Gunnbjørn Fjeld

It is from this book, and from the old sagas, that we learn how the Norsemen came to the coast of America.

It seems that about 900 a certain man called Gunbjorn was driven westward in a great storm and thrown on the rocky shore of an ice-bound country where he spent the winter.

Gunbjorn reached home safely and never tried again to find this new land.

But, long after his death, the story that there was land farther west still lingered among the settlers in Iceland and the Orkneys and in other homes of the Norsemen.

Some time after Gunbjorn's voyage, it happened that a very bold and determined man, called Erik the Red, who lived in the Orkneys, was made an outlaw for having killed several men in a quarrel.

Erik fled westward over the seas about the year 980, and he came to a new country with great rocky bays and fjords as in Norway.

There were no trees, but the slopes of the hillsides were bright with grass, so he called the country Greenland, as it is called to this day.