THE VIKINGS

St Brendan the Celtic Monk and perhaps many more before him, left Ireland in a skin covered boat called a Curragh, they settled Iceland, Greenland and North America. In the years of 500-700 B.C.

People have crossed the Atlantic in kayaks, rowboats, and simple rafts.  The Vikings sailed to Ireland, The Vikings had used their long ships to expand their horizons Gardar Svarvasson discovered Iceland in 861, Norse settlers started arriving shortly later, only to find Celtic monks from Ireland already there. As a matter of a fact they were there for centuries according to some records.

Iceland was the home of Eric the Red not Norway as many historians mistakenly reported.  In 982 Eric set sail for Greenland and landed at Mid Glacier, now called Blacks arc. He explored the coastal area of Greenland and settled permanently in Tunugdliarfik on the Fjord on the south western coast. He was the first Icelander to settle Greenland but alas the Celtic Monks beat him their also.  In 831 Pope Gregory IV, declared that Greenland would be administered by the Archbishop of Hamburg.

A short time later thirty five long boats left Iceland, for Eric’s homestead on Greenland with one thousand settlers but only fourteen ships with four hundred settlers arrived, in the year 986BC.

A year later Bjarni Herjulfsson set sail to join his father in Eric the Reds new settlement but was blown off course, and discovered Cape Cod, progressed up the coast to Nova Scotia and New Found land before arriving at the Fjord at Tunugdliarfik.

Eric’s new found settlement survived for close to 400 years growing to support 16 parish churches, a monastery, and a convent.

Thirteen years after Eric settled Tunugdliarfik he sent his son Leif to Norway where the King forced him to convert to Christianity, under threat of death for his entire crew.  After getting sailing directions from Bjani, Leif set sail for the New World, stopping first just North of St Johns in an area called flat rock, where he stayed for a short while then on to Nova Scotia, and then to Martha’s Vineyard   where they built shelters and wintered over, collecting grapes and other vegetation. The Year was 1003.

Over the next several years several trips were made to the southern New England area and as far south as Long Island. Trading began and many items that were indigenous to North America started showing up in Greenland and Norway. Skins of marmot, otter, beaver, wolverine, lynx, sable and black bear, anthracite coal, trees for lumber from Nova Scotia were sent to Greenland for building.

Three hundred fifty to four hundred years later there was tension, hostilities in between the Norse population and the indigenous populantes (Eskimos) resulting in the complete resettlement of the Norse population to Vinland sometime, between 1335 and 1345 BC.

In 1354 Norwegian King Magnus dispatches Sir Paul Knutson to Greenland to check on the welfare of the village.

...we desire to make known to you Sir Paul Knutson that you are to select men that shall go in the koru (Royal Trading Vessel) ...from among my bodyguards and also from the retainers of other men, whom you wish to take on the voyage, and that Commandant Paul Knutson will have full authority to select such men that he feels are best qualified to accompany him, whether officers or men....

The objective of the expedition was to bring apostates back to Christianity.  They first departed for Greenland, where they found the village abandoned and then their fleet split into three groups. The first to remain between the St. Lawrence River and Hudson Bay.  The second group penetrated deep inland, and the third group, stayed at Leif Erickson’s original colony at Norembega.

In 1898 a Minnesota farmer was clearing trees on his farm when he discovered a rune stone with an inscription on it which has become known to history as the Kensington Stone. Hjalmar Holand translated the inscription

....We are eight Swedes and twenty two Norwegians on an exploratory journey from Vinland round about west. We had camp by a lake with two skerries one day’s journey north from the stone. We were out and fished one day.  After we came home we found ten of our men red with blood and dead. Ave Virgo Maria save us from evil!  We have ten men by the sea to look after our ships. Fourteen day’s journey from this island in the year of our lord 1362.

According to Professors storm and Nansen who claim there is conclusive evidence that the remnants of the expedition returned to Norway in 1364.

ST. CLAIR / SINCLAIR

The Sinclair’s of Scotland were Vikings. They were descendants of Rognvald the Earl of More, in Norway. Earl Rognvald fought alongside King Harald Fine-Hair, who made him Earl of North More, South More and Romesdale all which lay in the vicinity of the modern town of Trondheim Norway.