The Norse mostly settled Greenland because they had to, not because it was such a great place to be. It was a frontier, settled by desperate people. Leif's fath

The Norse mostly settled Greenland because they had to, not because it was such a great place to be. It was a frontier, settled by desperate people. Leif's father, the chieftain Eric the Red, had moved there because he had been banished from Iceland over a murder. And of course the Greenland colony wasn't really sustainable, which is why it died out when a couple of hard turns came their way (climate change and getting cut off from trade for a few years).