2000 Iceland 1000K Thousand Kronur Silver Leaf Ericson Commemorative Graded pr69 dcam By ICG. Leif Erikson, Leiv Eiriksson, or Leif Ericson, also known as Leif the Lucky (c.?970 – c.?1019 to 1025), was a Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to have set foot on continental North America, approximately half a millennium before Christopher Columbus. According to the sagas of Icelanders, he established a Norse settlement at Vinland, which is usually interpreted as being coastal North America. There is ongoing speculation that the settlement made by Leif and his crew corresponds to the remains of a Norse settlement found in Newfoundland, Canada, called L'Anse aux Meadows, which was occupied 1,000 years ago (carbon dating estimates 990–1050 CE).