Leif+Eriksson

By John A. Rusyniak

Dear Journal

It's the year 1000 and I just set of the coast of Scandinavia with 35 crew members to find new and better land for farming, and to find the land that Bjarni had seen. The first day has passed and we've been sailing comfortably though the coat of Scandinavia. Our longship has been sailing well and I'm quite pleased with your choice of crew, the're good hard workers with a lot of on-going spirit. The first month has gone by and we still havn't found anthing important. The crew members are getting a bit impatient and there wanting to find land quick and easy. We have gone through a couple minor storms, but none have done any serious damage.

The other day we sighted land,but we've only traveled around 600 miles so I dout we're at the "New Land" Bjarni described yet. Land had been sighted though, so we pulled in to shore to see what is of this land. It had many glaciers and many rocks but we got up to the land anyways. It was a cold little island with many rocks and glaciers (as I have mentioned before), but i saw no wrong in claiming it as cold and rocky as it was. I then planted the flag in the ground and i named it Helluland (land of flat stones). After about a week or so we got ready to find the land that I was oringinally planning to end up in. So after some complaining of all of those, so called "land lovers".

We set off, and for the first few days the sea was as calm as ever. Though after very little time we saw another small island. Surley we havn't gone far enough yet ,Bjarni exclaimed as being much farther, I thought. But I saw no harm in coming in to shore, and this place did look a lot more pleasing than the last so I sent a couple scout boats out and they came back with good news. They said that this land had good soil, good game and nice, and many trees for fire wood. So I set out for this land to out find if it really was that good and pleasing. To my surprise this new found land had a bautiful landscape with white sandy beaches and long evergrowing forests. This place I thought to myself, will surely bring itself many visitors, but still it is not the land that Bjarni discribed. I named it Markland (woodland) and set off this time after a longer period of time, spent at Markland.

So I set off again hoping that the land we have all been wanting to find was soon to come. But after about two maybe even three months of traveling I started to become discouraged. I started thinking to myself all the horrible things that could of happened. I was mumbling to my self and I was about to just give up when I heard. "land". I ran upstairs and sure enough there it was. It matched Bjarni's, and I new that it would supply Scandinavia richly. I set ashore and I sent out my best scouter Thykyer to scout the area. After a couple hours he still hadn't come back. I was about to send out a search party. When he came back blabbering his mouth off about how he had found, many grapes. I follwed him and to my amazment there was not just a couple bushes, as I had expected, but there were many grape bushes. I ,then named the land Vinland for all of the grapes we had found there.

Aftter about a year I new it was time to set off, so we got our stuff (a couple pounds of grapes,salmon, and deer meat), and off we went. On our way back we caught sight of a man holding on to some driftwood for his life, I helped him into our ship, fed him, and traveled back to europe. My trip had been succsesfull.

Leif's Route is in the Lighter pink.

Extra Facts 1. He was born around 975 2. died around 1020 3.Left around 1000 4. Arived around 10015. Married Thorgunna 6.had one son Thorkeil Leifsson 7.First european to arrive in N.A 8. Was a pastor for Cristianity after his journy 9. Traveled in a longboat (viking boat) 10. Helluland is now called bafin's island 11.Markland is now Labrador

Longships and navigational tools. <A sun-stone <A Longship. (snekke) Longships the boats used by vikings were very interesting. The average speed of viking ships varied from ship to ship but lay in the range of 5-10 knots and the maximal speed of a longship under favorable conditions was around 15 knots. Has a shallow half hull designed for speed. Later versions sported a rectangular sail. When rowing, the crew sat on sea chests (chests containing their personal possessions) in order to save space. There were many types of different longships like the Skuldelev Ships the biggest of the ships could carry up to 70-80 men and was around 95 feet. Another one is the drekar ships (or the dragon ships) these were used by raiders and plunderers (these are the ones people refer to when thinking of vikings). The last one is the Snekke, the smallest of the ships (56 feet length,8.5 width) they carried 25 men and were probaly the most common of the ships vikings used. Vikings used sun stones in order to find their way through the sea. They also used Polorized Light and the Horizon light to find their way around. Sometimes Vikings used birds to find land by clipping them and then letting them go, the vikings would then follow the bird to land.