May 26, 2025

Here is the blog I researched and prepared for our arrival in Greenland. Let’s hope we are able to disembark in Qaqortoq so that I can get some photos for you.

Greenland is not green. So how did we end up with this country’s flagrant advertising? Why isn’t it called wind swept and perilously uninhabited land? Well, to discover the real reason behind Greenland’s name we need to take a crash course in guerilla marketing Viking style.

It is the 10th century in Iceland. Eric the Red had red hair and a red beard, but he also had a red-hot temper! Eric was not what you would call a gentle negotiator. He was born in Norway but came to Iceland as a child because his father was exiled to Iceland for manslaughter. In this case, the apple did not fall very far from the tree. Turns out this was something of a family tradition. As an adult, Eric the Red got into a dispute over some property harsh words were exchanged and then axes and Eric killed a man. In short order he went to retrieve some items left with neighbors and had another argument. More people ended up dead and this sealed Eric’s fate. He was exiled from Iceland for 3 years. Pretty lenient sentencing guidelines in those days. Multiple murders and he was given 3 years. Not in jail, he just had to find another place to live.

Eric had heard rumors about a strange land west of Iceland, that had been seen by sailors. No one had settled there. Nobody owned it. It was in Eric’s mind ripe for the taking. In 982, he set out on a very difficult sailing across the Denmark Strait until he reached Greenland. Not all of Greenland, Greenland is enormous, but the east coast of Greenland. Eric arrived in the summer months, so it gave him a little time to get established. The conditions were not that bad, it wasn’t paradise but if you had just been kicked out of Iceland it would do.

Eric spent the next 3 years exploring, surveying, testing the land’s potential, memorizing its shapes. He wasn’t just hiding out, he was dreaming up a plan. And when his exile ended, he sailed back to Iceland, not with a story of hard ship but with a well thought out sales pitch.

Now remember this is a man who had been exiled for multiple murders and yet somehow, he was able to convince people to move to Greenland. That says a lot about Eric the Red. He was a killer, but he also must have been a killer salesman. And as every salesman knows, you don’t have long to make a good first impression and a name counts for a lot. He decided to call the land “Greenland.” People would be attracted to go there if it had a favorable name. This was not just an accidental name, this was a marketing strategy. Eight hundred years before the first business school was established Eric the Red had keen business instincts. (For your information, the world’s first business school Ecole Speciale de Commerce et d’Industrie today known as ESCP Business School was established in Paris, France, in 1819. Harvard’s Graduate School of Business was founded in 1908.) Eric the Red knew instinctively what is now backed up by decades of research in behavior economics. If the name sounds appealing, people are more likely to buy it.

Eric the Red organized an expedition to Greenland. Twenty-five ships set sail for Greenland, but only fourteen made it. These were open deck long ships. Every wave over the bow was a gamble. Those who did complete the difficult journey must have seen it as a land of opportunity. Winters were long, food was scarce, storms were brutal, yet they survived in a place that had no right to be called “Greenland.”

Thanks for traveling with us.