Bjarni Herjólfsson

Bjarni Herjólfsson is, in the Greenlanders' Saga, the first European to lay eyes on North America — and the man who, having found it, did not bother to land. Sailing from Iceland to join his father in the new Greenland colony, Bjarni was blown far off course in fog and came upon strange coasts to the southwest: a low, forested land, then a flat wooded one, then a high and icy one — none of them Greenland. His crew begged him to put ashore and explore, but Bjarni, intent only on reaching his father, refused even to set foot on the new land, and sailed on north until he found Greenland. He is one of history's great anticlimaxes: the discoverer who would not explore. But his sighting planted the idea, and it was his account that later sent Leif Eriksson back along the coast to actually land. Bjarni — the man who saw a new continent and turned the ship away.