Biography of leif erikson

Leif Erikson’s Early Life and Conversion to Christianity

Leif Erikson (spelling variations include Eiriksson, Erikson or Ericson), known as “Leif the Lucky,” was the second of three sons of the famed Norse explorer Erik the Red, who established a settlement in Greenland after being expelled from Iceland around A.D.

980. The date of Leif Erikson’s birth is uncertain, but he is believed to have grown up in Greenland. 

According to the 13th-century Icelandic Eiriks saga (or “Saga of Erik the Red”), Erikson sailed from Greenland to Norway around 1000.

On the way, he was believed to have stopped in the Hebrides, where he had a son, Thorgils, with Thorgunna, daughter of a local chief. In Norway, King Olaf I Tryggvason converted Erikson to Christianity, and a year later sent him back to Greenland with a commission to spread the faith among the settlers there.