Eric the Red's Greenland pitch was history's best real estate scam

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:06:34

   His dad. His dad's name is Eric the Red, who was forced to flee Norway when he was probably 10 years old because his dad had killed some people. It's kind of hilarious in the saga, it says, for a few killings. Okay, I guess that's a thing. So he went to Iceland, and he got a farm in Iceland, which was already starting to become overpopulated. They had cut down all the trees. There were some climate problems of deforestation and farms just blowing away.

2. 1:07:08

   So the population was essentially beginning to crash in Iceland. And he got into a fight with his neighbor and ended up killing his neighbor. And so he was exiled from Iceland. who's exiled from the place his father had been exiled from. So it runs in the family, this whole outlaw thing. What also ran in the family apparently was this streak, this courageous streak. And he had heard that there had been people.

3. 1:07:34

   So the Norwegian Vikings, they were aiming for England and they hit the Hebrides, which are these kind of treeless islands above Scotland. And they found they were good for refueling because they'd pick up water or whatever and then on your way to Scotland to raid. And then a Viking had missed the Hebrides and discovered Iceland. And then another Viking had aimed for Iceland, missed, and hit Greenland.

4. 1:08:01

   And a little fun fact about Greenland, it is both north, south, east, and west of Iceland. So it's any direction, you're going to hit Greenland. So Greenland is hard to miss. It's hard to miss, which is not to take away anything from the extraordinary danger, the certain death of going further west. But there was this by this time, there was this idea that, you know, enough people had become famous by sailing west into the unknown and discovering things that I think there was a general idea of there's more out there to the west.

5. 1:08:32

   And so he had talked to someone who had seen Greenland and reported that there was this good land further west. And so he hired the ship's crew of that Viking. So it's kind of the deck was loaded. And he went to Greenland, where he was able to settle two different colonies. One was called the Western Settlement in the West, and one was called the Eastern Settlement in essentially the extreme South. And that was essentially the edges of where Viking technology could be.

6. 1:09:01

   a cool factoid is that the Vikings practiced husbandry, raised animals, and obviously this is not an option in Greenland, although they couldn't have known it at the time, but they brought plants with them. So, and then they were able to trade with the native Inuit for walrus blubber and things like that, and they made a go of it. But what's obvious, you know, anyone who's seeing Greenland. There are no trees. It's almost impossible to survive by practicing husbandry.

7. 1:09:32

   It is impossible to survive, as it turns out, just practicing husbandry. At this point, I think this extraordinary Viking pragmatism is beginning to be played out, because one of the reasons the Greenland experiment fails ultimately in 300 years is they fail to adapt. Clearly, they should focus more on fishing, on other sources, than just raising pigs and cows. So we hit the limit of the Viking adaptability, which they have demonstrated throughout the world.

8. 1:10:12

   Yeah, yeah. Interesting. So Eric the Red, he makes his name by exploring. And he does, in fact, once he discovers Greenland, he calls it green. He says there's so many salmon in the rivers, in the fjords, that you can just scoop them out with your hands. You don't even have to fish. Is this real? It's a lie. That's not true at all. So he's doing propaganda. is this story true that he called the green just so he can attract it is the greatest real estate scam in history yeah uh yeah okay genius um i mean just stuck to this day yeah it's the most misnamed place in the world yeah but but in the europe of the time even in iceland like the dream was to have land i mean land equaled wealth in europe and here he says there's enough land for the taking, like anyone who wants, which is true. It's the largest island on earth. I mean,

9. 1:11:05

   it's unusable, but it should be called Iceland, Glacierland or something. But it worked. He took 500 men with him from Iceland. It's got to be a significant chunk of the population, but there's enough people kind of land hungry. There's no more room in Iceland. It's too restrictive.