02:54]
Eleanor Barraclough
Well, he's got a good name for a start, right? Eric the Red. It's memorable. But the Vikings are very good at memorable nicknames. But the other thing is, because what he does is he essentially settles a whole country. He settles Greenland from Iceland at the end of the 10th century. So he's memorable for that. And we have sagas where, where he plays a very prominent role. So he's an interesting character all around, but definitely a complicated character too.
- [03:23]
Ryan Reynolds
I described him as a Viking. How accurate do you think that is?
- [03:28]
Eleanor Barraclough
Ah, okay, so it depends on your definition of Viking. Right, so Viking, literally Vikingr in an old Norse, you know, there's a version of the word in Old Norse, witching, there's a version in Old English. And both words basically mean pirate or raider. So by that standard, he's not what we would think of as a stereotypical raider. You know, he isn't going around attacking the monastery of Lindisfarne, for example, at the end of the 8th century. But Viking has essentially expanded that definition over the years. And so we talk about the Viking age, for example, and that's broadly speaking the period in which raids take place. But it also, it refers more broadly to the inhabitants of the early to mid medieval Nordic world. And so by that standard, yeah, you can say he's a Viking in that he is a sort of fairly early medieval Scandinavian or sort of part of that Nordic culture, however we're going to define it.
- [04:34]
Ryan Reynolds
But he's not necessarily like the militaristic Harald Hardrada esque type of Viking.
- [04:41]
Eleanor Barraclough
No, no, exactly. I mean, he's pretty bloodthirsty. He's a settler, he's an explorer, he's a colonizer to some extent, he's certainly a murderer, but he's not. Yeah, he's not a militaristic Viking. No.
- [04:55]
Ryan Reynolds
And his life was pretty much a thousand years ago from now, wasn't it?
- [05:00]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah, pretty much.
- [05:01]
Ryan Reynolds
What are the sources that we know about his life from?
- [05:05]
Eleanor Barraclough
Right, so the main sources are sagas and two sagas in particular. So Erik saga, Rajda, which we might hear his name in there, the saga of Erik the Red and Grijninninger Saga, which is the saga of the Greenlanders. Together they're known as the Vinland sagas, Vinland being the Norse word for part of the North American continent that they end up visiting. Not Erik himself, but certainly it seems from the sagas, his, his children.
- [05:31]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay, so there are two main sagas which we use as the sources for our knowledge of him. So my next question is, how reliable are they? Because I've read a few Norse sagas and for example, the saga of the Earls of Orkney, that seems like a very down the line historical document, just saying what's happened for the most part. And then on the other hand, you have something like the saga of Hrolf Kraki, the. That has a lot of fantastical elements. Where does the saga of Eric the Red and the saga of the Greenlanders fit on that axis? How reliable is it as information for this guy?
- [06:08]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah, I mean, it's a really good question. It's also a really tricky one to answer. Right. In the case of these sagas of Icelanders and the Vinland sagas, very much sort of this applies to them. They can be quite deceptive because they look exactly, as you say, like history as we would think of a historical source, or if we were writing a historical document, you would expect it to be verifiable according to what we say history is. The issue is that what history is and what to some extent truth is doesn't necessarily apply in the same way across different cultures and across different time periods. And so we have to sort of slightly expand our parameters for what truth is, what history is. So essentially the Vinland sagas are somewhere between. We know that some things they are saying are true, but we also know that there is, you know, there's that incident where there's sort of plague and then suddenly there are the walking dead and sort of the dead farmer's wife tries to get in bed with, you know, you know, another character who's dying and then they have to like drive an axe through her breast. And there's wild crazy creatures at the edge of the North American continent, sort of uniped creatures we'd expect to see, and the lists of the marvelous and monstrous races, of classical and sort of encyclopedic thoughts. So it's not what we would think of as history.
- [07:41]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay, so let's not try to pigeonhole it into either fact or fiction.
- [07:45]
Eleanor Barraclough
But.
- [07:45]
Ryan Reynolds
But we can say that Eric the Red did actually exist, or can we?
- [07:50]
Eleanor Barraclough
I mean, I would put money on it, but we. Yeah, unless we go back and ask. I mean, it's tricky. I mean, I've researched in Greenland quite a lot. I've spent quite a lot of time knocking around where he probably had his farmstead, looking at the same views out into the fjords that he and his family looked at when they were alive. But I Mean, we can't be absolutely sure.
- [08:14]
Ryan Reynolds
Well, let's take it that he does, that he did exist and let's go from there. Where do you think his story starts and what do we know about his early life?
- [08:22]
Eleanor Barraclough
Well, so we know that he was born or spent his childhood in Norway, but we don't know very much about that. Again, we're talking about the sagas here. And the sagas say that he and his father are essentially outlawed from Norway because of some killings. And they're not very specific about those. Be like, ah, right, okay. Eric has been a naughty boy.
- [08:41]
Ryan Reynolds
He's like, who? Who killed Kyle?
- [08:43]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah, what happened, Eric? Come on, you can tell us, we're friends. So something happens. And so off they go to Iceland and they settle Iceland. It sort of slightly depends on which saga we're looking at. But the broad brushstrokes of what happens is that he has thules, he has enslaved people and they cause landslides. So it says on another farm that causes a lot of damage and I think death. And so the other farmer, Erryk's neighbour, kills the thralls. And so Erryk basically goes and kills people. Possibly we're seeing the reason for his nickname, the red. You know, maybe he also had red hair, but I think something to do with his temper might be revealed by that. So then he moves and within Iceland still, so he's outlawed from the district. And then once again with his neighbor, he gets into an argument, this time about bench boards, these very highly decorated pieces of furniture. It's said that he lends them to his neighbour, his neighbour won't give them back. And so off Eric goes and kills at least two more people at that point. And the result of that is that there's a big court case and he's outlawed again. And so off he goes. And this is where the saga gets really interesting, or rather the sagas, because he decides he's going to go west, possibly because he's already been outlawed from Norway. So he's not going to go east, but he goes west and he explores the. It's really important. The west coast of Greenland. And we really sort of have to visualize that the east coast, by the standards of sort of medieval, northern European sort of farming and hunting cultures, the east coast is not habitable. It's very, very icy. The west coast is a different matter because although it is cold, it has very long winters, thick. It can also be incredibly icy. And obviously you can't go near the interior because it's all ice sheets. These fjords are rather nice, they're rather balmy. You can sort of farm there. You're very much on the edge of habitable land, but you are still at that edge, not beyond it. And so Eric spends those three years going up and down all the fjords quite far north, which is important because of why Greenland becomes quite an attractive place to settle. And he essentially decides, all right, I think I can make a go of this. So we're told he goes back to Iceland after his three years are up, he gathers his friends and his followers and he says, right, come on, we've got somewhere good to be. And so the sagas tell us he names it Greenland because people are more likely to want to settle there if it's got a good name.
- [11:18]
Ryan Reynolds
There's so much to unpack there. So he's born in Norway. Him and his father are outlawed from Norway, so they go to Iceland. He lives in Iceland. He gets into multiple feuds, violent feuds. Very Viking. Yeah, very Viking. And then so he has to leave Iceland. This is clearly someone who is not necessarily unconfrontational and peaceable. Oh, no, he has a violent streak. This is someone who you don't want to be getting on the wrong side, really.
- [11:50]
Eleanor Barraclough
Very much not. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting because often when there are sagas about people who go these far, travellers who go to other parts of the world, there's something about characters striking out west into these sort of unknown, wild territories. It is a sort of Wild west mentality. And so someone like Eric would be the perfect person to settle somewhere like Greenland, because it's going into the unknown. And I think you just have to have a particular type of character to want to do that.
- [12:21]
Ryan Reynolds
So he sets off from Iceland to Greenland. He explores and quote, unquote finds the west coast of Greenland. Then he goes back to Iceland to bring his mates with him. Yeah, let's just hit pause there. What's going on in the broader Norse world at the time? What could we expect these people's lives to have been like?
- [12:48]
Eleanor Barraclough
So we're talking around the year 985. Okay. So one thing to say is that back in the sort of Norse heartlands of Scandinavia, so Norway, Sweden, Denmark, we have increasing political centralization. We have this powerful kings are in place. So we're starting to see this consolidation of power and therefore also this consolidation of sort of religious control as well. You have this sense of the Scandinavian heartlands are very much embedded in this broader context of religious conversion and political centralization in the case of Norway, this is important because as we get closer and closer to the year 1000, we have Christianizing kings. You know, Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, is particularly important here, and he very much wants to bring Christianity to Iceland. And so in the decades running up to the year 1000, roughly speaking, nice, easy date for us to remember. He's sending missionaries over there, and those missionaries often get into quite a lot of trouble. But the idea is, look, I want to have some stake in this sort of this Christianizing movement across the North Atlantic. So Iceland sort of officially converts around the year 1000, but we have to think those tendrils are already spreading across the North Atlantic. This is important because when we see the settlement of Greenland under Eric the Red and his family and his followers, we're dealing with that cusp period just between. So in one of the sagas, Greenland is Christian at settlement, pretty much the other, it's just about to convert. So this is a really interesting cusp period, but it's also very much, you know, it's actually quite far into what we think of as that sort of core of the Viking age by the time Eric is settling Greenland.
- [14:56]
Ryan Reynolds
That sets out the broader context really well. I think in terms of there's Christianization going on, there's centralization going on. This isn't the Viking world that some listeners will initially be thinking about, where it's kind of scattered bands of quote unquote, pagan chieftains. This is much more. There are established power dynamics and there are broad forces at play here.
- [15:22]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah, exactly. I mean, having said that, it's important to remember in the case of Eric the Red, his wife Feudhilda, converts. So. So the sagas tell us she puts Eric on a sex ban because he refuses to convert. And, I mean, it's like classic saga understatement. It's like. And he was not pleased about this. I'm just imagining him, like, sulking in the corner of the longhouse.
- [15:40]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah. So Greenland is firmly in the picture now. It's either Christianized or beginning to Christianize. And Erryk has settled there with his family and his friends. What do you think that normal everyday life was like there? What do you think that the people who weren't necessarily Eric and his family, who are maybe the thralls, what do you think daily life was like in Greenland at this moment in time?
- [16:09]
Eleanor Barraclough
It's a complicated question, so it's probably worth situating ourselves a little bit geographically. We've got, broadly speaking, two main Norse Greenlandic settlements Both on that west coast, which is important to remember, because it gets confusing. The bigger one, the one that Eric is living in, where Brattleth is, is called the Eastern Settlement. And I mean, we're talking, you know, even at its height, we're talking sort of very low, few thousands, you know, couple of thousand people are living there. But there's a good number of farmsteads, you know, scattered along these fjords. And then a few hundred miles further up that west coast, we have a smaller settlement, and it's called the Western Settlement. And it's maybe a third of that size, maybe, oh, I don't know, kind of 80 farmsteads at its height, something like that. And then finally, we have to go further up that coastline, across the Arctic Circle to what the Norse called Northrsetta, so the northern hunting grounds. And they didn't live there, but there's really important resources there that are key, in a way, to Norse Greenlandic culture and survival of that culture. And it's things like walrus, walrus, ivory, in particular, incredibly important. So we've got to think, okay, that's sort of what it strung out. It's strung up that sort of lower part up to just above the Arctic Circle of that West Greenlandic coastline. So we have to think it's a very connected world. You can't just sit in your farmstead with your sort of extended family and followers around you and just get on with it. Because as we said before, these are very much the margins of sort of the land that they can farm, the land that they can hunt around. And so they. I mean, they do in the early years, they do try and grow crops, but it's not really feasible. It's too far north. It's too remote. The winters are too long and cold and dark for that. For the most part, Norse Greenlanders are not going to see bread on their table, for example. There are other things that they are going to see a lot more of. So, you know, there are reindeer, there are seal. Seal becomes increasingly important as a food source living later on in the lifetime of the Norse Greenlandic settlement. You mentioned thralls or enslaved people. And that's a really important thing to remember, that within the Viking age, within the Norse world, they are sort of so often invisible or nearly invisible, but there are a lot of them. A big part of the population is in some sense enslaved. And so we have to remember that they're there usually doing the nastiest, coldest, dirtiest jobs, most dangerous jobs in any farmstead.
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- [19:38]
Ryan Reynolds
Sea so I guess my question is, if it's not harder to live there necessarily, but it's not easier to live there necessarily than Iceland, why do you think that people would have left with Eric to go there? Because that seems like a lot of effort and risk and upheaval to go to if you're going to somewhere that's pretty similar.
- [20:01]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah, it's a good question. So part of it, he takes his family as well. So it's his family and his followers that come with him. We have texts again, Icelandic texts, that tell us that 25 ships set out now, exactly as you say, it's hard when you get there, but the journey, just getting from Iceland to Greenland is also really hard. So these texts say that out of the 25 ships that first went there, only 14 made it to Greenland and the rest are either lost at sea or they're driven back to Iceland. So it is hard. I think Erik, sort of on a personal level, I think Eric must have been very charismatic. Sort of dangerous and murderous, but charismatic, you know, so it's, it's his followers going with him. It's not like half of Iceland uproots itself and goes. But the other thing is that a lot of the Norse expansion across the North Atlantic is driven by the need for good land. Whether that's for, you know, farming or hunting or whatever it is, but sort of somewhere that you can make a good farmstead and live a good life. And Iceland is small. And Iceland is also only really habitable around the edge because again, it's very rocky, lots of glaciers, lots of ice on the insides. You know, people increasingly have less and less land to take when they arrive. And obviously it's going to be less good land, less, you know. So I think there's something about the practicality, but I think there's also something about the mentality. And those two aspects, I think are in a way encapsulated in the figure of Eric the Red, and therefore also.
- [21:33]
Ryan Reynolds
In his family and his followers think dangerous and charismatic. He kind of sounds like Han Solo, and it makes you understand why people would want to follow him.
- [21:44]
Eleanor Barraclough
Oh, I would follow Han Solo. He says, right, Jump in we go. Like, right, Yep, let's go. There we go.
- [21:50]
Ryan Reynolds
So let's go back to Eric, then. So we understand now what Greenland was like when he landed there, the kind of settlements that they create and the kind of lives that people have there. So on Erryk specifically, this is the kind of later portion of his, or like the second half of his life. Now that he's landed in Greenland, is he kind of like the de facto king there? And I guess he brings his family and his children. Could we talk a bit about their lives, too? Because they're very much a part of his legacy, aren't they?
- [22:25]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah, huge part. Really, really important. And, I mean, Leif Erikson is in some ways much better known than Eric the Red for reasons we can talk about. So king is an interesting word, and it's a word that I think you've got to think he's coming from sort of an Icelandic cultural context where there are no kings. And that's a very important part of who they are and how they define themselves. What you do have is powerful chieftains, and you have powerful families. So certainly what we could say is Eric is a powerful leader, a powerful chieftain in Greenland. Probably. Yeah, probably the most powerful. He's one of the first settlers. You know, he is the most important settler as far as the sagas are concerned. But that doesn't mean he's the only one in terms of his children. So Eric and. Well, this is tricky because, again, we're really dependent on the sagas here, and they don't tell us the same thing. So one important thing to emphasize about the saga of Eric the Red and the saga of the Greenlanders is that they're not copying off each other. They seem to be drawing on that same pool of oral tradition. You know, these. These stories that are passed down the generations, but they. They tell different versions of the same events. And that's really important. And that's true as well, with things like, okay, how many children does he have? And whose are these children, in a way? So we have four names if we take the sagas together. We have Leif Erikson, we have Thorvald, we have Thorsten, and so those are all males. And then we have Freydis, who's a female.
- [24:05]
Ryan Reynolds
So at this point, Eric he's not the king, he's not ruling necessarily, but he's massively powerful. He's extremely influential over these settlements in Greenland. And while he's kind of there presiding as this powerful figure, his son Leif, he is now setting out on his own expeditions.
- [24:28]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yes.
- [24:28]
Ryan Reynolds
Can we pick up that story? Cause that seems like it's a part of Eric's story too. I mean, it's his son, you know, Eric did this. His son is following in his footsteps, in a sense. So what does Leif get up to?
- [24:40]
Eleanor Barraclough
So, I mean, it's very much Eric's story. In fact, it's really one of the sagas tells us. Should be Eric's story as well, in that Leif persuades Eric to go off with him. And Leif is sort of waiting at the harbour for his father. His father appears on a horse, comes down, and then the horse throws him off. And Eric says, look, this is not a good sign. I think I'm too old. I'm not gonna be exploring any more lands. Thank you. Wimp very much. You wimpy? Yeah. I mean, I think I'd wimp off. If I'd fallen off a horse, I'd be like, right, see you on the other. You enjoy that.
- [25:08]
Ryan Reynolds
I mean, he'd already gone from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to Greenland. Like, he'd done his.
- [25:12]
Eleanor Barraclough
It's fair.
- [25:12]
Ryan Reynolds
He'd done his exploration.
- [25:13]
Eleanor Barraclough
Right. And he's probably getting on a bit as well. So I think it's perfectly reasonable. He's like, off you go. I'm going back to the Longhouse for a cup of tea. Thank you very much.
- [25:20]
Ryan Reynolds
Hands over the baton to his son.
- [25:21]
Eleanor Barraclough
Exactly. And again, we don't know if that actually happened or not, but it makes perfect sense within that framework of a saga narrative. He is. Yeah, he's sort of handing over. Off you go. The story goes one way or the other that Leif and his crew set off west from Greenland and they essentially travel down that coastline of the edge of the North American continent. Then they go further south and they end up probably in what's now Labrador. And they call this markland, which means forest land. And here there's a lot of trees, which is really good, particularly if you come from somewhere like Greenland. It doesn't have an awful lot of wood resources, and so that's great. They carry further on and they stop at the tip of Newfoundland and Leif is said to build what are called Leifs boothir. So Leifs booths Leifs huts and there they stop. And from there they go in. And again, who does the exploring inland is different depending on the sagas. So one of the sagas, it's a pair of enslaved Scots called Hucky and Hekja. They go inland and they find sort of all these fine resources. They find grapes and self sowing wheat.
- [26:33]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah. So just to paint a really clear picture, you have Leif and he's landed in this kind of north eastern edge of North America. And then there are these. In one version of the story, there are these two Scots, they're running along trying to find what's there, trying to explore so that they can then go and report back to Leif and tell him, look, we found these resources.
- [26:55]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And yes, it's very important to say because particularly in the 19th century, Americans, as in USA, you know, that read, they were very, very keen on the idea that the Vikings that Leif Erikson had got there. We have Leif Erikson Day, for example, this idea of an alternative founding myth, sort of very let's. European founding myth, right. To Christopher Columbus. So when we are talking about the part of the North American continent where the Norse, yes, did get to under Leif Eriksen initially perhaps, and then other members of Erik's family, we're talking about what is now the eastern sort of Arctic eastern edge of Canada.
- [27:38]
Ryan Reynolds
Right. Okay. So they land there, they explore that region. I'm gonna ask the same question that I asked before about, you know, what motivated people to leave Iceland and go to Greenland. When Leif and these explorers inverted commas when they were heading over to this, to what we now call north eastern Canada, what were they hoping to find? Why were they going.
- [28:04]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah, it does look like resources are important. Sense of adventure is important. Sense of discovery, but also the possibility of settlement. The problem is we are talking now a good couple of thousand miles between Greenland and the edge of the North American continent. That's a long way if you're going to maintain those cultural links with your. It's why they often use the word diaspora, that sort of Norse cultural sphere that's now stretched really quite far.
- [28:32]
Ryan Reynolds
So Leif's landed there. They found this amazing new place full of trees and things they've never seen before. And they're thousands of miles away from Greenland. So it's a long way to go back. Why don't they stay there?
- [28:46]
Eleanor Barraclough
We should say it's not just one voyage that's important and it's not just Leif who's involved. So there are other voyages. I think one of the sagas, it's six voyages. The other, it's three voyages that sort of, you know, shoved in. So it's Leif, but it's other. It's Thorvaldr, Thorsten, another son. I think he dies when sort of they want to go out there, but he sort of dies from plague. But his wife Gudridr, who's a really important character, Gudrid, really important character, she also traveled to the edge of North American continent. In fact, she gives birth there to a little child called Snorri with her next husband, another Thorsten. They're all called Thorsten, which, if in doubt, call them Thorsten. So there's a series of these voyages. Again, this is very much the sagas. There's a tiny bit of evidence to back this up in the archaeological record, but it's extremely small. But according to the sagas, they meet the indigenous people who live in these parts of, you know, this, the coastline. So various tribes, various peoples who are, you know, have been there for many, many, many, many, many years. And so it's quite eerie in a way, how closely this resembles the narratives we see later when other Europeans come over. It starts with trade. So the. The natives, they're not given a good name. The Norse in the sagas, they call them skrlinger, which means essentially wretched ones, puny ones. It's not nice. But eventually it starts off fairly kind of amicably. So they're trading dairy products for cloth, for skins, for pelts, you know, so it's that standard narrative that we see later on. But eventually the relationship breaks down and, you know, the Norse kill some of the people living there and then obviously there are retaliations. And that's the point where they say, we can't set up home there. There are people here already. But it's difficult because we're seeing this through the sagas, through the eyes of the Norse. And so some of that information is quite garbled, some of it's quite supernaturally tinged, as we would think about it. So we have to think this is. This is not. Again, this is one of the examples where straightforward historical narrative in the sense that we would understand it now, doesn't really apply. However, there's clearly cultural contact. Eventually, though, it becomes too difficult and, you know, quite reasonably, the people already living there become very hostile because, you know, there is a breakdown in relations.
- [31:10]
Ryan Reynolds
So there's this amazing collision between these two equally fascinating, utterly distinct cultures on the edge of North America.
- [31:19]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah. First time it's ever happened, you know, that we know, of the World has joined that way. It's incredible.
- [31:25]
Ryan Reynolds
Yeah. It really, really feels like two separate worlds meeting. I think that's amazing. And conflict means that the expeditions from Greenland leave. That interests me. It feels like to me that if this were 200 years before, and perhaps maybe if there were more of the Vikings, more of the Norse, they would have maybe tried a bit harder to stake their claim and fight. Do you think?
- [31:54]
Eleanor Barraclough
You mean tried a bit harder in sort of more violently? Yeah, yeah.
- [31:59]
Ryan Reynolds
Because when they expand eastward into Europe, there's a bit of that. Do you think it's just how far away they are from the rest of the Norse diaspora, How cut off they are? I mean, I guess this is a relatively weak expeditionary force that isn't. I'm guessing they're not all clad in armor and all kitted up with the best weapons.
- [32:19]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah, exactly. I think that's a big part of it. It's a good question. I suspect that there are bits of the answer that I just wouldn't be able to give you, but you're right, I think numbers, that's definitely part of it. And backup reinforcements. It's not like when you have 100 years earlier, 865, give or take. You have the great Heathen army, as we mentioned in England, but basically they're swinging across the channel between mainland Europe and Britain, depending on which ruling power is weakest. They're sort of like the stray cats. They just turn up, and when life gets too difficult for them on one side of the channel, they kind of migrate over. So there's definitely that these are not warriors. It comes back to your first question. You know, is Erik a Viking, essentially? No. The same is true of the children in that militaristic sense. Exactly. As you say, as well. That sense of the diaspora being stretched too thin is definitely part of it. There's also the question of the Norse. Often when they assimilate with a culture, maybe assimilate is not quite the right word, but there is definitely elements of that going on. When they're. They're settling in Britain, for example, or Ireland or on the continent or going further east, they are settling within kind of existing cultural groups where they. They have some commonality. They have some sense of, okay, you know, in Britain, for example, it's. It's when they start to plow the land that's really important, but that's what people are doing there already. There is possibly the sense. And this comes back to what we're saying about the sagas. This is not historical in the way that we would understand it. There's a lot of these fairly supernatural, eerie elements. They've just gone so far beyond what is culturally recognizable to them that there's no assimilation to be had, not on the sort of scale they would need it to be. So the numbers aren't there, the backup isn't there, the sort of what they are as a culture isn't there, but also that familiarity isn't there either.
- [34:19]
Ryan Reynolds
So Erryk's dynasty, let's say, has gone to Canada. They've come back. This is probably where Eric's story ends, isn't it? I mean, it's the end of a pretty epic life, but, like, this is broadly speaking, the end of it for him.
- [34:34]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yes, it is, broadly speaking. Where his life ends, we don't know exactly. Sort of some point after that, Leif takes over as the most important chieftain in that part of Norse Greenland. Yes. Where his legacy ends. I mean, that is a more fascinating question in a way, because it certainly doesn't end at that point.
- [34:51]
Ryan Reynolds
And so even after Eric's story is done, and, you know, his children's story is done, Greenland does persist for a while as a identifiably Norse settlement. But not forever.
- [35:06]
Eleanor Barraclough
No, not forever, no, Exactly. So I want to say it's sort of like the mid 13th century. We know that sort of the smaller of those two settlements starts to come to an end. So the Western settlement is not clear how, it's not clear why. It looks like a fairly orderly retreat, but, yeah, it seems to come to an end then. It's always been more marginal, it's more reliant on those northern hunting grounds. There's all sorts of reasons internally and externally, why life becomes harder. We've had sort of plague hitting in Norway around sort of the middle of the. What is sort of like the mid-1300s. It hits Iceland just after 1400. So, again, that sort of. That sense of those trade links are becoming increasingly sort of frayed, those threads. And the Norse Greenlanders are very reliant on those. And so life gets harder and harder. And so it looks like it's a fut rather than a bang in terms of how Norse Greenland comes to an end. We know that by around 1500, they're gone. But of course, and this is where Eric's legacy is even more important, or sort of more interesting maybe, is that by the time we get to the 1700s, Scandinavians don't realize that the Norse Greenlandic settlements have come to an end. And so a missionary decides to go out in the 1720s. Because he says, well, they're probably all still Catholic out there. Let's go out there. I need to convert them. We're all Lutheran now. And of course he doesn't find any Norse Greenlanders. What he finds are the ancestors of today's modern Inuit population.
- [36:39]
Ryan Reynolds
It's an amazing legacy for someone to have. And I think what makes it so interesting is that you paint it almost as like the last refuge of the Viking age, when everything else has come to an end. 1066 has come and gone. You've got Greenland right on the edge, kind of not realizing that it's over and then it kind of just fizzles out.
- [37:00]
Eleanor Barraclough
Yeah, absolutely. And I just. It is such a fascinating story and one that I think this is really important and this is this incredible example, or it's like a. I was gonna say a warning from history. Maybe that's not quite right, but it's certainly a sort of a memento mori. It's like all cultures, all times pass and Norse Greenlanders did not know that their time was going to be over. And yet it was eventually and it is now.
- [37:35]
Ryan Reynolds
And that I guess brings us to the end of Eric's life and legacy. I just have one final question, and that is it's a story where we haven't mentioned women a lot. There have been a few names that you've dropped in, but this has predominantly been quite a male dominated story. I don't think that does it justice, does it? Because actually when you read these texts, there are powerful women who have a lot of intelligence and agency. Could you mention a few of them just as we wrap up?
- [38:11]
Eleanor Barraclough
Great pleasure. We've mentioned a couple from the sagas who are very important. So it's been said that actually. Sorry, Eric, but Eric saga would be better named Gudrida's or Gudrid Saga. And this is this very, just absolutely fascinating character who again, travels to the edge of the North American continent, as I said, gives birth to a little child there called Snorri, comes back, becomes a sort of pilgrim, becomes the mother of all sorts of very powerful religious figures. Later on there's a really interesting. We won't get into the detail of it, but there's a really interesting episode in the sagas where she's nursing her child, you know, on the edge of the North American continent. And someone comes in and she comes face to face with a woman who is sort of of the indigenous people who live there. And this very weird episode where she says, my name is Gudduyddr. And what's your name? And the other woman parrots back, my name is Guddvidudr. And for me, I mean that it's one of the most incredible, confusing, eerie episodes in the whole of the Vinland sagas. And this is this point, this is the only time we have sort of this, this textual retelling, should we say, I wouldn't say historical record of two women talking to each other. This is the first time we have this narrative of two women from across the North Atlantic coming together and talking to each other. You know, that historic in terms of the sort of the history of humanity that is spine tinglingly, sort of important. We have, we mentioned Theodhildr, where we have evidence for this formidable woman who. Yeah, who puts Eric on a sex ban, which is quite formidable in itself, judging from his character. But, you know, we have what may well be the archeological remnants of her early church as one of the first converts to Christianity in Greenland. And you know, for the year 1000, they actually built a replica of the. The church, which is this beautiful little turf and stone and wood building that looks out onto the fjords. And then of course, I mean, we can't talk about the sagas and not mention Freydis, who. Oh, my goodness, she's. She needs a. She needs a Hollywood film of her own. So.
- [40:25]
Ryan Reynolds
And this is Eric's daughter.
- [40:26]
Eleanor Barraclough
Exactly. Possibly illegitimate. We're not quite sure who her mother is. What is so wonderful is in the saga of Eric the Red, now Freydis, also in both sagas, goes to the edge of the North American continental continent. In the saga of Eric the Red, she is very heavily pregnant and relations at this point between the Norse and the people they encounter are breaking down. And, you know, people are killing each other. And there's an incident where essentially all the Norse men run away, leaving Freydis heavily pregnant by herself. And the saga tells us that she bears her breast and she picks up one of the swords from the dead and she slaps her breast with it. And, you know, the people who are. Want to attack her are so terrified by this that they run away. So she is as badass as it gets in that saga. What's even more interesting is what she's like in the saga of the Greenlanders because there she is a truly terrifying character, very manipulative, very murderous. And she goes with her husband as part of this expedition. They're on one ship, they go with another ship where there are two Norwegian brothers. Relations break down and eventually she. She persuades the men in her party to kill the men on the other ship, you know, in the other party, the Norwegian brothers. No one will kill the women. So there's this absolutely chilling moment where she just says, put an axe in my hand and she dispatches the women herself, you know, so even if we're just looking at the sagas, probably, you know, the three most memorable characters are all women. But that then, and this is what I do in sort of my latest book, is I look underneath those sort of big, heavy hitting characters and Greenland is the most extraordinary place to find these little remnants of everyday lives and everyday female lives, the sort of women who would not end up with their own sagas or even featured in one of the sagas. And we have things like, you know, beautiful bands of human hair that have been woven into necklaces and we have women who have, have inscribed their names in runes onto their textile making equipment. Without women, this world Norse Greenland doesn't exist. Without women, the Viking Age doesn't exist.
- [42:38]
James Osborne
That was Eleanor Barraclough, a historian, broadcaster, writer and senior lecturer in environmental history at Bath Spa University. Her latest book, Embers of the Hands, Hidden Histories of the Viking Age, is out now in paperback. You can find more of her in BBC History magazine and on the History Extra podcast. Head over to the History Extra website to find out more. She was speaking to James Osborne. Thanks for listening to today's Life of the Week. Be sure to join us again next time to learn about another film. Fascinating figure from the past.