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Leif the Lucky,
Discoverer of America
Five hundred years before Columbus, the first European set foot in America: Leif the Lucky, who was born in west Iceland, the son of Erik the Red. According to the Sagas, Leif
wintered in a place he named Vinland after grapes he found growing there, around the year 1000. A likely site is Newfoundland, where ruins of a Viking farmstead have been
excavated.
Leif left the New World but another expedition was led there by Thorfinn Karlsefni and his wife Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, who explored as far as where
New York stands today and spent three or four years trying to establish a settlement before they gave up the idea. While in America they had a son, Snorri Thorfinnsson, the first
European born in the New World. Gudrid and Thorfinn left America to live on a farm in north Iceland, Glaumbær, and when she was widowed she made a pilgrimage on foot to Rome,
becoming the first known female transatlantic traveler and undoubtedly the most widely traveled women for at least the next 500 years. |
Icelandic names
A nation of sons and daughters
Everyone in Iceland is on first name terms, and people are even listed by first names in the telephone directory. Most Icelanders still use the old Viking patronymics instead of
family surnames, with different forms for sons and daughters. For example, a man called Haraldur Magnusson and his wife Helga Jonsdottir might have a son called Petur whose final
name would then be Haraldsson, and a daughter called Ingibjörg Haraldsdottir.
Logical enough, but the naming system sometimes raises eyebrows at
passport control and hotel reception desks when Icelanders travel abroad.
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