Thorfinn Karlsefni
Icelandic explorer · Iceland · Historical Figures · Lived 980 to 1020 · aged 40
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Something wrong?Icelandic explorer who tried to plant roots in North America five centuries before Columbus - and learned the hard way that some places aren't ready to be settled.
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Around 1010, Thorfinn Karlsefni Thórdarson sailed from Iceland following the route Leif Eriksson had charted to Vinland. He brought his wife Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir and a group of followers with ambitions to do what no Norse expedition had managed: stay. The settlement didn't take. Whatever combination of climate, distance, or resistance they met, it sent them back across the Atlantic, leaving Vinland to the coast and the centuries.
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