Books
Phase
Norse Greenland and Vinland
c. 985–1020 CE
Late in the tenth century, Norse settlers led by Erik the Red established farming communities in Greenland after travelling west from Iceland. From Greenland, expeditions associated with Leif Erikson, Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir and Freydís Eiríksdóttir reached lands remembered in the Icelandic sagas as Vinland, Helluland and Markland.
William T. Vollmann’s The Ice-Shirt retells this movement through saga, myth and speculative history. Freydís and Gudrid become opposing centres of a narrative that connects migration, environmental danger, rivalry and the first recorded encounter between Europeans and Indigenous North Americans.
