Herjólfr Bárðarson is one of the primary settlers in the
History of Greenland
The history of Greenland is a history of life under extreme Arctic conditions: currently, an ice sheet covers about eighty percent of the island, restricting human activity largely to the coasts. The first humans are thought to have arrived i ...
.
First he lived in
Iceland
Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...
on Drepstokki. He was the son of Bárð Herjólfsson and married to Þorgerður. His son
Bjarni Herjúlfsson was the first European sighting the
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, p ...
continent in 986, after getting off course.
Herjólfr was one of
Eiríkur rauði's liegemen, who left Iceland with 25
Viking ship
Viking ships were marine vessels of unique structure, used in Scandinavia throughout the Middle Ages.
The boat-types were quite varied, depending on what the ship was intended for, but they were generally characterized as being slender and flexi ...
s in 985 to settle Greenland. Of these 25 only 14 made it to
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...
,
[Grænlendinga saga Chapter 1] among them Herjólfr's.
According to the Icelandic ''
Landnámabók
(, "Book of Settlements"), often shortened to , is a medieval Icelandic written work which describes in considerable detail the settlement () of Iceland by the Norse in the 9th and 10th centuries CE.
is divided into five parts and ov ...
'', his family settled at Herjólfsfjörð on
Herjólfsnes peninsula south of
Brattahlíð
Brattahlíð (), often anglicised as Brattahlid, was Erik the Red's estate in the Eastern Settlement Viking colony he established in south-western Greenland toward the end of the 10th century. The present settlement of Qassiarsuk, approximatel ...
, near modern
Narsarmijit
Narsarmijit, formerly Narsaq Kujalleq and Frederiksdal (Anglicised: Frederiksthal), is a settlement in southern Greenland. It is located in the Kujalleq municipality near Cape Thorvaldsen. Its population was 62 in 2024. There has been a slow but ...
(Friedrichsthal) south of
Nanortalik
Nanortalik (, ), formerly Nennortalik, is a town in Nanortalik Island, Kujalleq municipalities of Greenland, municipality, southern Greenland. With 1,072 inhabitants as of 2024, it is the List of cities and towns in Greenland, eleventh-largest ...
.
References
External links
Norrøne Texts:
Grænlendinga sagaLandnámabókPartial English translation of the graenlendinga saga
{{DEFAULTSORT:Herjulf Bardsson
Norse settlements in Greenland
10th-century Icelandic people