These famous Vikings were explorers, poets, kings, and warriors who helped shape Norse history between the 8th and 11th centuries C.E.
Vikings were renowned Norse warriors and seafarers, explorers and conquerors who conducted raids, traded goods, and explored Europe, Asia, and the North Atlantic between the eighth and 11th centuries.
While they are often portrayed as nothing more than brutal killers, the reality was far more complex. The Vikings were highly skilled craftsmen, sailors, farmers, explorers, and poets with a rich and vibrant culture. And like any culture throughout history, there were some Vikings whose names and deeds would be remembered centuries after their passing.
Read the stories of 13 famous Vikings below.
Erik The Red, The Murderous Viking Whose Banishment Led To The Founding Of Greenland
Bettmann/Getty ImagesA 1688 illustration of Erik the Red from Arngrin Jonas’ Gronlandia.
Erik the Red was one of the greatest Viking explorers, but his path was paved with blood. Born around 950 C.E. in Norway as Erik Thorvaldsson, he gained his nickname from his fiery red hair and equally fiery temperament. When Erik was just 10 years old, his father Thorvald relocated the family to Iceland after being found guilty of manslaughter and facing banishment — a fate Erik himself would later share.
Erik eventually married a wealthy woman named Thjodhild Jörundsdóttir and became prosperous and influential in his community. However, his violent nature would prove his undoing in Iceland.
Around 980, after Erik’s servants accidentally triggered a landslide that destroyed a neighbor’s house, the neighbor’s kinsman killed Erik’s servants in retaliation. Erik responded by killing the kinsman and another man, leading to his banishment from the village.
Public DomainSummer in the Greenland coast circa the year 1000 by Carl Rasmussen (1874).
Two years later, Erik loaned ornamental wooden beams to a settler named Thorgest, who refused to return them. Erik took them by force, then preemptively ambushed Thorgest and his clan, killing two of Thorgest’s sons. This act earned him a three-year banishment from all of Iceland.
Rather than sulk, Erik the Red chose exploration. In 983, after sailing roughly 900 nautical miles across the open ocean, he reached a large land mass and spent two years mapping it. Despite its cold, arid climate, he named it “Greenland” to entice settlers. In 985, Erik returned to Iceland and convinced about 400 people to join him. Of the 25 ships that departed, however, only 14 completed the journey.
Erik lived prosperously in Greenland and raised four children, including his son Leif Erikson. Erik’s life ended rather anticlimactically shortly after the turn of the millennium, either during an epidemic or by falling from his horse.
