Vinland the Good

Name: Vinland the Good
Rating: 2.5 (5 reviews)

by Henry Treece

First published 1967

Amazon

2.5(5)

From the settlements of Greenland, Leif Erikson and other Norse voyagers sail west in search of timber, pasture and land described by earlier travellers. The unfamiliar coasts offer abundance but also uncertainty, and each attempt to establish a base depends on a small community surviving distance, weather and internal disagreement.

Drawing chiefly on the Greenland saga tradition, Treece presents the discovery of Vinland as a sequence of exploratory voyages rather than a single heroic arrival. Freydís Eiríksdóttir and the other settlers reveal competing responses to danger and opportunity, while contact with Indigenous inhabitants makes permanent colonisation increasingly precarious.