Eric the Red - Anne Millard

Part of a series which looks at explorers whose discoveries helped to change the world, and together they chart 1000 years of seafaring, exploration and discovery. Each book describes the background to these journeys, focusing on the economic pressures and technological advances which combined to make them possible. The books also examine the native societies that the explorers encountered, and assesses the long-term impact of their discoveries at home and abroad.;The Vikings are known as seafaring warriors, but many of their sea journeys were made to find new land to farm and new markets to trade with. At the end of the 10th century, Eric the Red sailed from Norway and found Greenland, and persauded other Vikings to settle there. His son Leof was probably the first European to set foot on American soil. This book follows these and other Vikings across the Atlantic and to the Mediterranean, and traces the history of their settlements, including the discovery in the 19th century of many fake artefacts said to prove the Viking sagas. The contents include: travel on land; Viking gods; boat-building; merchant ships; boat burials; navigation; crime and punishment; Greenland settlements; the battle for England; fakes; archaeology.;Horizon boxes at the end of some chapters list people, places and events which readers can research to find out more about the period.