Who are the ancestors of Icelanders and Greenlanders, and who discovered these two islands?

In the journey of human expansion and adventure, there are fewer and fewer virgin lands on the earth, and those wild places where the climate seems unbearable for survival have gradually become blue oceans. Today we will talk about two huge islands in the Arctic Circle. There is a legend behind their discovery!

Let’s take a look at Iceland first. Iceland is a lonely island floating in the northern North Atlantic Ocean, very close to the Arctic Circle. It is located between Greenland and Norway. It is the second largest island in Europe. White snow and ice cover these two huge uninhabited islands all year round. If the adventurous Vikings hadn't discovered them, the civilizational history of Iceland and Greenland would have been delayed for who knows how many years. Pirates discovered them, developed them, and expanded the scope of human activities to the inaccessible vicinity of the Arctic.

According to historical research, two Vikings first discovered Iceland at the end of the 8th century AD. They were the Norwegian Nadod and the Swedish Gardar. When they were sailing in the North Sea, the ships drifted to the coast of Iceland one after another due to strong winds. Later, when they returned to their hometown, they told people a lot about the island. Since then, Iceland has been known to more people. After this, another adventurous Norwegian Viking, Raven, took his whole family and many people who were willing to follow him to land in Iceland.

The winter on this island was extremely cold. They found it unbearable, but they finally got through it. For this reason, they called the island "Iceland". When they left Iceland to go home, many people firmly stated that they would never return to this cold island again, but some people had a very good impression of Iceland. In their mouths, Iceland was described as beautiful. And a paradise of opulence, so much so that butter flows on every blade of grass. This kind of praise reached the ears of a Viking nobleman, Ingolf Arnarsson of Norway, and aroused his infinite yearning. So Ingolf made the decision in 874 AD to live in Iceland.

In fact, there is a reason why Ingulf left Norway and settled in Iceland. At that time, the two sons of a famous pirate leader in the country played a trick on Ingulf's sister and the fiancée of his brother Leif. Helka and the angry Ingolf killed the two evil-doing gangsters. This caused a big disaster. He had nowhere to hide in Norway, and he had no choice but to find a safe place to avoid the pirate leader's pursuit. It happened that stories about Iceland were spreading a lot, so he decided to live in this place where butter flows on every blade of grass. After sailing nearly 700 nautical miles in the storm-torn North Atlantic, they finally arrived in Iceland.

Before setting off, Ingolf led his family to make full preparations. Their first expedition was just to verify whether Iceland was suitable for settlement. So when they arrived in Iceland, they just built some extremely simple cabins. They spent a cold winter in Iceland. Although the winter there was a roaring wind and heavy snowfall, there were occasional warm periods due to the action of a warm ocean current. He was very satisfied with this and made up his mind to develop in Iceland. . So they returned to Norway again and decided that Ingolf would collect all the items needed for the family to move to Iceland to ensure that they could live a comfortable life on the ice-covered island.

However, in the Viking concept, "raising" and "robbing" are completely equivalent. After Ingolf arrived in Ireland, he showed his appearance as a pirate. He ran around frantically, grabbing almost everything he saw. What made him most proud of it was grabbing a huge and sharp sword. With this huge sword, he went around attacking and killing, and he was invincible. This huge sword made him famous, and he got the title of "Sword Ingolf". At the same time, on his way back to Norway, he relied on the coercion of the sword to capture 10 Irish people and took them back to Norway as slaves. After Ingolf of the Sword returned to Norway, his family, together with some neighboring free residents and slaves snatched from Ireland, set out on two ships to sail to Iceland. Since then, large numbers of Norwegian Vikings and Scandinavians have settled in Iceland.

The discovery of Greenland also has its own story: the first person to discover Greenland was a Norwegian named Erik the Red who was sentenced to three years of exile for murder and had to leave Iceland. .

According to records, Eric himself has obvious characteristics: an excessively rosy face, bright red hair, and a jumpy personality. Coupled with his violent and cold bloodthirsty nature, he has the name "Red Hair". Rick? That nickname.

In the eyes of Norwegians, the Eric family's long-standing tradition is to advocate force. He and his father left their native Norway because they committed murder. After settling in Iceland, the red-haired Eric did not change at all the bloodthirsty hobby he had always maintained in Norway. He led a group of murderous demon kings. Just because he had some unpleasantness with his neighbors, he caused the neighbors' homes to bleed into a river of blood. For this reason, he committed murder again and was sentenced to three years of exile. It would be impossible to stay in Iceland any longer, and Eric knew that he had become a public ostrac in both Norway and Iceland. Therefore, he was determined to carve out a safer and more prosperous territory of his own. He wanted to become the leader of an independent kingdom.

After a long period of wandering at sea, he and his soldiers discovered a coast covered with thick ice. Landing on the shore with ice floes was an adventure. So he continued sailing along the southwest coast and finally found a pleasant bay. The terrain of this place can block the cold winds from the Arctic direction, and green plants will grow during the short summer in the Arctic Circle. So they abandoned the ship and landed ashore and built large houses. Eric understood that although the winter here was more severe and unbearable than in Iceland, and he had to endure the biting cold wind mixed with ice and snow, this wilderness of ice and snow finally belonged to his own territory. When Eric's exile was over, he returned to Iceland. Before leaving, Eric named this area full of green vegetation "Greenland", which means "green land".

When Eric returned to Iceland, he told everyone he met how beautiful and fertile the green land was. His kind words moved the hearts of many people, and many people planned to follow him to the new territory to pan for gold. There were 25 ships full of immigrants, plus all their belongings, livestock and daily necessities. Under the unified command of Eric, they left Iceland in 986 AD and sailed to a new place of residence. Unfortunately, they were hit by a storm, many ships sank, and some had to turn around and return to Iceland. In the end, only 14 ships arrived in Greenland, and more than 400 immigrants successfully reached their destination in one day. .

Vikings were born with the virtue of hard work and hard work. But the natural conditions in Greenland really made them feel desperate. At the beginning, the narrow strip of grassland where the immigrants chose to settle was located just above the fjord, facing the glacier, which flowed regularly, which often brought disaster to their stone houses and huts. It is impossible for roots to sow crops during the short summer. The only food they could eat was fish, and the meat and milk provided by the emaciated cattle and sheep brought from Iceland. Although these immigrants from Iceland also need a capable leader to lead, Eric admires "great honor" and likes everyone to recognize his authority.

But Eric did not deliberately turn himself into an autocratic monarch. Instead, he adopted a more democratic governance in accordance with the Viking tradition. The islanders quickly established a management structure similar to that in Iceland, and corresponding laws were quickly established. With this guarantee, the colony developed steadily, and thus attracted more Vikings from Iceland. They survived tenaciously on this white island. Many years later, people knew It is the largest island on earth, covering an area of ??2.175 million square kilometers, which is equivalent to more than 20 times the area of ??Iceland and more than 5 times the area of ??Norway.

The people of Iceland have gone away. Today’s Icelanders and Greenlanders should be grateful to their ancestors who pioneered in distant times. Although they were rough pirates, they braved hardships and dangers to create a new world. , without them, today's Iceland and Greenland may belong to something else.