Born late 970s,
Iceland
Died 1020,
Greenland

The most reliable evidence of Leif Eriksson’s exploration of North America remains the sagas written almost 200 years after the events they describe. The two sagas chronicling the explorations of Leif Eriksson and other Norsemen are Erik the Red’s Saga, which credits Eriksson with bringing Christianity to Greenland in 999 at the request of Norway’s King Olaf I, and Greenlanders’ Saga, which credits the discovery of Vinland to Bjarni Herjolfsson and not Eriksson, who was its first explorer and name-giver. Scholars believe the two sagas do not share the same origin, and were written independently of each other, sometime in the thirteenth century and most likely after 1263, using older stories from the oral tradition.

The son of Erik the Red, the founder of Greenland, Leif Eriksson was probably born in Iceland in the late 970s...