A more important question arises in connexion with various conflicting statements as to the ultimate religious faith of Eric the Red, and the precise time of his death. On these points the Flatey Book is not quite consistent with itself, for in the body of the Olaf Tryggvason Saga, chap. 352, it states that Eric was converted. This passage, however, is evidently from a different source, and speaking broadly we have the statement in the Flatey Book that Eric died in the winter following Leif’s return from Wineland, which would hardly give time for his admittedly slow conversion to Christianity, while in Hauk’s version Eric lives on to the time of Karlsefni. The repeated statements in other authorities as to Eric’s low opinion of the priest, whom he described as a humbug or hypocrite, give colour to the theory that he died unconverted. The priestly chronicler of his achievements, on the other hand, would doubtless favour any rumour of the final conversion of his hero. It would hardly do, if it could be avoided, to leave this pioneer of colonial enterprise in the hell which the belief of the period would inevitably assign to him if he refused to the end to abandon his old creed. I am inclined to think, on the whole, that the Flatey Book is correct in saying that Eric was dead when the later voyages took place. If we glance at the chronology we find that Eric, by 981 or 982 (date of first Greenland voyage), had been long enough in Iceland to have made many friends as well as enemies. Before he came to Iceland he was old enough to be implicated in homicide with his father.[75] He married, and one son was born before his three years’ exile from Iceland. The sons of Thord Gelli, brothers, that is, of Karlsefni’s grandmother, were among his active enemies. The father of Gudrid, Thorbjörn Vifilson, was among his contemporaries, as was Herjulf, who had a grown-up son who had owned a ship for some years in 985–6. True, Snorri Godi, born 963, and the sons of Thorbrand of Alptafjord, were among those who participated in his quarrels, but they must have been among his younger contemporaries. In 985 or 986 Eric had an established position as a leader of men; at the date of Leif’s voyage he considered himself an old man. If we put his birth midway between that of Snorri Godi (963) and his father (938), we shall not then be far wrong. Eric, therefore, would be born about 950.