How did the Vikings Discover Iceland?

Iceland has very strong links with Scandinavian countries its language Icelandic is ass North Germanic language related to the other scandinavian languages and its flag is a lot like the other scandinavian flags but where does this connection with Scandinavia come from well in this video we're going to find out now if you didn't know the answer is the Vikings of course or the Norwegians more specifically and actually the reason why I'm making this video is because another channel called Shah diversity was kind enough to give this channel history with Hilbert a shout-out yesterday in one of his videos something for which I am very grateful and if you haven't already subscribed and checked out Chad's channel then please do go and do that he makes very interesting commentaries like the ones that I do but also with different styles looking at historical armor and weapons a lot of things about the Middle Ages and he specifically mentioned that I made a few videos about the Vikings which is true I do that and quite a few people have come in something I'm very thankful to Chad for because he's obviously helping a lot of other smaller channels not just mine to grow with this so I thought to welcome all the new people on board I would kick us off with a video about the Vikings or the Norseman more specifically and their interaction with Iceland the discovery of Iceland so that's what the video is going to be about now before we kick off I would like to say that actually it's very likely that the first people on Iceland were not actually Scandinavians but were Gaelic so probably Irish monks however they actually decided to leave as soon as the Norseman arrived because they didn't really get on too well but it'd be interesting to see how and when they actually got there so I might make another video about that at some point in the future so to begin with it was mostly as I mentioned the Norseman so people from Norway although this wasn't actually a kingdom when the first people started going to Iceland and it's important to look a bit at the other geography and where Norwegians were before they got to Iceland because they didn't just cross the sea straight from Norway to Iceland they actually first colonized in the middle of the 9th century the Faroe Islands as well as having colonies and taking over parts of the Hebrides northern Scotland Shetland and Orkney as well as establishing a few Beach heads in Ireland most famously of course Dublin which is today the capital of Ireland and the first Explorer that we're going to look at all actually is an accidental Explorer is a man named Nadal that and Nadal that was himself a Norseman from somewhere in west Norway and while he was enroute to the Faroe Islands where he actually lived he drifted off course and ended up in Iceland now not over is an interesting character and with all of these people who I'm going to mention we have no idea the exact dates of when they were born because interestingly enough these guys were fairly variously unknown actually they weren't the big cheese's so no one was really writing about them they only they became famous because they discovered these places which makes they're interesting because we don't really hear too much about quote-unquote common people from the Dark Ages but he then lands in Iceland he was actually one of the first settlers on the Faroe Islands and he became the first Scandinavian at least to our knowledge who landed in Iceland now when he got there he did climb a hill to look for signs of life but he couldn't find any signs of any smoke or anything so he decided it would be uninhabited and when he went back to his ship it started to snow so because it started to snow he decided to call this new land snarl and which is Old Norse for snow land and that was the first name of Iceland he then went home again and we never hear about him again now the second person I'd like to look at in relation to Iceland is a man named Garza Jefferson and Gunther Suarez on was born sometime around the same period as the previous Explorer as not other and very interestingly he was Swedish now I've hardly talked about the Swedes because I haven't yet covered the East because the Swedes very famously went to the east rather than the West they sailed down the rivers of the Ukraine such as the Dnieper and also the rivers of Russia to get to the Baltic not the Baltics sorry the area around Byzantium at the time to trade with the Byzantines and to rate that way as well as establishing the country that would become obviously Russia which is named after them they were called the ruse but the reason why this guy is going west is because he held lands in Denmark now Garza was married to a woman from the Hebrides and while he was traveling to the Hebrides to claim an inheritance he was in the Pentland first a very very hard piece of waters and navigate which is essentially between a brief Orkney and the north coast of Scotland and he drifted ashore again went way to the north and ended up coming again to Iceland so you see the second time it's also a mistake and he arrives in Iceland and instead of making landfall he and his crew actually are the first ones to circumnavigate Iceland and therefore to prove that it was indeed an island because obviously Agartha had no idea that it wasn't an island and they actually made winter camp at a place called husavik and husavik is the old norse for house bay so who's week week is also a possible route for where we get the word freaking her from which is this word that developed into Viking and they stayed there over the winter and it went finally the spring came again they decided to head off but that actually isn't the end of the story as well he was going off one of his slaves or actually three of them managed to escape and this slave was called nat fatty and we don't actually know what happened to them although they did make it ashore on Iceland and they would be the first settlers then who remained for a while longer although we're not sure what happened to them later if they managed to survive or if they perished or then managed to escape back to the known world quote-unquote so the next one that we're going to look at you will probably have heard of and he is actually the character that floki in the Vikings is based off and this guy is called Ruffner flow Cavill Jefferson and he was born again a similar period to this and he was actually the first person to purposefully go to Iceland he had obviously heard the stories of Nod other and guar that who had gone to Iceland by accident and he was the first one to go there on purpose so he went first to the Scottish islands to Shetland where unfortunately his daughter drowned and then back onto the Faroe Islands where he acquired three Ravens and this is where he gets his nickname from enough now her Ethne is the Old Norse for Raven so he's called Raven floki because he sets these Ravens off that was an old technique used by Norse and Scandinavian travelers at the time seafarers was to find land that Ravens could obviously they could see way above what a human could see because they could fly so they would essentially fly to the nearest piece of land and he said one off and I flew back to the Faroe Islands he then later on set another one off and it flew around for a bit and landed back on the mast but the third Raven he set off went straight in a northwesterly direction and then he knew that the northwesterly direction that must be where Iceland was and he was bang on the money and he then landed at a place called retinas Luther and which I believe is something like fjord of the lakes something along those lines also I've tried actually I haven't done it on this one but I've tried to make the place-names the Old Norse versions of the place names although in this one I've forgotten to do that because difference between Old Norse and Icelandic place names a lot of the time is the old moss would just end in the or whereas the Icelandic the modern Icelandic they put a you in front of it so instead of atmosphere it'd be if you had a nose for self so yes I just thought I'd mention that and he and his family they all went to Iceland and they stayed in badness warfare for some years although they had quite a hard time but actually while floki was down by the river he climbed a mountain again and he sees an iceberg so he decided to call the land Iceland or he didn't really see an ice iceberg he saw a massive glacier and and then he thought oh it's the land of ice so I'll call it Iceland and this is actually the name that stuck although he had a very hard time finding food on Iceland although they did manage to survive and actually after a while they did return back to Norway although he did actually come back to Iceland with his family and that's where he died even though he said that the land wasn't worth coming back to so he contradicted himself in the end and perhaps he might have only said that Iceland wasn't worth settling because he didn't want other people to settle it now the next person I'd like to look at is a man called Engel food and I've forgotten to do it again on that one apologies Engel for our Nizam he is a very interesting one because he also purposefully sailed to Iceland the reason being that he was involved in a blood feud in Norway which meant he was excluded and actually this is very interesting because a lot of the Norseman who went west so I believe in the case of Erik the red as well he went west from Iceland to Greenland because he had been involved in feuding in Iceland so you can almost see it as the Wild West of the Dark Age is a lot of these guys were the brigands the shadowy figures who were looking to escape a troubled past by going west to first the Faroe Islands or all the Scottish Isles and then obviously Iceland and after that you have obviously the trek West again across the Denmark Strait to Greenland and finally the Americas which is where Lafe Erikson ended up but I'll make videos about that in the future so he sets off to Iceland and he finds Iceland as well and he has his slaves or his thralls and many of which were from Ireland so you have a lot of Irish DNA especially in the the females in aya in Iceland because of yeah they had a lot of female Irish slaves or at least that was the theory for quite a while and he had these slaves throw over his post holes and these post holes were for his seat in the Great Hall you'd have these great big posts that you would take with you and he threw them overboard and then sailed off and he said wherever these post holes end up that is where I will build my house or my farmstead on this new land and where did they find them nowhere other than the place we now call mecca Vic which is the capital of Iceland today and Reykjavik is also the thick ending so the Bay or the cove and it's the cove of smoke that's the rough translation or probably because of the I imagine the the geysers or volcanoes in the area things like that with the steam because obviously Iceland is very geologically an interesting place and so they set up camp in Reykjavik but there is trouble as his half-brother who came with him he was called he'll fear he is killed by his Irish slaves now he goes after the Irish lay obviously that have killed this brother and he chases them right the way down to the Westman Islands or the fest maan ire and in Icelandic and there he catches up to the slaves and kills them all it's actually very interesting because a lot of places on route 2 where he killed one slave and drowned another and then caught the last ones they are all named after the places where these slaves were slaughtered by Inga fur and then obviously he returns to your neck you fake and soon the wreck you fake became a very popular place for people to go especially in the middle of the 9th and 10th century when successive rulers were starting to take over power consolidate power in the kingdoms of Norway so for example with Harold - Harold fairhair and people started to go to Iceland to escape these and obviously at IKEA became an important place and actually by the end of the 9th century you actually have that pretty much all the land in Iceland was taken at that point so it went really quite quickly as soon as these first sort of beach heads in Iceland had been established so thank you very much for watching I hope I have not rambled on too much but this has been my video about the Norse discovery of Iceland now and I hope you have indeed enjoyed this quick video that I put up and welcome to the channel everyone again massive thank you to shadow Vista for the shout out and massive welcome to everyone who was come over to the channel from that shout out and anyone else who hasn't from come from the shoutout but it's just here then thank you very much for watching so yeah I'm history with Hill but if you have anything to add or any comments anything else you'd like to know then don't hesitate to leave a comment in the comment section below and I will be happy to answer them when I get the time to you now I might make a few more videos about Viking Iceland I find it very interesting topic as well as perhaps the age of settlement or the settlement of Greenland and then the Americas as well so thanks for watching don't forget to give it a thumbs up a comment and to subscrible I'm history with Hilbert and I will see you soon

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 176,709

Rating: 4.9167686 out of 5

Keywords: Vikings, Iceland, Viking Iceland, How did the Vikings Go to Iceland, Discovery of Iceland, Norse Iceland, Viking History, History, Floki, Vikings Season 5, Vikings Season 5 Full, Norse, History of Iceland, History of Norway, History of the Vikings, Iceland Discovery, Vikings in America, Vikings Floki, Vikings Ragnar, Vikings in Iceland, Vikings Ivar, Vikings Trailer, Vikings and Anglo-Saxons, Viking History Documentary, Iceland History Documentary, History Channel, Shadiversity

Id: MxZErCjJUsY

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 10 2017