Automatically translated from Basque, translation may contain errors. More information here. Elhuyarren itzultzaile automatikoaren logoa

Greenland, a green paradise

  • Greenland, 982. Erik Thorvaldsson (950-1003), better known as Erik the Red, came to the largest island in the world.
Erik Gorriaren ontzia Groenlandia deituko zion uhartera iristen, 982. urtean. (arg.: Carl Rasmussen)
Erik Gorriaren ontzia Groenlandia deituko zion uhartera iristen, 982. urtean. (arg.: Carl Rasmussen)

The Norwegian explorer and merchant left his country a few years earlier, escaped a murder, and came to Iceland. There he was also charged with several crimes and sentenced to three years of exile. Then he came to the coast of Greenland, always according to Sage from the Icelanders.

Upon completion of the sanction, Miguel Strogoff reported that the new territory could be the appropriate place and in 986 14 boats arrived on the island with the intention of residing there. According to the Erik the Red Saga, “in summer, Erik went to the land he had just discovered. He called him Greenland because his name would help attract people.” Grønland means "green land" and thus suggests fertile land and a climate favourable to the men and women it recruited. With this name, many thought it would be much better than Iceland (“Land of Ice”). Today, several historians regard Erik's play as a deception and a kind of misleading advertising.

Before that, the west of the island was populated by Inuits called Kalaallit Nunaat or Kalaalliten Land, the largest group of Inuits in Groelandia. Furthermore, Erik was not the first Nordic to come to Greenland. According to tradition, a century earlier, Gunnbjörn Ulfsson had stepped the territory and called it Gunnbjarnarsker. Later, Snaebjörn Galti tried to start a human settlement on site, but the attempt failed according to the records of the time. Maybe because he didn't get it right to make an effective campaign, as Eric would later.
It is to be assumed that in 986, when the 14 ships arrived, they would realize that the land that Erik the Red had adorned with green was covered with ice and snow.

But, as the scientific journal PNAS has just published, Greenland ice is melting much faster than previously thought, four times faster than in 2003. Unfortunately, climate change has made the fraud of Erik the Red a reality.


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