Why Life Matters: The Early Explorers
Life: What do we mean by the word life?
The word ‘life’ is an important word throughout the history of North America. It is an easy word to say. And it is also an easy word to take for granted. Life is an old word that can mean many things to many people. Depending on how you use the word and what you are using the word for. The word ‘life’ can refer to a lifetime — the period between birth and death.
The word life means to experience reality by interacting with the environment and with others. Giving something back to the world through creativity and self-expression. Changing your attitude when faced with a situation or circumstance that you cannot change is a good approach to life.
The word ‘life’ can also be used as a way to show how someone lived. We call this a ‘way of life.’ It can describe the conditions of a living thing — “wow, that person’s life must be hard”. Life can describe the active part of human existence, such as doing the things you like to do. In other words, the word ‘life’ means many things to many people depending on how it is used. And it certainly meant something to some of the earliest explorers in North American history.
An example of life in various parts of early America can be depicted through the story and history of the Vikings.
There are numerous accounts of life in the early Americas.
One of the first people credited with exploring areas in the early Americas was Leif Erikson. He belonged to a large and historically important community called the Vikings. Leif was the son of a man named Erik the Red, who historians credit as the founder of the first European settlement in the present-day nation of Greenland.
Born in Iceland around A.D. 970, Erikson sailed to Norway around A.D. 1000, where he began exploring and searching for new life in this part of the world.
This aerial map of the North Pole is a great vantage point from which to see the Scandinavian lands that Erikson visited. For perspective, the north pole is the red dot in the middle of the image. North America lies south of Greenland at the very bottom of the map.
