He had a giant squid and a current named after him - what more do you need to know?

Seriously though he was a proper scientist and endorsed by none other than Charles Darwin. He was one of the fist to take a holistic approach to nature, looking into the relationship between geography and biology.

He is also the reason we have altitude sickness, or more precisely that we understand what it is.

Some people call him the father of modern geography and he is one of those amazing people that just discovered a whole series of science, yet we doubt many people would have actually heard of him?

He was also the first person to map areas of equal air temperature and pressure, a technique now used in weather forecast around the world.

Humboldt explored the territories of nations we now call Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico, he sailed up the Casiquiare and determined its longitude and latitude, climbed Mount Chimborazo to the height of 17,900 feet.

He wrote 23 volumes of his travels — which puts us to shame. if every there was someone who deserved more recognition for his contribution to world understanding we would put Alexander right up there.

Erik Thorvaldsson was a Norse* and explorer. He was born in Iceland and is well documented in the Saga’s - folk tales of adventures from Iceland and Greenland.

*To be a Norseman is just a collective term for the Proto Europeans of Germanic , Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Faroe Islands**, now-a-days we call them Scandinavians. Interestingly Finland although part of the same land mass as Sweden has its roots in Slavic culture and is not consider Norse or part of Scandinavia. Many people in the Shetland Islands in the far North of the British Isles also consider themselves Norse even today, as witnessed by the Norse inspired Fire Festival of Up Helle Ar, which we would recommend a visit - an amazing experience.

In old Norse a víkingr is a person, while víking is an activity, therefore to go Viking is to do something. A víkingr was someone who went on expeditions, usually abroad, usually by sea.

Vikings are not therefore just Norsemen. To go Viking means to go on an adventure, often to trade, but also to take slaves**, kill and steal goods, food and materials, as well as loot.

Like many of the explorers that were to follow, he was violent, tough and resourceful – you had to be to survive. They were also superb navigators, and would regularly travel vast distances in small boats over rough seas of the North Atlantic.

He married a Hebridean woman, itself remarkable given the vast distance between Greenland – Iceland** and the Hebrides off the coast of Western Scotland.

** A recent DNA study of Icelandic women indicates that some 62% of the females currently in Iceland have mitochondrial inherited from the British Isles

He founded a village called Brattahlid in what is now called Quassiarsuk Southern Greenland, with a tiny population and even today its population is less than 50 people.

Son of Eric the Red, hence Erics - son, he and his crews “discovered”* North America 500 years before Christopher Columbus, and long before the pilgrim fathers such as the Mullins from Dorking set sail on the Mayflower from the river Thames to eventually shatter the peace of the indigenous population.

*We use the term discovered, but these places, were always there, and for the most part already had their own indigenous populations, long before any other nations decided to visit and claim land or resources, often with disastrous results for the native population, both human and wildlife, bringing both war and diseases with them.

In 1492 Christopher Columbus was credited with discovering America but it is more probably that all he discovered was the Bahamas and later the Island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and Dominican Republic. There is a nice 19th c statue of Christopher Columbus in Santo Domingo, but actual evidence he ever set foot on continental North America.

The Mayflower was much later again and set sail to America on the 16th the September 1620

Leif Ericson or his followers probably founded a settlement in New Foundland which is now called “Anse aux Meadows” which is carbon 40 dated to the time of Leifs adventures.