Early life couldn’t have been easy for Erik the Red – he certainly didn’t live a glamorous youth before becoming one of the Arctic’s most famous explorers.
Born Erik Thorvaldsson in Rogaland, Norway, he and his family were forced to leave their home country when his father was exiled for committing manslaughter.
Sailing west, they settled in Iceland, where Erik would grow from a boy into a man and where Erik the Red's saga would eventually earn him an exile or two by his own bad deeds.
Most of what we know about Erik today has been passed down over hundreds of years as Nordic and Icelandic folklore such as the Grænlendinga Saga.
