Grœnland (Greenland)

Greenland is the far western colony — the staging-post at the edge of the habitable world, founded by Erik the Red after he was outlawed from Iceland for killing. Erik gave it its hopeful, salesman's name to draw settlers to what is mostly ice, and a small Norse society took root on its green southern fjords, centred on his seat at Brattahlid. From Greenland the boldest voyage of all set out: it was Greenlanders — Leif Eriksson, Bjarni, Karlsefni — who sailed on west and found Vínland, the shores of North America. The colony lived for centuries on the margin, herding, hunting walrus, and trading ivory, before the cold and the distance finally swallowed it. Greenland is the corpus's image of human reach at its limit — a foothold of farms and a little church on the rim of the known, from which men looked one ocean further west and went.