Þorfinnr Karlsefni

Thorfinn Karlsefni is the leader of the great attempt to actually settle Vínland — the Icelandic merchant who, marrying the much-travelled Guðríð, mounted the most serious of the Norse expeditions to the new world in the west. With ships, livestock, and households of men and women, Karlsefni sailed to plant a real colony on the American coast, not merely to explore it: his people built houses, traded with the native Skrælingar, and there Guðríð bore their son Snorri, the first child of European descent born in the Americas. But trade soured into violence, the Skrælingar came in force, and the settlers were too few and too far from home to hold a hostile new world. Karlsefni judged it soberly and led his people home. He is the saga world's image of the clear-eyed colonist — the man who came closest to making Vínland Norse, and who had the sense to know when it could not be done.