Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24577079-20141203031648/@comment-823840-20141204021945

A central figure in this historical drama was Eriksson's father, Erik the Red, who grew up in Iceland after his father, Thorvald Asvaldsson, was exiled from Norway around 965 for "some killings."

Merely linked the Wikipedia article for posterity. Terminology of Leif's patriarch aside, my point remains that butterflies might have affected who did what in this vastly different world. For all we know, a unified non-Christian Western Roman (or Germanic) presence exists at the dawn of the ninth century and nips the Viking Age in the bud by "culling" the extraneous Norse population.