Which 10th century explorer founded an Icelandic colony which he named 'Greenland', to encourage people to settle there?
History of Greenland Icelandic, "Grønland" in modern Danish and Norwegian) - in effect as a marketing device. Both the "Book of Icelanders" ("Íslendingabók", a medieval account of Icelandic history from the 12th century onward) and the "Saga of Eric the Red" ("Eiríks saga rauða", a medieval account of his life and of the Norse settlement of Greenland) state ""He named the land Greenland, saying that people would be eager to go there if it had a good name"." According to the sagas, the Icelanders had exiled Erik the Red for three years for committing murder 982. He sailed to Greenland, where he explored
History of Greenland worn down by whetting. This knife they took with them for display." According to a 2009 study, "there is no evidence for perceptible contact between Iceland and Greenland after the mid fifteenth century... It is clear that neither Danish and Norwegian nor Icelandic public functionaries were aware that the Norse Greenland colony had ceased to exist. Around 1514, the Norwegian archbishop Erik Valkendorf (Danish by birth, and still loyal to Christian II) planned an expedition to Greenland, which he believed to be part of a continuous northern landmass leading to the New World with all its wealth, and which he