Erik the Red and his persuasion strategy

Lately I’ve changed course, moving away from self-development, marketing and investment books towards something a little different. And I have to say I haven’t enjoyed reading this much in years. Right now I’m really into books about human development, history, geography, discoveries and inventions. Of course, I look at all of it through my warped marketer’s perspective. I came across Erik in the last two books I read.

If you discover something, it’s yours!

A time when you could find something and say it was yours is unimaginable to us, and fascinating. In today’s society, everything belongs to someone. If we want something, we have to buy it or the state gives it to us. That’s it.

It used to be more interesting and wilder. You arrived somewhere, looked around and nobody was there? Then it was yours. You didn’t have to check the land registry to see whether it belonged to anyone. You simply stuck your flag in the ground and it was yours until someone stuck something in you.

Erik’s story involves a lot of sticking things in.

Erik the Red

Erik the Red was a guy you wouldn’t really want as a neighbour. First, he and his father were banished from Norway for some mischief, and then, for a double murder in Iceland, he was banished from the island for 3 years (and people say today’s punishments are lenient).

However, Erik didn’t head back to Norway, as the vast majority of people would have. He set off in the other direction and gambled that he would either die or it would work out. Today, Erik would probably be doing the rounds of casinos and playing the slot machines.

Back then, though, it paid off and he came across Greenland. He discovered, for Europeans, the largest island in the world, with an area of 2,166,086 km². To put that into perspective, it is 28 times larger than today’s Czech Republic.

On paper, that looks like a big win and a jackpot, but there was a bit of a problem. This little map illustrates the problem quite well.

This is where one of the basic rules of capitalism comes in. When something is yours, you feel more attached to it and you value it more highly than its objective worth.

And you also want to sell it to others. So how do you sell a frozen, isolated and inhospitable land?

The green promised land

Well, you have to do it a bit like Thai hotels on Booking. Give the squalor a really good polish.

And the name is the foundation. If they knew nothing about either option, pretty much everyone would rather go swimming in Crystal Lake than in Mud Pond. The name simply matters. Names trigger all sorts of associations and expectations in our heads. When you read the names of these historical figures, you probably picture them straight away:

1. Ivan the Terrible
2. Ethelred the Unready
3. Hughes the Big Bottom
4. Edward III, the Black Prince
5. Cnut the Big Nose

Back to Erik

So Erik the Red named the island Green Land (Groenland) and settled in a place called Brattahlid (steep slope) near Erik’s Fjord. Some sources suggest that Greenland was more pleasant in his day, but probably only by a degree.

Wherever Erik went next, he named it Erik’s. Some of the names have survived to this day.

1. Erik’s Fjord (Eriksfjord)

2. Erik’s Settlement (Eriksstadir)

3. Erik’s Land (Eriksland)

The first 3 years Erik and his mates lived in Greenland were a fight for survival and a time of exploration. They travelled 10,000 kilometres and Erik realised that he had a huge land but no one to rule. Life in a community of 50 people is very different from life in a community of 800. As a rule, the larger the community you have, the more “comfortable” life tends to be.

A campaign was needed. He set off for sparsely populated Iceland, which nevertheless couldn’t even feed its small population. He travelled from settlement to settlement running a recruitment campaign, greatly embellishing what life in Greenland was like. In fact, he lied outright, but surprisingly it served its purpose (like some political campaigns).

Greener grass, fatter walruses? Not really, but once the Icelanders had been lured to Greenland, there was often no way back for them and they had to accept this harder life.

After a few years, Erik the Red became the respected chieftain of several thousand inhabitants, and Greenland began to prosper fairly well in terms of trade. His son, Leif Eriksson, is considered the first Viking to reach North America.

If you look at Erik’s story more closely, you’ll find that he really wasn’t afraid to push risk to the limit.