LEIF the video game about the life of the Viking Leif Eriksson – Background

Called, the Lucky One, the first European on American soil, still 500 years before Christopher Columbus, Leif Eriksson and his followers set foot on American soil in search of raw materials and trade goods. In the process, they encountered the indigenous peoples of North America and brought to Europe not only wood but also tobacco, which was unknown at the time. Battles over goods between the natives and the Vikings cut wide gaps between both sides, the Vikings brought women from North America to Iceland and so both cultures mixed with each other early on.

En route to King Olaf Trygvason of Norway, Leif and his crew were shipwrecked. They rescued themselves to the island group of the Hebrides in Scotland. During his stay, he met and fell in love with the daughter of the local chief. Leif converted to Christianity, which until then had been hated by the Vikings. But trade packs gradually softened this mindset, so Leif converted all of Greenland to Christianity. Leif’s father Erik “the Red” Thorvaldsson was a cruel man but a loving family man, just as his own father Thorvald Asvaldsson had been.

In childhood, Thorvald’s family was banished from Norway for killing a Viking in a rage. Thorvald founded the first Viking settlement on Iceland. Monks from Scotland and Ireland who had moved back there were murdered. Since Iceland was full of birch tree forests at that time, there were enough raw materials to build a large number of settlements on Iceland.

Erik lived in simple circumstances with his wife Thjodhild Jorundardaughter had a daughter with another woman and three sons with Thjodhild, including Leif Eriksson. Due to a landslide caused by his two slaves, including a German who had taught Leif at the age of 8 everything that made a good Viking, including hunting, boating, fighting, writing, reading and foreign languages, they destroyed part of the house of their neighbor Eyjolf the Foul. A friend of Eyjolf’s then killed Erik’s slaves. This in turn enraged Erik so much that he killed him and Eyjolf as well. As a result, Erik and his family were banished from Iceland for three years by the local Jarl.

They fled to Orkney, an archipelago in Scotland. There, Erik entrusted his Setstokkr, a richly decorated wooden beam that tells the story of his own family and their gods and is considered an important part and heritage of the family, to his friend Thorgest, as Erik was about to head west, for sailors seemed to have discovered new land to the west. Now when Erik came back after a long time and wanted to retrieve the Setstokkr, his friend refused to do so and so it came that Erik killed his friend’s two sons and also Thorgest and was thus banished again.

There was only one way, the way forward and the new settlement on Greenland. Years of settlement, fighting, sacrifice, love and death followed. This is the story we would like to tell with LEIF, a massive story as only life itself can write it.