The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America

Author

Unknown

Original Works

Saga of Erik the Red·Saga of the Greenlanders

Translators

Magnus Magnusson·Hermann Pálsson

Format

Collection / Anthology

Language

English

Year

2003

Publisher

Penguin

Country

United Kingdom

Pages

126

ISBN

9780140441543

0000

One of the most arresting stories in the history of exploration, these two Icelandic sagas tell of the discovery of America by Norsemen five centuries before Christopher Columbus. Together, the direct, forceful twelfth-century Graenlendinga Saga and the more polished and scholarly Eirik's Saga, written some hundred years later, recount how Eirik the Red founded an Icelandic colony in Greenland and how his son, Leif the Lucky, later sailed south to explore - and if possible exploit - the chance discovery by Bjarni Herjolfsson of an unknown land. In spare and vigorous prose they record Europe's first surprise glimpse of the eastern shores of the North American continent and the natives who inhabited them.— Google Books