The big idea: Around 982 CE, Norse Vikings began pushing further west than ever before — first to Greenland, then to a place they called Vinland.
They did not sail into the unknown for fun
- Not enough farmable land at home — the first hard fact that pushed them
- A new kind of ship — it finally made the crossing possible
Scandinavia is beautiful but stingy. Mountains, forests and fjords cover most of Norway, and even Iceland — already a Norse colony by 982 — is largely lava rock and glacier.
Only a thin strip of coastal and valley land could grow crops or graze animals. As families grew, that thin strip filled up fast.
This is called population pressure: too many people for the arable land available.
Under Norse inheritance custom, land was often split between sons, so each generation had a smaller plot to live on. Younger sons with no land of their own had every reason to look for new land elsewhere — and Iceland itself had been settled this way a century earlier, from Norway.
- Mountainous terrain — most of Norway is unsuitable for farming, so settlement clustered on a few fertile strips
- Iceland filling up — the best land near the coast was claimed within a few generations of the first settlers arriving (c.870s)
- Land inheritance splitting farms — dividing an estate between sons left later generations with too little land to support a family
- A cultural pull west — Norse sagas and oral tradition already told of a rich, empty land further out, encouraging risk-takers to go and see
Push, not just pull: Keep the direction straight for the exam: push factors are the problems at home (no land, family disputes) that made people want to leave. Pull factors are what they hoped to find abroad (empty land, resources). Both matter, but the inquiry question here is about what prompted the exploration — start with the push.
Free preview
This is the free notes preview
You're reading the free notes. Aimnova Pro unlocks the full study experience — and you can try it with your first topic free to keep:
- FlashcardsLock in vocabulary and key terms with spaced repetition.
- Practice questionsAnswer exam-style questions and get instant AI marking.
- Mock exams & past-paper vaultSit full mocks and see exactly how examiners award marks.
- Personalised study planA daily plan built around your exam date and weak areas.
Land pressure explains why the Norse wanted to leave. It does not explain how they crossed open ocean to reach Greenland and beyond. That answer is technology: the longship and its cousin, the knarr.
The longship's secret: clinker building: Norse shipwrights overlapped each plank slightly over the one below it and riveted them together — a method called clinker-building.
The result was a hull that was light, strong, and slightly flexible, so it could bend with the waves instead of breaking. A shallow keel let the ship sail in rivers and shallow water as well as the open sea.
The knarr: the ship that actually crossed the Atlantic: The longship was built for speed and raiding along coasts. The knarr was its wider, deeper-hulled sister — built for cargo and long, open-ocean voyages.
Why the knarr mattered
- More room for people, animals, timber and supplies
- A sturdier build for facing Atlantic swells far from land
- This was the ship that carried settlers, not just raiders, to Greenland and Vinland
- Clinker-built hull — overlapping riveted planks gave strength and flexibility in rough seas
- Shallow, flexible keel — allowed landing on open beaches, not just harbours
- Square sail — let sailors travel efficiently using prevailing westerly winds and ocean currents
- Steering oar (not a rudder) — mounted on the right side of the stern, giving fine control at sea
- Navigation by sun, stars and known landmarks — no compass yet, so knowledge of routes was memorised and passed on
| Feature | Longship | Knarr |
|---|---|---|
| Main use | Raiding, warfare, speed along coasts | Cargo, settlers, long ocean crossings |
| Hull | Long, narrow, shallow | Shorter, wider, deeper |
| Crew | Many rowers, built for speed | Small crew, relied more on sail |
| Best known for | Viking raids on Britain and Ireland | Carrying settlers to Iceland, Greenland, Vinland |
Reading a source about ships: If a Paper 1 source is an image of a knarr or a description of a voyage, its content is telling you about capability — what distances and cargo were possible. Ask: does this source show technology enabling the crossing, or does it show why people wanted to leave? Content that does both is gold for a Q1 answer.
Get feedback like a real examiner
Submit your answers and get instant feedback — what you did well, what's missing, and exactly what to write to score full marks.
Population pressure and better ships explain the conditions for exploration. Individuals still had to act on them. Two men's stories dominate the record: Erik the Red and his son Leif Erikson.
Erik the Red (c.950–1003)
Exiled from Iceland around 982 CE after a killing, Erik sailed west and spent three years exploring an unknown coastline. He returned to Iceland, recruited settlers with the name Greenland — deliberately attractive marketing for a mostly ice-covered island — and led roughly 25 ships (about 14 survived the crossing) to found the first Norse settlements there around 985 CE.
Leif Erikson (c.970–1018)
Erik's son grew up in the new Greenland colony. Around 1000 CE he led an expedition further west, becoming the first European known to reach North America — a region the Norse called Vinland. His voyage extended the exploration his father had begun into an entirely new continent.
Erik pushed west out of Iceland to found Greenland; his son Leif pushed further west out of Greenland to find Vinland.
Why individual leaders still matter for an inquiry question: Push factors explain the pressure to leave; ship technology explains the means. But Erik's exile and Leif's ambition explain the timing and direction — why it was these two men, in this order, who actually made the crossings that others then followed.
Where the story comes from — and why that matters: Almost everything we know about Erik and Leif comes from the Icelandic sagas (especially the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders), written down roughly 200–250 years after the events, based on oral tradition.
That gap matters: A saga is not a diary — it is a later retelling, shaped by storytelling conventions and by what medieval Icelanders wanted to remember about their ancestors.
Worked example — reading context on a saga extract: Source: an extract from the Saga of Erik the Red, written down in Iceland in the 13th century, describing Erik's exile and voyage to Greenland.
Here is how to use its context (the Q2 skill).
| Context | What it means for this saga |
|---|---|
| Origin | An Icelandic saga: oral tradition fixed in writing centuries later, so exact details (dates, dialogue) cannot be trusted as eyewitness fact. |
| Purpose | Partly to entertain, partly to record family and settlement history with pride, which may inflate Erik's achievements. |
| Time and place | Written in Iceland, a society directly descended from the settlers it describes. This gives it deep cultural knowledge, but also a strong reason to tell a flattering story. |
Conclusion: The saga is highly useful for showing how the Norse themselves remembered and explained the push to Greenland — but weaker as a precise factual record of exact events in 982 CE.