Thorfinn Karlsefn, an Icelandic explorer and wealthy trader, attempts in about 1010 to establish a settlement in the territory that Leif Eriksson called Vinland, wintering there.

Thorfinn's expeditions are documented in the Grœnlendinga saga ("Saga of the Greenlanders") and Eiríks saga rauða ("Saga of Eirik the Red"), which together are referred to as "The Vinland Sagas", but the details are at considerable variance.

According to the Grœnlendinga saga, Karlsefni left with sixty men and five women, trailing the path taken by Leif and Thorvald Eiriksson.

Whereas, according to Eric’s Saga, describing the voyage in greater detail, he took three ships with one hundred and forty men aboard.

The Scandinavian colonists, both men and women, trade and then fight with the native Skraelings (roughly, "savages").

In Greenland, Thorfinn Karlsefni had met Gudrid Thorbjorns-daughter, the widow of Thorstein Eiriksson, and wedded her.

She had been staying under the care of her brother-in-law Leif Eriksson, at Brattahlid the estate left to Leif by Eirik the Red, who was dead by this point, having succumbed to an epidemic around 1003.

Thorfinn had reached the momentous decision to go to Vinland, which according to the Grœnlendinga saga happened at the insistence of Gudrid.

And Leif agreed to lend the houses he built in Vinland, though unwilling to make a free gift of it.

Among the other settlers into Vinland was Freydis, sister or half-sister of Leif Eriksson, who may have accompanied Karlsefni's voyage (Eric’s Saga) or headed an expedition of her own that ended in carnage (Grœnlendinga Saga).