Sheila Schwartzs age 11 of Dorchester, Mass.., for her question:

Who was Eric the Red?

Eric of the red hair was banished from his native Iceland. He had killed a neighbor  a fight. This was the law and order of the Norsemen some 975 years ago. Eric loaded boats and took his family, his cattle and his possessions. They sailed north to a bleak island, Eric the Red named the place of his exile Greenland.

In three years Eric returned to Iceland but not to stay. He took back with him 500 settlers to live with him on the fringes of Greenland's glaciers. All this we know from the Norse Saga of Eric the Red. The same story retold carefully through the generations, tells us of Eric the Red’s young sons ‑ the Ericsons.

Yes one of them was Leif Ericson known to his friends and to us as Leif the Lucky. The Saga tells how Eric the Reds Greenland colony grew and thrived. And it tells how his sons went a‑Viking. Some 956 years ago young Leif returned home to tell of a forested land to the far west.  He brought some timbers along to prove it. This same Leif was probably the first European to set foot in the new world!