"Nearly a millenium ago," Hodding has told us, "in the summer of the year 1000, Leif Ericsson and his crew left their homes in southern Greenland in search of more wooded and fertile land. Our voyage this summer will follow Leif's route as exactly as possible. We'll start in southern Greenland at Eric's old farm, follow his trail north, west and then south."

Leif Ericsson was the son of Eric the Red. Eric was a pagan, but his wife and Leif were Christian. (But you knew that.) Perhaps you didn't know that women were very much a part of the Viking travels and treated by the men almost as equals.
The last known Viking voyage to Vinland (Leif Ericsson's name for the land he discovered in North America), in fact, had the first woman leader, Freydis, Leif Ericsson's half sister. It's written that Freydis ruthlessly asserted her authority by murdering all the other women of the party with her own ax. So much for the competition!

Most of our impressions of Vikings are obtained from illustrations that portray them as warriors. Which, it turns out, is about as accurate as forming an impression of America based on illustrations of cowboys and Indians.

"The Vikings who came to America were not the warriors," Hodding insists. "In fact, one of the reasons they didn't stay in America once they got there was because they were outfought by the native Americans who were living along the Canadian coast at the time. The Norsemen who came to America were looking for lumber and for better land, for grazing and for farming.
"But they were certainly adventurous, going out on the open ocean at a time like that as they did. For example, when the Vikings went from Iceland to Greenland, it's known there were 25 ships that set out, but only 14 made it. Some turned around, sure, but others were lost at sea."

Writer and adventurer Hodding Carter is one of the better storytellers we know. And that's fitting, as he follows the route of the Vikings and that intrepid Norseman, Leif Ericsson. Because the Vikings are famed for their telling of stories, spinning of sagas, weaving of legends.
Stories and poems were told from memory and passed down from father to son, mother to daughter. Kings even had their own poets.

The Viking alphabet was called futhark after the first six letters. The alphabet totalled sixteen letters, most of which consisted of straight lines and were easliy carved. The Vikings celebrated bravery, their own and others, by raising memorial stones, carved with pictures and writing in runic letters.
Because the Vikings and Norsemen sailed so widely, carved examples of their alphabet have been found in widely scattered locations.

For 300 years, from the 8th to 11th centuries, the Vikings took the world by storm. In search of land, slaves and precious metals, the brave warriors set sail from their homes in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. They voyaged as far east as Baghdad, as far west as America.
But the Norsemen who reached America were not warriors but settlers. In fact, they were outfought by Native Americans and retreated.

The Vikings relied on their knowledge of seabirds, fish, winds and wave patterns to find their way. But whenever possible, they sailed within sight of land.