Viking voyages: Eirik Raudes Land

Even by Viking standards, Erik the Red (Eirik Raude in Norwegian) was particularly badly behaved. So off-putting was his demeanour that he was exiled from his native Norway and fled to Iceland. There, his marauding manner earned Erik the Red as bad a reputation as that he had enjoyed at home. After a particularly heavy night of Icelandic drinking in 982, which led to blows being exchanged and the death of several of Erik’s neighbours, the unhappy mariner was invited to set sail again and instructed not to return to Iceland for three years. So Erik travelled west to Greenland. Scholars suggest that the allusion to ‘red’ in Erik’s name was inspired by his unruly mop of ginger hair, but it might equally have applied to his fiery temper.

Three years exploring the coast of Greenland might well have mellowed Erik to some degree. Certainly by the time he returned to Iceland in the summer of 985, he had refined his communication skills to the extent that he was able to act as an inspiring advocate for the new land which he called Greenland. Indeed, Erik was arguably the most successful real estate agent since Moses gave the property market in Canaan a big boost (though admittedly in the matter of the Exodus from Egypt, the armies in pursuit gave the Children of Israel a strong incentive to follow Moses). Erik did for Greenland what property developers have always done. He played a little light with the truth, emphasising the serenity of the sea views and the green pastures (and failing to mention the icebergs). Indeed, his very choice of the name Greenland is one of the most preposterous exaggerations in history.

Whether the winter of 985 was particular harsh in Iceland we do not know. But over those long dark months, Erik worked a little magic in communities around the coast of Iceland, pushing the idea that life could be a whole lot better if folk invested their energies with Erik in Greenland. Erik was so engaging an advocate of Greenland that in the summer of 986, a fleet of two dozen ships left Iceland to create a new colony in Greenland.

Had Erik not already christened the new land, there would surely have been a good chance that the new territory might have been named in his honour: Eirik Raudes Land (Erik the Red Land). Yet almost a millennium later, Eirik Raudes Land did make a fleeting appearance on various maps.

A plaque at Antarctichavn in memory of Helge Ingstad, who served as governor of Eirik Raudes Land during the territory’s short existence (photo © Jerzy Strzelecki).

In the last issue of hidden europe, we dwelt a little on Norway’s impertinent adventures in the late 1920s, when the Oslo government filed some extraordinary land claims. Some of Norway’s acquisitions from that period such as her 1928 claim on Bouvetøya (in the South Atlantic) and her 1929 claim on Jan Mayen (between Svalbard and Greenland), have survived the test of history.

There was no surer way of ruffling Danish feathers than having upstart Norway claim a big chunk of Greenland. But that’s what happened in 1931, when trapper, meteorologist and Arctic adventurer Hallvard Devold raised the Norwegian flag in Myggbukta. Devold’s expedition was backed by scientist and explorer Adolf Hoel, who was intent on re-establishing what he judged to be a historic polar empire for Norway — a man whose reputation was latter much tarnished, less for his eccentric interpretation of mediaeval history but more for his active collaboration with the Nazis.

Within a fortnight of Devold’s telegram being received in Oslo, the Norwegian Parliament had unanimously endorsed the claim to Eirik Raudes Land, approving the name without comment. Did they really not think it a trifle odd that here was a new Norwegian territory named after a tenth-century thug? Helge Ingstad was promptly installed as governor of the territory and despatched to Myggbukta with a supply of Norwegian flags and no great budget (but presumably with instructions to develop the place in a manner that might befit a capital city). Ingstad was still a young man, just 31 years old and a qualified lawyer, and he had established a reputation in Norway for his canny understanding of the Arctic. His 1931 book Pelsjegerliv (literally ‘A Trapper’s Life’), recounting his experiences of living and travelling with trappers in the Canadian North, had been very well received in Norway. In 1933 Pelsjegerliv was translated into English with the title Land of Feast and Famine. It remains a classic piece of travel writing on the Arctic and is happily still in print.

Ingstad quickly decided that Myggbukta was too barren and exposed and decamped to a more sheltered spot further south at Antarctichavn. There he busied himself doing what governors do. He started building a brave new Norwegian outpost on the inhospitable coast of eastern Greenland. Reality intervened just a few months later when the International Court in The Hague declared Norway’s occupation of eastern Greenland illegal and ordered that Eirik Raudes Land had no status in international law. Norway was no inclined to contest the decision of the court and Ingstad was instructed to make a dignified retreat to Oslo. A memorial to Ingstad in Antarctichavn still stands, recalling this bizarre episode in international politics. The Norwegian meteorological station at Myggbukta remained in operation until 1940, when it was destroyed by Allied bombing.

Eirik Raudes Land disappeared quickly from maps and nowadays is largely forgotten. Ingstad’s diaries from the period (see quote at top of page opposite) give a dispassionate account of life in this most oddball of polities. Sadly, they have never been translated into English. But Ingstad himself did not slip into oblivion. He went on to achieve considerable fame for his work with his wife Anne Stine Ingstad, an archaeologist, in mapping early Viking settlement in eastern North America. It was Anne and Helge who in 1960 discovered the important site at L’Anseaux- Meadows in northern Newfoundland which attests to early Norse voyages to the New World. And here there is a link back to Erik the Red. It was Erik’s son Leif Eriksson who first made landfall at L’Anse-aux-Meadows. Leif was by all accounts more even-tempered than his dad. His voyages in the seas beyond Greenland pre-date Columbus’ journeys to the New World by almost five hundred years.