Leifsbudir (

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

: Leifsbuðir) was a settlement mentioned in the Greenland Saga as founded by

Leif Eriksson Leif Erikson, also known as Leif the Lucky (), was a Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to set foot on continental America, approximately half a millennium before Christopher Columbus. According to the sagas of Ice ...

in 1000 or 1001 in

Vinland Vinland, Vineland, or Winland () was an area of coastal North America explored by Vikings. Leif Erikson landed there around 1000 AD, nearly five centuries before the voyages of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. The name appears in the V ...

. Later, 160 Greenlanders, including 16 women, established themselves there under the leadership of Norseman

Thorfinn Karlsefni Thorfinn Karlsefni Thórdarson was an Icelandic explorer. Around the year 1010, he followed Leif Eriksson's route to Vinland in a short-lived attempt to establish a permanent settlement there with his wife Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir and their f ...

, the first European to come into contact with the local ''

Skræling (Old Norse and , plural ) is the name the Norse Greenlanders used for the peoples they encountered in North America (Canada and Greenland). In surviving sources, it is first applied to the Thule people, the proto-Inuit group with whom the Nors ...

s'', or North American Indigenous peoples. Thorfinn's son,

Snorri Thorfinnsson Snorri Thorfinnsson (Old Norse and Icelandic: Snorri Þorfinnsson or Snorri Karlsefnisson; most likely born between 1004 and 1013, and died ''c.'' 1090) was the son of explorers Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir. He is considere ...

, is believed to have been the first child of European descent to be born in North America outside of Greenland. However, the settlement was a temporary one—the settlers were forced to abandon Leifsbudir due to a lack of trade with natives and return to Greenland. Leifsbudir is believed by some scholars to have been located at

L'Anse aux Meadows L'Anse aux Meadows () is an archaeological site, first excavated in the 1960s, of a Norse colonization of North America, Norse settlement dating to approximately 1,000 years ago. The site is located on the northernmost tip of the island of Newf ...

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of . As of 2025 the population ...

. Dr. Stuart C. Brown of Memorial University has written "...Dr. lngstad's Procrustean attempt to demonstrate that L'Anse aux Meadows is Leifsbudir is wholly unconvincing..." ewfoundland Quarterly, Fall, 1988, page 42.ref>

References

{{Authority control History of North America History of Newfoundland and Labrador by location Leif Erikson Vinland

See also

References