The Saga of Erik the Red

« From the Fact Files
The Saga of Erik the Red
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Published in	The Transformers issue 21
First published	29th June, 1985
Writer	Y. Duval
Artist	J.M. Woehrel
Letters	uncredited
Translation	uncredited
Chronology	Nearly two thousand years ago

An exiled Viking finds a new world when he's left with norway home.

Synopsis

It is nearly two thousand years ago. Exiled from his homeland of Norway, Erik plans to set up a new home in Iceland, not only for his wife Thjodhilde and son Leif, but for the sake of his father. Erik single-handedly begins work on constructing his homestead, despite heckling from his new neighbour. Needing to make a journey to his brother's house for some tools, Erik leaves his wooden beams in the neighbour's care... but on his return, Erik finds the man and his sons using the wood as their own. Enraged, Erik attacks his neighbour, and the sons join in. After several minutes of fighting, the man discovers that Erik has killed both of his sons. That night, the council of elders sentences Erik and his family to three years of exile.

The next morning, Erik and his family pack up to follow a path taken by Gunnbjorn generations ago, oversea and far out to the west. His ship is manned by a few of his most faithful friends – though they now refer to him as Erik the Red due to the blood on his hands. After a few days at sea, the Vikings discover a fertile plain they name the Green Land.

For three years, Erik and his friends live in harmony. With his exile expired, Erik returns to Iceland to encourage more people to join the colony. Five hundred Vikings are convinced, and they go with Erik in twenty-five longships, though ten of the ships are sunk in a violent storm.

Many more years of peace and prosperity pass in the Greenland, though not without a shortage of wood. Erik's son Leif, now a grown man, reminds him of a time fifteen years ago when Bjarni had been blown off course to a nearby land, suggesting it to be ripe with the resources they need. Erik is now too old to be leading an expedition, but his men insist on his command. On the day of their departure, Erik's horse gets spooked and he falls. Though unhurt, Erik takes this to be an omen from the gods. He names Leif leader in his place.

As Leif and thirty-five men depart for new lands, Erik implores the spirits of their ancestors to grant him safe passage. And so, long before Christopher Columbus, the Vikings explored North America.

Featured characters

Team Erik	Antagonists	Others
Erik the Red Thjodhilde Leif Eriksson Erik's faithful friends Five hundred Vikings	Erik the Red's neighbour Erik the Red's neighbour's sons	The council of elders

Quotes

"If your family hadn't been exiled from Norway, you wouldn't have to sweat like this now!"
"Don't you worry... when I've finished, you'll wish this house I'm building was yours!"

—The neighbour and Erik engage in some banter.

Notes

Original printing

• "La saga d'Erik Randa", Le Journal de Tintin, 17th January 1984
  • French issue number: NT436
  • Belgian issue number: TB03/84

As with other From the Fact Files stories, this comic was produced for the long-running Franco-Belgian magazine Le Journal de Tintin. No personnel are credited by Marvel UK, though the first page includes a notice reading "Copyright ©1984 Lombard/J.M. Woehrel, Y. Duval." – Le Lombard being Tintin's publishing company, and Woehrel and Duval being the artist and writer, respectively.

"The Saga of Erik the Red" appeared in The Transformers issue 21, translated and re-lettered by unknown parties. Both the contents page and the first page of the story refers to the reprint as "From the Fact Files".

Real-life references

It really happened! There was indeed a Norse colonisation of North America. The strip takes its name from the real Saga of Erik the Red, a written history of the Vikings' exploration.

• Erik the Red is based on Erik Thorvaldsson. His farm is Eiríksstaðir, and his father, Thorvald Asvaldsson, is also alluded to. Erik's wife, whose name is spelled here as "Thjodhilde", also comes from history; her name varies from the Anglicised "Thjodhild" and "Thjodhildur" to the very Norse "Þjóðhildur", with her surname being Jorundsdottir.
• Erik swears by the great Thor.
• The incident with Erik's neighbour is based on a real conflict between Erik and a man named Thorgest in which the latter's two sons did indeed die. Erik is exiled by what is referred to as a council of elders here, but was historically referred to as a thing.
• Gunnbjorn is Gunnbjörn Ulfsson, a Norwegian-born explorer who first sighted Greenland between 45 and 100 years before Erik shored up – albeit by accident.
• Erik returned after his exile expired and told tales of Greenland, a name chosen specifically to sound more appealing than Iceland.
• Bjarni is Bjarni Herjólfsson, a Norse-Icelandic explorer whose ship was blown off course, leading him to sight the Americas, though he refused to shore up on the unknown land.
• Erik's son is Leif Erikson, a.k.a. "Leif the Lucky". Leif took over the expedition after Erik fell from his horse, discovering an area of North America referred to by the Vikings as Vinland, theorised to be modern-day Newfoundland.
• Erik makes much of Leif believing in the Christian God. This is historically accurate, as both Leif and Thjodhilde took to Christianity, with the latter commissioning the first church on American soil. Erik himself remained a devout Norse pagan.
• And then there's this icehole.

Artwork and technical errors

Historical inaccuracies

• Let's get the major one out of the way – the opening caption's "nearly two thousand years ago" is flagrantly erroneous, as Erik's journey to Greenland took place around 982 A.D.. Perhaps it was an error in translation that should have read "nearly one thousand years ago", but until the original language version surfaces, we just don't know. The mistake becomes particularly egregious concerning Leif's adoption of Christianity about a thousand years before the religion reached Iceland.
• The opening panel suggests that it was the adult Erik, along with Thjodhilde and Leif, who were exiled from Norway to Iceland. It was his father Thorvald that was banished from Norway after committing manslaughter, and he settled in Iceland when Erik was ten years old. Thjodhilde was born in Iceland.
• Leif is depicted as the only child of Erik and Thjodhilde; in addition to his birth postdating Erik's arrival in Iceland, he had three siblings in Freydis, Thorvald, and Thorstein.
• Erik's dispute with Thorgest was not over simple beams, but rather setstokkr – ornamented pillars inherited from his father – that he had left in Thorgest's care while he finished building his new home. Thorgest refused to give them back, leading to a fight in which Erik killed a number of men including Thorgest's sons. Erik is not known to have a brother.
• Gunnbjörn is said to be the son of "Ulf Drake"; his patronymic surname was either "Ulfsson" or "Ulf-Krakuson", so where the "Drake" part comes from is unknown.
• Erik was not called "the Red" because of the blood on his hands but because he was a ginge.
• Of the twenty-five longships to set off for Greenland, eleven sank, rather than ten.

Other notes

• This is the second Fact Files in a row where someone falls off a horse in connection with (dis)embarking a boat.