In honor of World Redhead Day on May 26th, we are celebrating one of the most famous redheads in history: Erik the Red.
Born in Norway around 950 CE, Erik Thorvaldsson is best known as the Viking explorer who founded the first Norse settlements in Greenland. His distinctive red hair and strong-willed, fiery personality earned him the nickname “Erik the Red.”
Shortly after his birth, Erik’s family moved to Iceland after his father, Thorvald Asvaldsson, was banished from Norway for committing manslaughter. In 982 CE, Erik himself was exiled from Iceland for three years for similar reasons, prompting his expedition along Greenland’s coast, where he established several key Norse settlements, including Brattahlid, where he is said to have spent his later years.
Before leaving Iceland, Erik the Red married Thjodhild Jörundsdóttir, with whom he had several children, including the famed explorer Leif Erikson. Once in Greenland, Thjodhild converted to Christianity, a decision said to have caused tension in her marriage to Erik, who, according to the Icelandic sagas and Norse history, never adopted the faith.
Thjodhild is credited with building one of the first Christian churches in the Americas at the family’s farmstead in Brattahlid. In 2020, as part of a massive study of the Viking world, researchers sequenced the genomes of Viking Age individuals who were buried in a mass grave in the church’s cemetery. While the exact location of Erik the Red’s grave remains unknown, it is possible that he was among those buried there.
In honor of Erik the Red and World Redhead Day, we have added four new individuals from Brattahlid to our Historical MatchesSM feature. If you are a 23andMe+ Premium™ member, you can check it out to learn more about this ancient site and find out if you are distantly related to them or hundreds of other historical individuals.
