The mission: conquest and plunder
In 951 A.D., King Eric Blodok (Bloodaxe) of Norway sent an especially large Viking war party, under the direction of his eldest son, Prince Knut, to crisscross the world in search of new lands to conquer and new treasures to be plundered and brought back to Norway. More than 200 vessels, each large enough that they could carry 40 people and several horses, were assembled for the expedition. Food, sufficient to feed the warriors--and the women they would kidnap in their raids--for several months, was carefully stored in the hull of the ships.
Since no war party had ever traveled as far as King Eric envisioned his son would go, the king sent Sigrid, a seeress believed to be favored by Odin, the Viking god of war, poetry, knowledge, and wisdom, to accompany him. In all decisions, the king advised Prince Knut to abide by Sigrid's divine counsel.
The flotilla
The ships, under the direction of Prince Knut, departed from Stavanger, Norway, in early spring, for what was believed would be a year's voyage. None of the ships or their warrior passengers was ever seen in Norway again and were presumed by the distraught king to have been lost at sea.
Actually, the expedition followed the route earlier Viking vessels had taken across the North Atlantic with stops at Iceland and Greenland to renew provisions. The ships then followed the North American coastline south past Newfoundland, and, going where no Viking ships had ever gone before, hugged the coastline of what is today the United States with periodic forays inland to obtain wild game and other food.
The longest journey ever
Prince Knut, content that the journey had far exceeded any other Viking expedition in length and duration, determined to return to Norway, but Sigrid was adamant that the expedition continue and the king's son, remembering his father/king's advice, was loath to disobey the seeress with her special powers of divination.
For months the ships followed the American coastline, island hopped the Caribbean, and then traced the shoreline of South America. Then, four years after they first set sail from Norway, the Viking flotilla arrived at South America's apex and began the most dangerous part of the expedition, the journey around the fabled--and dreaded--Cape Horn which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The raging storms send the flotilla into the Pacific
Buffeted by strong winds and an almost constant succession of storms, the wooden vessels were tossed on the waves like toy boats. Knut again implored Sigrid to let the expedition return to Norway, but Sigrid remained unbending. The violent storms resulted in several of the ships capsizing, their passengers and provisions lost to the frigid waters.
Midway through the Cape Horn passage and during one of the most violent storms, Sigrid disappeared, either thrown overboard by crew members long since disillusioned as to her divine powers or tossed into the churning ocean by one of the many giant waves which hammered the ships. Terrified of what might lie ahead for the expedition now that the seeress was gone, Prince Knut led the expedition through the straits and up the Pacific coastline of South America (believing it would take the armada back to Norway).
Lost!
As the fleet of warships approached present-day Peru, a giant storm blew the ships away from the shoreline and out into the vast Pacific. Lacking modern day compasses, the prince was unable to find his way back to the shoreline and the vessels were instead steered in the direction overhead birds were taking, believing erroneously that by following the birds the Viking armada would be returning to the shoreline it had trailed for so long. In point of fact, the Prince and his Viking warriors were heading in exactly the opposite direction.
How long it took the expedition to finally reach land is unknown, but lore says it was more than three months. The Viking expedition encountered the east-to-west current and, traveling approximately 60 miles a day, sailed across the empty ocean. The Vikings subsisted on an abundance of fish plucked from the waters of the ocean's surface. In 1947, the famed Kon-Tiki raft of fellow Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl would make the same journey in about the same time. So many days on the water, however, reduced the Vikings to an emaciated and quarrelsome crew crippled physically and emotionally by their long and arduous journey.
A heavenly sight
The sight of what appeared to be an oasis in the midst of a vast ocean would no doubt have quickened the strokes of those manning the paddles and buoyed the Vikings' spirits. What they would have seen no doubt thrilled and excited them: a landscape of palms and pandanus trees and other plants of the South Pacific, growing in profusion in a veritable Garden of Eden.
As the vessels drew near the island, the Vikings jumped out of the ships and swam the distance to the waiting shore, jubilant that their lives had been spared and their god had brought them to an island paradise. Elated by his good luck and overwhelmed by the island's beauty, Prince Knut stepped out on the sandy beach and uttered "Himmelsk," a Norwegian word which translates in English to "Heavenly." The descriptive word eventually became the island's name. The date of their arrival: April 1, 956 A. D.