The Legend of Leif Erickson.
This is the Tower of Leif Erickson located in Waltham,
just outside Boston.
It is believed that Leif the son of Eric the Red was born in Iceland around 970 A.D.
His father was involved in a village dispute where his village attacked and killed seven men of a neighboring village. As a result Eric the Red was banned from Iceland for a period of three years.
Eric the Red had heard of a land to the North West. He gathered up his family and village into 25 viking boats and headed for Greenland. They were caught in a fierce storm and 11 boats either sank or turned back. Fourteen arrived. They sailed around the southern tip of Greenland and went up a fiord to a great plain attached to a steep clif they called, Brattahlid. Today this plain is called Narsarsuaq his town at the base of the cliff is called Qassiarsuk. Not far from the town of Qaqortaq (Cock ho tock)
Eric the Red had several son's. Two are Leif and Thorwald named after the God of Thunder Thor. Their family was visited by Bjarni Herjulfsson who had been blown off course by a fierce storm and had seen a land to the West that was heavily forested. Bjarni apparently was the first European to see the America's but never set foot on the land.
Leif the son of Eric (Ericsson) and his brother Thorwald set out on an expedition to discover this land and bring back wood to the settlement in Greenland. After visiting several locations in Canada he went south to a land of plains and grapes, or some type of berry. Historians fight over where this location is. However, many believe it is up the Charles river, near Boston, to modern day Waltham. In Waltham they built a settlement that lasted three hundred and fifty years.
Leif after discovering this land sailed back to Greenland, Iceland, and on to Norway where he converted to Christianity. His brother Thorwald went to the Americas to conquer the natives. One minor detail, they killed him after he picked the fight.
Leif went on the return to Greenland as a missionary converting his mother and many others in the settlement of Brattahlid and near by farmers.
The legend that Leif and his brother will return from Waltham back to Greenland, Iceland, and the Viking Islands one thousand years later in a small open boat may have just been fulfilled.
You see, The Last Vikings, as they were nicknamed in Thorshaven, the haven of Thor, were both borm in Waltham just outside Boston and traveled back to the Viking Islands (Faroes) almost exactly a thousand years after Leif and Thorwald.
See www.CrossTheAtlantic.com
