# Was Columbus aware of Ericson?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [October 23, 2012, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654 "2012-10-23T19:54:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@gatorslap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gatorslap)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/1 "2012-10-23T19:54:56Z")
It seems to me that if you want to reach Asia by sailing west from Europe, and you don’t know that the Americas are there, you would want to take a more northerly route so you can cover more longitude in a shorter distance. Why didn’t Columbus do that?
Was Columbus familiar with Leif Ericson and his voyages? Was such knowledge common among explorers of that era (and/or educated members of the nobility)? At a minimum he must have known about Greenland. Would he have heard of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland?
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### Author:  [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/2 "2012-10-23T20:35:16Z")
Remember that Columbus was using sailing ships and 15th century navigational tools. It was pretty hard to get exactly where you were going - you had to take into account the prevailing winds and pray that you won’t drift or be blown too far off course. It wasn’t like today where you can set sail from Liverpool and expect to pull right into Norfolk, VA - you set sail and hopefully you hit somewhere between Nova Scotia and Florida.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/3 "2012-10-23T20:37:23Z")
Seems unlikely. The stories indicate Chris may have been told by someone else of the western route to China, and Magellan who actually found it may have heard these stories as well. I suspect there were many such stories, and if Erickson’s were in the mix they would have been indistinquishable from legend.
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/4 "2012-10-23T20:38:59Z")
> [@gatorslap](#):
>
> It seems to me that if you want to reach Asia by sailing west from Europe, and you don’t know that the Americas are there, you would want to take a more northerly route so you can cover more longitude in a shorter distance. Why didn’t Columbus do that?
Not when what you really want to find are the [Spice Islands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maluku_Islands), in the tropics. Columbus would not have been anxious to find a route to Kamchatka (even if he had known it existed).
Also, in an age of sail, other things being (as far as you know) equal, you go with the [prevailing winds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_prevailing_winds_on_earth.png).
> [@gatorslap](#):
>
> Was Columbus familiar with Leif Ericson and his voyages? Was such knowledge common among explorers of that era (and/or educated members of the nobility)? At a minimum he must have known about Greenland. Would he have heard of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland?
Almost certainly not, to all of these.
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### Author:  [@Rucksinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rucksinator)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/5 "2012-10-23T20:42:02Z")
> [@gatorslap](#):
>
> It seems to me that if you want to reach Asia by sailing west from Europe, and you don’t know that the Americas are there, you would want to take a more northerly route so you can cover more longitude in a shorter distance. Why didn’t Columbus do that?
>
> Was Columbus familiar with Leif Ericson and his voyages? Was such knowledge common among explorers of that era (and/or educated members of the nobility)? At a minimum he must have known about Greenland. Would he have heard of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland?
IDK what he know about Ericson, but I believe that sailors in those days knew about the Gulf Stream (or the flow of wind in general) which would have prescribed a more clockwise route.
ETA: I got ninja’d
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### Author:  [@gatorslap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gatorslap)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/6 "2012-10-23T20:48:26Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#):
>
> Remember that Columbus was using sailing ships and 15th century navigational tools. It was pretty hard to get exactly where you were going - you had to take into account the prevailing winds and pray that you won’t drift or be blown too far off course. It wasn’t like today where you can set sail from Liverpool and expect to pull right into Norfolk, VA - you set sail and hopefully you hit somewhere between Nova Scotia and Florida.
All the more reason to north, hopping from island to island, rather than cross the vast open ocean.
> [@njtt](#):
>
> Not when what you really want to find are the [Spice Islands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maluku_Islands), in the tropics. Columbus would not have been anxious to find a route to Kamchatka (even if he had known it existed).
Ok, but it’s still quicker to travel in a curved line. Additionally it would be easier to navigate from land to land.
> [@](#):
>
> Also, in an age of sail, other things being (as far as you know) equal, you go with the [prevailing winds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_prevailing_winds_on_earth.png).
Why wasn’t that a factor for the Norse, or John Cabot?
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### Author:  [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/7 "2012-10-23T21:27:08Z")
Unlikely that Columbus was familiar with the Norse sagas.
FWIW, Columbus’ expedition was based on the Earth being round of course, but also much smaller than it really is or was even believed to be in his day.
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### Author:  [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/8 "2012-10-23T21:29:04Z")
Columbus was almost certainly aware of Lief Ericsson, and his voyages. The reasons for this are:
-Columbus made a voyage to Iceland in 1477 (he picked up a cargo of salted codfish). The sagas the described Ericsson’s voyages were written down about 1350, so certainly mariners he met in Reykjavik knew about Greenland and Vinland
There is evidence that there was contact between Norwegian traders and the last Greenland colonists, as late as the 1450’s, so Columbus may have actually met someone who had been to Greenland.
-despite much misinformation, Columbus was an educated man. He had carried on correspondence with Martin Beheim (Cologne, Germany), who was the most eminent geographer of his time. Beheim probably knew of Vinland, and advised Columbus of the same.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/9 "2012-10-23T21:30:38Z")
[Maybe.](http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/columbus.htm)
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/10 "2012-10-23T21:30:58Z")
> [@ralph124c](#):
>
> Columbus was almost certainly aware of Lief Ericsson, and his voyages. The reasons for this are:
> -Columbus made a voyage to Iceland in 1477 (he picked up a cargo of salted codfish).
I did not know this. It certainly is evidence that he’d heard of Erikson and a western route to somewhere else.
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### Author:  [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/11 "2012-10-23T21:44:24Z")
> [@gatorslap](#):
>
> Was Columbus familiar with Leif Ericson and his voyages? Was such knowledge common among explorers of that era (and/or educated members of the nobility)? At a minimum he must have known about Greenland. Would he have heard of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland?
Almost certainly. There was a well-published expedition to Vinland in the 1360s, notes of which were well known for centuries. The Vatican appointed bishops to Greenland, and one made a large survey tip into Vinland.
The Greenlanders went to Vinland for trees, and there is indirect evidence in Denmark for direct trade. Nothing about it would be particularily secret to a man with an interest for the Atlantic.
What Colombus had no way of knowing was the sheer \*size \*of Vinland. He had no reason to think it more than an island, maybe the size of the UK, or even Spain. Not something that would go all the way down. Basically, he would have heard of it like a fairly big island, with hostile natives. Vinland wasn’t ignored in Europe for being unknown, but for being unimportant. Terrible climate and hardly any products you couldn’t get with much less effort from Russia.
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### Author:  [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/12 "2012-10-23T21:45:06Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#):
>
> Remember that Columbus was using sailing ships and 15th century navigational tools. It was pretty hard to get exactly where you were going - you had to take into account the prevailing winds and pray that you won’t drift or be blown too far off course. It wasn’t like today where you can set sail from Liverpool and expect to pull right into Norfolk, VA - you set sail and hopefully you hit somewhere between Nova Scotia and Florida.
Thats really not true. I could take a crappy plastic protractor, some sticks, and a good eye and determine my LATITUDE (north south) to within a hundred miles give or take a factor of two or three. LONGITUDE (east west) takes some pretty accurate time keeping OTOH.
You let me sail from Europe, tell me what major city on the east coast of America I need to hit and I can get pretty close with stuff from 1492.
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### Author:  [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)
#### Post date: [October 23, 2012, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/13 "2012-10-23T21:50:22Z")
Columbus didn’t explicitly say he went to Iceland. He said he went to Ultima Thule, which was usually, not always, associated with Iceland at the time. He said he sailed 100 leagues “beyond” (possibly Iceland) and at one point mentioned tides of 50 feet, which don’t happen in that region. Columbus liked to spin a good tale and might not have actually witnessed the places and things he claimed.
But he was certainly aware of various tales of far off lands and actively sought out information about them.
So, he no doubt knew about Greenland, at the very least, and knowledge of lands beyond Greenland (e.g., Vinland) wouldn’t have been too hard to come by for someone like Columbus. But the name of someone dead for centuries like Erikson would have not been nearly so common a factoid.
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### Author:  [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2012, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/14 "2012-10-24T00:21:13Z")
Weren’t the Basques, among others, already fishing the Grand Banks by the time Columbus voyaged? He has to have known about the presence of land to the East, if that were the case.
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### Author:  [@sugaree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sugaree)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2012, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/15 "2012-10-24T03:57:33Z")
I’ve heard that about the Basques, and also that sailors from Bristol visited America.
Columbus’s son also said that when his father was in Ireland, he saw two exotic-looking bodies, who had washing ashore in a canoe-like boat. Inuits, maybe? Columbus’s theory was that they were Chinese.
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2012, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/16 "2012-10-24T04:00:54Z")
> [@sugaree](#):
>
> I’ve heard that about the Basques, and also that sailors from Bristol visited America.
>
> Columbus’s son also said that when his father was in Ireland, he saw two exotic-looking bodies, who had washing ashore in a canoe-like boat. Inuits, maybe? Columbus’s theory was that they were Chinese.
Can you give me any links so I can read about this?
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2012, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/17 "2012-10-24T04:08:25Z")
> [@sugaree](#):
>
> Columbus’s son also said that when his father was in Ireland, he saw two exotic-looking bodies, who had washing ashore in a canoe-like boat. Inuits, maybe? Columbus’s theory was that they were Chinese.
Not Ireland, the Azores.
From [here.](http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/portoazores.htm)
> [@](#):
>
> It was famously recorded that Columbus and his wife moved to the island of Santo Maria. Here he learned that strange items had been washed upon the shore of local beaches including carved pieces of wood unlike any in Europe. There were huge hollowed out carved pine-tree trunks, which he would later discover were made by Indians and called “canoes.” Most significant, two bodies of dead men washed up on shore. Their features differed from those of the known races, the known world of Columbus’s day extending on the north to Iceland and Scandinavia, south to a cape 100 miles south of the Equator, to the east as far as China and Japan, and to the west as far as the Azores. (4) According to Bartolomé de las Casas, the two dead bodies that looked like those of Indians were found on the Portuguese Flores Island in the Azores. He said he found that fact in Columbus’ notes, and it was one reason why Columbus presumed that India was on the other side of the ocean. (5)
>
> The event was recounted by Alexander Von Humboldt in 1803:
>
> “Whilst the art of navigation was yet in its infancy, the Gulf-stream suggested to the mind of Christopher Columbus certain indications of the existence of western regions. Two corpses, the features of which indicated a race of unknown men, were cast ashore on the Azores, towards the end of the 15th century. Nearly at the same period, the brother-in-law of Columbus, Peter Correa, governor of Porto Santo, found on the strand of that island pieces of bamboo of extraordinary size, brought thither by the western currents. The dead bodies and the bamboos attracted the attention of the Genoese navigator, who conjectured that both came from a continent situated towards the west. We now know that in the torrid zone the trade-winds and the current of the tropics are in opposition to every motion of the waves in the direction of the earth’s rotation.”
The event is also mentioned in Samuel Eliot Morrison’s _Admiral of the Ocean Sea_, p. 60:
“Two dead bodies had been cast up on Flores, not like Christians but broad-faced like the “Chinese” that Columbus had seen in Galway.”
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### Author:  [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2012, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/18 "2012-10-24T04:14:24Z")
Nailed it. I couldn’t find a link.
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2012, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/19 "2012-10-24T04:21:45Z")
> [@sugaree](#):
>
> Columbus’s son also said that when his father was in Ireland, he saw two exotic-looking bodies, who had washing ashore in a canoe-like boat. Inuits, maybe? Columbus’s theory was that they were Chinese.
Actually, now that I check, Columbus did describe Asian-looking people in Ireland, but alive rather than dead:
From _Admiral of the Ocean Se_a, p. 25
> [@](#):
>
> Columbus certainly visited Galway in Ireland, a natural port of call on Iceland voyages, for on the margin of his copy of Aeneas Sylvius’s Historia Rerum he wrote, “Men of Cathay which is toward the Orient have come hither. We have seen many remarkable things, especially in Galway of Ireland, a man and a woman of extraordinary appearance in two boats adrift” - flat-faced Finns or Lapps, probably.
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### Author:  [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)
#### Post date: [October 24, 2012, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-columbus-aware-of-ericson/638654/20 "2012-10-24T05:23:32Z")
Columbus was fortunate that the new world got in his was. His estimate for the distance to China was something like two-thirds the distance he traveled to get to the Bahamas. Had they know the reality of the situation, it never would have been tried in the first place. Crossing 12000 miles of uncharted ocean is not even considered feasible today, and when you believe it is less than a fifth that distance, you should be in a world of hurt.
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