I. NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE
In order to judge what historical value should be assigned to the
narrative here translated, it is necessary for the reader to have a
clear idea of the nature of saga literature, and some notion of the
process by which such stories were transmitted from the time of their
occurrence to the period, more than three centuries later, when they
assumed the form which is now known to us. In view of the fact, which
must be at once conceded, that we are dependent upon an interval of
oral tradition before any written account of the Wineland voyages can
have come into existence, we must first of all consider how the special
characteristics of story-telling in Iceland affect the reliability
of such tradition; next we should look for any early corroboration
bearing upon the questions involved; and finally we must consider the
manuscripts which form the basis of the story, and inquire into any
circumstances which may make one source preferable to another.
_Oral Tradition in Iceland._
None of the Wineland voyages which form the subject of our inquiry
can have taken place later than—say—A.D. 1030, and the earliest
would appear to date from as early as 986. Until the inconvenient
runic alphabet, suited only to short inscriptions, was superseded
by something better adapted to the requirements of fluent literary
composition, the history of such events could be preserved only by
word of mouth. This change did not occur till at any rate nearly a
century had elapsed from the time of the occurrences with which we are
dealing. Oral tradition, however, may, under favourable conditions,
show a fidelity to the actual facts which is at first sight surprising.
Mention might be made in this connexion of the Scottish Highlands,
where, in spite of the Celtic imagination, the ‘shenachies’ or prose
annalists attached to the more important families have been found
to have transmitted historical facts which have been most exactly
confirmed by subsequent investigation of documentary evidence. A little
consideration will show that this is not so extraordinary as one might
superficially be disposed to imagine. The distinction, recognized by
our law, between libel and slander is partly at any rate based upon
a consideration which should be borne in mind in this connexion.
The written word remains, even though contradicted and disproved;
nay, it may not infrequently survive its contradiction. The verbal
narrator of contemporary events, however, is always liable to have
among his audience those who are as thoroughly conversant with the
facts described as he is himself. An inaccuracy may be suddenly and
unpleasantly brought to book; the lie is no sooner uttered than it is
denounced and exposed. We find a good illustration of the embarrassing
predicament in which a story-teller might find himself placed (though
the hero in this instance came out of the ordeal with credit) in
the episode of the Icelandic saga-man at the court of King Harald
Haardraade which is reproduced among the excerpts in Vigfusson and
Powell’s _Icelandic Reader_ (p. 141). This young man, we are told, was
taken in at court for the purpose of entertaining the bodyguard with
his sagas. About Christmas time he began to grow melancholy, and on
the cause being investigated it was found that he had used up all his
stories but one just at the time—the Yuletide festivities—when his
accomplishment was most in demand. This remaining story he hesitated
to recite, for it was the saga of the king’s own travels. Encouraged,
however, by Harald himself, he ventured upon his embarrassing task,
the hero of the exploits described being present among the audience.
The story was told, and the days passed by, but the Icelander evinced
no curiosity to know how his rendering had pleased the person who had
first-hand knowledge of the facts. ‘I am afraid about it’ was his
reply, when the king drew his attention to this omission on his part.
Harald reassured him, however, saying that his version was perfectly
correct, and inquired the source from which so accurate a report had
been obtained. On learning that one Halldor Snorrison was the person
originally responsible, the king said that he was no longer surprised
at the accuracy of the tale, and offered the narrator the hospitality
of his court on any future occasion when he might wish to come there.
Another instance, where the consequences were not so satisfactory to
the story-teller, occurs in Njál’s Saga, where Gunnar Lambison is
requested by King Sigtrygg in the Orkneys to give an account of the
burning of Njál in his house, to which he had been a party. He starts
telling the story in an unfair and inaccurate manner, stating among
other things that Skarphedinn, Njál’s son, had wept as the danger
closed round him. Upon this Kári, who has been listening at the door,
dashes in with a drawn sword, and cuts off the head of the untruthful
historian. Flosi, another of the burners, defends and justifies Kári’s
action, and thereupon tells the story himself, and as he favours
neither one side nor the other unduly in his narration we are told that
his story was believed.
Now the conditions of this art of story-telling in Iceland were
unusually favourable to the maintenance of an accurate tradition. In
the first place, as may be seen from the instance cited, the practice
was to all intents and purposes contemporaneous with the occurrence of
the events described. In the second place, a point which will fall to
be developed later on, it is evident that the taste of the Icelandic
audience was intensely practical and unimaginative. Superstitions no
doubt there were, in Iceland as throughout the whole world of this
and indeed far later periods, but even their ghosts and supernatural
occurrences are treated by this people, far more than by any other
with whose works I am conversant, as something all in the day’s work.
The Icelander did not want, like the Celt or the later Romancers,
to surround his heroes with an atmosphere of picturesque mythology;
his principal desire was to learn in the utmost detail exactly how
everything was done, with the dates, genealogies, and circumstances
relevant to the story to which he was listening.
I have mentioned the word genealogies, and this brings me to the last
factor which operated in favour of the accuracy of oral tradition
in Iceland. The colony was from its very nature composed of a great
number of more or less connected families, equal in social status, and
known to each other to consist of men of like passions with themselves.
There was no king, no outstanding heroic personality, round whose
unapproachable majesty the flattering tongues of courtiers could
weave their myths and fictions. The saga-teller moreover was not,
like the bards and shenachies of the Scottish Highlands, the appanage
of a single family. He moved from place to place, whiling away the
monotony of the Arctic winter with his histories, and the hero of one
locality was in another an ancestor or a member of a family in no
way superior to the persons who were gathered to hear the tale. Each
listener was deeply versed in genealogy, a subject which was clearly
regarded as of primary importance. Most great families, by dint of
intermarriage, were connected with at all events some of the characters
which were introduced into almost any saga, and the necessity of
reciting correctly before the most critical of audiences the intricate
ramifications of all the family trees occurring in the course of the
narrative must have been the best possible discipline to produce a
school where accuracy was placed above every other consideration.
From the circumstance, too, that the story had to satisfy the
inhabitants and the visitors of a number of different settlements,
with an equal social status but with frequently conflicting interests,
arose the characteristic which has often been noticed by students
of Icelandic literature, that both or all sides of a question are
stated fairly, the author or reciter being, as Vigfusson has put it,
‘a heathen with the heathen, a wrathful man with the avenger, and
a sorrowful man with the mourner, as his style reflects the varied
feelings of his _dramatis personae_’.[64]
We have therefore the best of grounds for imagining that the exploits
of those who fought, litigated, or explored in the tenth and eleventh
centuries were carried with truth, impartiality, and accuracy over the
brief interval which separated them from the age of written history,
which dawned with Ari the Learned.
_Ari the Learned._
This pioneer of Icelandic history and of the age of writing was born,
as we learn from the Icelandic Annals, in the year following the Norman
conquest of England (1067). His grandfather, Gelli, was a contemporary
of Karlsefni, and was in fact his second cousin. (See Genealogical
Table, p. 20.) We are expressly told by Ari that his uncle, Thorkel
Gellison, supplied him with information relating to Eric the Red, which
he had obtained from direct speech with one of the latter’s companions.
The events with which we are concerned thus fall within a period
bridged by one human memory from the time of occurrence to the period
when they could be recorded in writing, and when written history, as
superseding oral tradition, may be said to begin.
It is moreover worthy of note in passing that the most important
explorer with whom these sagas deal, Thorfin Karlsefni, was of the same
stock as Ari, and must almost necessarily have been personally known to
one of his informants, his uncle Thorkel.
It should also be remarked that one of the persons for whom Ari
expressly tells us that he composed his Íslendíngabók, and to whom he
showed it, was Bishop Thorlak, the grandson of that Snorri who, as we
are told in the saga, was born to Karlsefni in Wineland.
To the truthful and conscientious work of Ari the Learned a well-known
introductory passage in the history of the kings of Norway known as
Heimskringla bears eloquent witness. The author of this book was
greatly indebted to the researches of Ari; in fact, though the latter’s
original work on the subject of the Norse kings no longer exists in
its intact and primitive form, we know that such a book was among his
literary achievements, and was in all probability followed closely by
subsequent compilers of stories relating to the earlier history of
Norway. Unfortunately, however, greatly as later writers were indebted
to Ari, of his original work only one book remains, and this in a
highly condensed and summarized form. This is the Íslendíngabók, or
history of the Icelanders. We know from the author’s own statement
that this book was originally written in a different and probably more
extended form, of which no copies now remain, but the little book now
extant contains, besides a genealogy of Karlsefni, one passage valuable
to us in dealing with the present subject, from the early corroboration
which it affords of the essential outlines of our story. This passage,
which will also be found in the Appendix of Supplementary Passages, p.
74, may be rendered as follows:
‘The country which is called Greenland was discovered and colonized
from Iceland. It was a man called Eric the Red from Breidafjord who
went out thither from this country, and he took land in the place
which was afterwards called Ericsfjord: he named the country and
called it Greenland, saying that the fact that the country had a
good name would attract men to journey thither. They found there,
both in the east and the west of the country, dwellings of men,
and fragments of canoes, and stone implements of a kind from which
one could tell that a race had come (_farit_) there _of the kind
that inhabited_ (_bygt_) _Wineland, and whom the Greenlanders call
Skrælings_. Now the date when the settlement of that country was
started was from fourteen to fifteen winters before Christianity
came here to Iceland, according to an account given to Thorkel
Gellison in Greenland by one who himself accompanied Eric the Red
out.’
This casual reference would appear to afford the strongest confirmation
both of the known and recognized existence of Wineland, and, in
particular, of the episodes described in the sagas relating to the
savages or ‘skrælings’.
It furnishes besides, in the present writer’s opinion, proof positive
that a land inhabited by savages had been visited by the Norsemen at
a time when no such people had actually been met with in Greenland
itself. The Eskimo of Greenland, it will be observed, had, so far as
Ari’s information went, come and gone before the Norse occupation
(_farit_), and their existence was only inferred from the traces above
described, while the natives of Wineland had at the same date ‘a local
habitation (_bygt_) and a name’. ‘Skrælings’ was not therefore a title
transferred from known inhabitants of Greenland to savages figuring in
tales of Wineland; the reverse was the case.
This point will be developed later, and certain objections which have
been raised to this interpretation of the passage will be fully dealt
with, but it will at once be seen that it is of considerable importance
in its bearing upon the accuracy of the saga and the fact of the Norse
discovery.
_The Landnámabók._
Another work of high authority, in which it is certain that the
conscientious hand of Ari played a large part, is the Landnámabók or
history of the settlement of Iceland. Hauk Erlendson, in his edition
of this classic, expressly acknowledges the authorship of the master,
saying that it is ‘according to that which first priest Ari the
Learned, Thorgil’s son, has written, and Kolskegg the Wise’. Kolskegg
was a contemporary of Ari’s, and Vigfusson[65] thinks that his share
in the collaboration was confined to supplying the genealogies of the
Eastern district. Judging from its uniformity of style, this great
authority[66] has no hesitation in ascribing the sole authorship of
the Landnámabók to Ari and Kolskegg. The authoritative character of
this work has a direct bearing upon our subject, for it is evident
that the writers of both versions of the story drew largely from its
pages, indeed both versions contain a great deal of absolutely literal
quotation.
As regards Wineland itself, however, the Landnámabók has but little
to say. It was in fact foreign to the purpose of a book whose whole
scope was confined to Iceland, and we ought not therefore to expect
more than we actually find. The only reliable mention of the place is
in the passage relating to Ari Marsson, who is there said to have
been cast upon Hvítramannaland, ‘which some call Ireland the Great,
it lies westward in the sea near Wineland the Good’. The importance
attaching to this passage is that Wineland is casually mentioned as a
well-known locality from which the position of Hvítramannaland could
be approximately fixed, without the necessity of further explanation.
Another passage, relating to ‘Karlsefni who found Wineland the Good’,
is of less value, as it is in all probability an interpolation by
Hauk, which consequently affords no independent corroboration of the
discovery.
_Adam of Bremen._
It has therefore been established so far that at the time when writing
superseded oral tradition the fact of the discovery of a ‘Wineland’
by the Norsemen was perfectly well known, that it lay to the west
(vide Landnámabók), and contained savages. The name moreover affords
some corroboration in itself of the details given in the sagas with
reference to the discovery of grapes there. A further confirmation of
the facts recorded as to the principal products of the country must now
be dealt with. This dates from an even earlier period, and comes from
an independent source, the _Descriptio_ of the ‘islands’ or countries
of the North which was written by Adam of Bremen. This worthy became
director of the cathedral school in Bremen in or about the year of
Ari’s birth (1067), and derived, as he tells us, the information upon
which his description is based from Svein Estridson, King of the Danes,
who died in 1076.
Knowledge obtained from such a source brings us practically to the
lifetime of Karlsefni’s contemporaries, and well within that of many
who might remember him or his associates. In the geographical work
referred to, Adam inserts the following reference to Wineland:
‘He (King Svein) told me of yet another island besides, discovered by
many in that Ocean, which is called ‘Wineland’, from the fact that
there vines grow naturally, producing the best wine. Moreover that corn
abounds there without sowing we have ascertained, not from fabulous
conjecture, but from the reliable (_certa_) report of the Danes.’
_Prima facie_, therefore, we have here the most controversial part of
the whole story—the existence of the wild corn and vines—substantiated
by an authority based on a Scandinavian source, almost within the
lifetime of the explorers themselves. In view of a contention which
will be dealt with more fully later, that the accounts of vines and
wild corn occurring in the sagas are derived from references to the
Fortunate Islands in Isidore Hispalensis and classical works, it may be
important to note here the emphasis laid by the writer on the source of
his information.
Adam of Bremen, a learned continental _magister_, must have been
already familiar with the numerous legends relating to these
Fortunate Islands, references to which are frequent in many classical
authorities, and he appears to be anticipating the criticism which has
in fact been made, when he draws, as he does, a careful distinction
between _fabulosa opinio_ and _certa relatio Danorum_. He seems in fact
to be saying,—‘Of course you think that this is another story based on
classical legends which are familiar to you, but it is nothing of the
sort: when I was in Denmark I had the opportunity of questioning the
Danes whose information I have recorded, and I find it impossible to
conclude that this is merely a case of the Insulae Fortunatae at second
hand.’
_Date of the Existing Manuscripts._
We may now pass on to consider the sources from which the present
translation is drawn. The existing manuscripts, it will be found, are
none of them earlier than the fourteenth century, but it may be well to
point out that this fact is not so damaging to their credit as might be
supposed.
The day of oral tradition was long over, the day of documentary history
had been long established, and the compilers of those versions which we
now possess must have worked in the main not from oral tradition, but
from earlier written sagas which had then attained to a large extent
the form in which we have them. A well-known passage in the Sturlunga
Saga is not without a bearing on this point. ‘Nearly all stories.’ it
says, ‘which had been made in Iceland before Bishop Brand Sæmundson
died (A.D. 1201) had been committed to writing; but stories of things
which have taken place since were hardly committed to writing at all
before the skald Sturla Thordson dictated the Iceland Sagas.’ Now while
we may admit, with Vigfusson, that this passage has reference primarily
to the three sagas which have at this point been incorporated in
Sturlunga, it is clear that ‘nearly all stories’ cannot be a statement
confined to three, and must have a general reference to the condition
of all the stories known at that date. It follows that any events
which took place before 1201 had in all probability assumed a more or
less fixed written form before Sturla (born _c._ 1217) started to write
down the later occurrences.
The contributions of later scribes would appear to have been confined
for the most part to bringing the genealogies down to their own day;
the fashion of romanticizing the earlier material to any great extent
did not become general till a later date than those which we have to
consider.
That Eric’s Saga had assumed a written form before the Flatey Book
version was compiled is evident from the reference to it in the opening
chapter of that story: ‘Thence arose the quarrels and fights between
Eric and Thorgest which are related in Eric’s Saga.’ How far the saga
of Eric known to the compilers of the Flatey Book corresponded with
any work which now bears the same name is a question which cannot
be adequately discussed till we have considered further the nature
and authenticity of the versions from which the translation has been
derived.[67]
_Hauk’s Book and the Saga of Eric the Red._
Our knowledge of the Wineland voyages is obtained, as the careful
reader of the translation will discover, from two apparently
independent sources, which may for convenience be described as Hauk’s
version and that of the Flatey Book. The story as known to Hauk is
found in two manuscripts: one contained in Hauk’s Book and partly
written by his own hand; the other, in an early fifteenth-century
hand, is No. 557 4to in the collection of Arne Magnusson, and is most
conveniently designated—according to its actual title—as the Saga of
Eric the Red.
This last-named manuscript, while it was undoubtedly written long
after Hauk’s Book, probably embodies the earlier and better text of
this version. It is certainly not a free rendering of the story, but a
literal transcript of some earlier manuscript, for it contains a number
of typical copyist’s errors. There are, for example, words repeated
twice in succession, and passages which as they stand are meaningless,
and require some simple emendation. It is equally certain that the
text followed was not that of Hauk, for the language differs slightly
throughout, and there are sentences in each version neither occurring
in the other nor arising from it by necessary implication. The theory
that the Saga of Eric the Red embodies an earlier text than that of
Hauk is deduced by experts from the greater simplicity of the language
in the former version. To the lay mind the most convincing proof
is to be derived from the genealogy at the end of the saga. As has
already been stated, it was the practice of transcribers to bring such
pedigrees down to their own day. Hauk follows this practice, tracing
the line of Karlsefni down to himself. The Saga of Eric stops short at
Bishop Brand the first, several generations earlier. Hauk, according
to his account, was the great-great-great-grandson of Bishop Brand’s
second cousin. (See Genealogical Table, p. 20.) The fact, however, that
Bishop Brand is described as ‘the first’ shows conclusively that the
text copied in Eric’s Saga was not completed till the ordination of the
second bishop of that name, which took place in 1263.
Of course, as far as this goes, it is not inconsistent with the
writers of these two versions having worked from the same manuscript,
which Hauk altered and edited, while the other scribe contented himself
with a literal copy. While, however, the sense of Hauk’s version
follows approximately that of the rival manuscript, the language is
rarely identical for many words together. Had both been working from
the same manuscript, this is not what one would expect to find: it is
so much simpler to transcribe a passage _verbatim_, when the meaning
which it is intended to convey is as adequately given by such a method.
And Hauk’s text occasionally gives us information which cannot be
explained as a mere intelligent amplification of the other.
We are consequently justified in all probability in imagining that
the common origin of the two versions must be assigned to a period
considerably earlier than either. Finnur Jónsson, an excellent critic
of Icelandic styles, considers that we may give the common archetype as
early a date as 1200. As regards the date of the extant manuscripts,
to which, for reasons already given, too much importance should not
be attached, it is sufficient to state that Hauk died in 1334, and as
his own hand concludes the saga it must have been written some time
before that date. The clue given by the mention of Bishop Brand ‘the
first’, noticed above, is common to both manuscripts, and fixes the
period before which neither manuscript was completed at 1263. In the
case of Hauk’s Book these limits are further narrowed by the mention of
Hallbera with her title as Abbess of Reynisness. We know that this lady
attained this position in 1299, so that Hauk’s Book cannot have been
completed before this date.
_Hauk’s Personal Authority._
Mr. W. H. Babcock, in his clear and valuable treatise on the
subject,[68] lays considerable stress on the fact that Hauk was a
descendant of Karlsefni, as enhancing the authority of this version
of the narrative. To some extent this is a good point, but it may
be doubted whether Hauk’s knowledge of his ancestors was sufficient
to check the written records accessible in his day. He follows the
demonstrable error of Landnámabók in making Thorbjörn Vifilson the
son of Aud’s freedman, which a close examination of the chronological
data shows to be an altogether untenable theory. (See Genealogical
Table, p. 20.) He was separated from Karlsefni by no fewer than eight
generations, and any reader who takes the trouble to consider how
much he knows of the achievements of so distant an ancestor will no
doubt form the conclusion that Hauk was not in a position to throw
much additional light on the subject, though it was naturally of
peculiar interest to him. All we can say is that he regarded the saga
as historical and not romantic, and his wide experience of Icelandic
literature, quite apart from his family connexions, made him a good
judge. That he had no special private sources of information is clear
from the fact that he transcribed the saga practically as it stood. It
cannot be sustained that he discarded the Flatey version, or preferred
the alternative; it seems much more likely that the editors of the
Flatey Book tapped sources to which he never had access. Hauk, had he
deliberately compared the two authorities, would for example inevitably
have selected the Flatey version of the stranded-whale episode, as
this tallies much better than his own text with the older verses
incorporated. (Cf. next chapter, p. 132.) Hauk, in fact, merely copied,
with more or less intelligence, the only version of the story which he
knew, and his manuscript, therefore, stands on exactly the same footing
as the Saga of Eric the Red: coming from a common archetype they of
course afford no independent corroboration of one another.
_Independence of the Flatey Version._
That such corroboration is, however, afforded by the version contained
in the Flatey Book is, I think, clear to demonstration. But for the
attitude of some modern writers on the subject, the independence of
this account might be said to be beyond dispute, whatever its relative
value as an authority might be. Some commentators have, however,
attempted to establish that the Flatey Book is but an embroidery based
on the rival text. Thus Mr. Juul Dieserud, in the Bulletin of the
American Geographical Society (1901), states boldly that the Flatey
Book ‘borrowed incidents and descriptions from the story of Thorfin’.
He adds: ‘This may seem to be a hazardous conjecture, but ... the only
way out of it is to regard the saga of Thorfin as the result of a
similar process.’
The alternative, however, with which Mr. Dieserud here considers
himself to be faced, is by no means the only one. The depositions of
two witnesses to a matter of fact may show many points of agreement as
well as discrepancies without any collusion or borrowing whatsoever.
So, too, different authors may treat of a question of history or
tradition without having consulted each other’s works. Again, if I and
a friend go through some experience together—suppose, for instance,
that we serve in the same unit during the war—the accounts which we
transmit to our respective descendants may be quite independent of one
another. A charge of plagiarism, under such conditions, needs to be
established by definite and cogent evidence.
Now what does Mr. Dieserud put forward as proof or support of his
contention? He says, for example, ‘an incident related of the stalwart
Freydis and the short mention of some quarrels caused by the women
during the last winter in Straumsfjord sets somebody’s imagination
working till we get a gruesome tale of her separate expedition to
Wineland in company with the brothers Helgi and Finnbogi’. The quarrels
over (not otherwise caused by) the women in the Saga of Eric the Red
are of a purely sexual character. The bachelors, we are told, coveted
the wives of the married men. This situation, though hardly unique,
might well provide an imaginative mind with a plot like that of a
modern problem novel. But where is anything of the kind to be traced
in the Flatey Book story of Freydis? There is no quarrel about women;
in fact, feminine charm was hardly Freydis’s strong point. There is
a purely mercenary dispute about the ownership of a boat, in which a
person who is incidentally a woman plays the principal part. In short,
there is no sort of connexion between the two plots; it might as well
be said that the story of Jezebel and Naboth was a plagiarism from that
of David and Bathsheba.
In the same way, the alleged development of Bjarni Herjulfson from
Bjarni Grimolfson, which is also asserted by Joseph Fischer,[69]
rests upon no more solid foundation than the coincidence of a name
by no means uncommon in Icelandic literature. Storm, more correctly,
recognizes the Bjarni of the Flatey Book as ‘en ellers ganske ubekjendt
person’ (a person otherwise quite unknown), and Neckel’s _Erste
Entdeckung Amerikas_ makes use of an identical expression. Would
anyone, desiring to make up a good story about Bjarni Grimolfson,
neglect the dramatic episode of his death in the worm-eaten ship, as
given in the saga of Eric? Why, as Neckel says, not let him land and
find the vines and corn, if the object was to give him a credit not
his due? Apart from their first names, Bjarni Grimolfson and Bjarni
Herjulfson have nothing whatever in common. When Fischer says, ‘Only
in this way (i.e. by inventing the Flatey Book story) could the
priest (John Thordson, one of the scribes of the Flatey Book) ascribe
the honour of the discovery of Wineland to his hero Bjarni, who was
really only one of the band who accompanied Karlsefni on his later
expedition’, one is disposed to ask, Who treats Bjarni as a hero? He
gets no credit for the discovery which accident threw in his way; Leif
is here, as elsewhere, treated as the discoverer of Wineland: nay, we
are told that Bjarni was severely criticized for lack of enterprise in
not pursuing his investigations further. Moreover, if Bjarni Grimolfson
was John Thordson’s hero, why change his surname altogether?
The third parallel suggested by Mr. Dieserud is between Tyrker in the
Flatey Book and Hake and Hekja in Eric’s Saga. Hake and Hekja, one
would think, make a more picturesque appeal to an imaginative writer
than Tyrker. They are at least as good material for a story. But they
are Scots or Celts while Tyrker is a German, they are two while he is
one; in fact, they show few points of resemblance. A better case could
be made out for a comparison between Tyrker and Thorhall the Hunter,
though even this would be pretty remote. These are the three instances
most prominently put forward to substantiate a charge of plagiarism.
When we look for points in one version which must inevitably have been
included in the other if the two accounts were interdependent, we are
only struck by the dissimilarity. The wild corn, so prominent in Eric’s
Saga and in the popular accounts which reached Adam of Bremen, is not
mentioned anywhere in the Flatey Book. The stranded whale, evidently
a fact, as shown by Thorhall’s verses, is referred to, but the whole
point of the story, as a story, is destroyed by too literal adherence
to what appears to be the simple truth.
On the other hand, numerous statements of a circumstantial nature are
made in the Flatey version which find no place in the rival account.
The important ‘eyktarstad’ observation (see Chapter V) is a good
instance of this. The Flatey Book gives the south-westerly course which
the necessities of the case, as known to us, demand, but we look in
vain for such a course in Eric’s Saga or Hauk’s Book, which follow
the current ideas of Icelandic geographers in reporting a uniform
progress to the south. Is it suggested that the greater accuracy of the
Flatey Book in this particular is a freak of a vivid but uninstructed
imagination? The savages, sleeping under their boats, as Jacques
Cartier found them centuries later, are also mentioned in the Flatey
Book alone. It is true that the authors of this version, coming to the
conclusion that all the explorers made the same landfall, have felt
at liberty to draw the description of Leif’s camp from what appears
to be a report of Karlsefni’s Hóp, but, assuming the latter place to
have been actually discovered by Karlsefni, there is no evidence in
this that another saga was consulted at all. In short, I can find
no evidence whatever that the compilers of the Flatey Book version
had any knowledge of the rival account known to us. It is true that
Finnur Jónsson[70] considers that the reference to ‘Eric’s saga’ in
the introductory matter quoted from Landnáma is to the document known
to us by that name; but, with all respect to the views of so fine an
Icelandic scholar, such a theory seems to me untenable. In the first
place, in the passage in question the author must be alluding to a
story so well known to his audience that he can refer them to it
without hesitation. _A fortiori_ a story known to himself. Yet no one
who had more than the haziest recollection of our Eric’s Saga could
possibly make the wide departures from it which are characteristic
of the Flatey version. Secondly, the reference to the ‘quarrels and
fights’ between Eric and Thorgest suggests a detailed account of the
whole dispute. Yet the matter omitted in the Flatey Book from that
supplied by Landnáma, which is the source quoted by all our authorities
at this stage, amounts to no more than a bare mention of the battle
which brought about Eric’s banishment, and that on his return to
Iceland which was the prelude to reconciliation. The omissions are in
fact hardly longer than the explanation which the author inserts. The
object of the reference being clearly to effect a saving of time or
space, one must suppose that the allusion is to some fuller account.
But even if the reference were to our Eric’s Saga, it would not
disprove the independence of the Flatey version as a whole, since at
this point the compiler has not reached the stage where he incorporates
new matter, but is copying practically _verbatim_ an abridgement from
Landnáma which is to be found in other texts of the Saga of Olaf
Tryggvason. The reference to ‘Eric’s saga’ is part of a quotation,
rather than an original observation. In fact, as Neckel puts it, ‘the
(Flatey Book) narrative makes pretty strong departures from the Saga
of Eric the Red. It knows on the one hand more, on the other less;
above all, the same occurrences appear in quite different order and
connexion’ ... ‘Between both accounts runs the remarkable relationship
that while clearly harmonious in the main features they are widely
separated from one another in details. The use of the older narrative
by the younger is accordingly excluded.’
The motive apparently suggested by Mr. Dieserud and those who agree
with him for the tone adopted in the Flatey Book is the glorification
of the family of Eric the Red. The introduction of a prior discoverer
to Leif does not seem likely to conduce to such a result, and one
feels that a member of Eric’s family would hardly regard the story of
Freydis with pride or pleasure. But let that pass. Those who adopt this
position seem to be faced with a dilemma. No one outside Greenland
had any interest in attempting such a task, while if—as I myself
believe (see next chapter, p. 139)—this version comes in the main
from a Greenland source, it is far more likely that it represents an
independent tradition than that compilers in so inaccessible a country
had access to the version current in Iceland. For these reasons we need
have no hesitation in accepting the independence of the Flatey version,
and in concluding with Vigfusson that ‘the correspondence of these
distinct versions throws great light on the vitality and faithfulness
of tradition, and is a strong confirmation of the credibility in
main points of a saga which is especially important for historic
reasons’.[71]
_Date of the Flatey Book._
The date and circumstances of composition of the Flatey Book are known
to us from the invaluable researches of Vigfusson, who transcribed the
entire manuscript for publication. From this source we learn that it
was compiled for one John Haakonson, who was born in 1350; the date
of its commencement can therefore hardly have been earlier than some
twenty years later (_c._ 1370). As originally planned it commenced
with the mythical tale of Eric the Far-travelled, a fact which is
plain from the words of the text, ‘He that wrote this book set this
story first’. It continues in the same hand to set down a long saga
of Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway, followed by the saga of King Olaf
the Holy. At this point the first scribe, John Thordson, lays down his
pen, and the book is carried on by one Magnus, terminating with some
Annals, which it was intended to keep up to date by additions from
time to time. When therefore Magnus found himself in possession of
some additional matter, which it was thought desirable to incorporate
in the volume, he added a few leaves at the _beginning_ of the work,
leaving the blank pages at the end for the continuation of the Annals.
Towards the end of the newly incorporated matter comes the statement
that it was written in the year 1387. Magnus then added a title-page
with a list of the contents, and continued to add to the Annals from
time to time till 1394. The story of the Wineland voyages given in the
Flatey Book consists of two ‘thættir’ or episodes, interpolated after
the manner of the time in the saga of Olaf Tryggvason, which is the
second piece of literature included in the original volume. It follows
therefore that, so far as we are concerned, the manuscript dates from
some time after 1370, when the owner came to man’s estate, and before
1387. Considering the time which must have been occupied in writing a
book of such gigantic proportions, we may fairly ascribe the Wineland
parts of the book to a date considerably earlier than the year last
mentioned.
The manuscript at present extant is therefore of a later date than that
of Hauk’s Book. In admitting this we should, I think, for the reasons
given earlier, be chary of attaching too much importance to the fact.
Evidence is not wanting that the sources followed compare favourably in
age with the rival version. Two such proofs are mentioned by Reeves,
though only one of these seems to me of real importance. This is the
fact that, unlike the rival version, the Flatey Book refers to Bishop
Brand without the distinguishing title ‘the first’, which would in all
probability have been added by anyone composing the archetype used by
John Thordson at a date subsequent to the second Bishop’s ordination.
The other point mentioned by Reeves is the reference to Eric’s landfall
in Greenland by its original name of Midjökul, as well as by the later
designation of Bláserk, which latter is given alone in Hauk’s version.
A reference to the Landnámabók, however, shows that both names are
there preserved, and as the part of both versions where the name occurs
is obviously founded on Landnáma, the omission of a word of the matter
copied by Hauk appears to me devoid of significance.
Turning to the contents of the rival productions of Hauk and the Flatey
Book, though the two stories are obviously the same, we are at once
confronted by certain striking dissimilarities. Bjarni Herjulfson and
his adventure are recorded in the Flatey Book, and nowhere else in
literature. Leif’s voyage is represented by the same version alone as
being deliberately undertaken as a result of Bjarni’s discoveries;
elsewhere it is accidental, an episode of a different voyage. A
separate voyage of Thorvald Ericson, terminating in his death, is
detailed in the same account, whereas in the Saga of Eric the Red no
such person is mentioned at all till the episode of his death, and in
Hauk’s Book and the companion manuscript he is represented as sailing
and meeting his death under the auspices of Karlsefni’s expedition.
Finally, after Karlsefni’s return, we have in the Flatey Book alone the
story of Freydis’s second visit to the newly discovered country. With
these discrepancies, and the attitude of modern criticism towards them,
it will be necessary to deal in a separate chapter.
II. THE DISCREPANCIES OF THE FLATEY BOOK
The earlier writers on the subject of the Wineland voyages based their
theories very largely on the Flatey version, and indeed accepted its
authority as in every way preferable to the alternative rendering of
the story. Laing, for example, in his preface to the Heimskringla,
laments the fact that any other document besides the Flatey Book should
come into the discussion at all: and Hauk’s version is dismissed
by a writer in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for 1872 (vol. xxvi) as ‘a
later manuscript ... full of the most marvellous impossibilities’.
In a slashing and sceptical paper on the subject in vol. VII of the
_Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society_, by R. G. Haliburton,
the same view is emphasized. This writer had but little faith in any
of the stories, but he treated the Flatey account as at all events
preferable to that of the Saga of Eric the Red.
Perhaps none of the writers cited above can be considered as of very
high authority, but their attitude is typical of the older school of
thought, and the Flatey Book has as great a critic as Vigfusson on
its side. They are quoted to show how widely the opinions of students
can vary. For since Gustav Storm in 1887 published his _Studier over
Vinlandsreiserne_[72], his views, which have found very general
acceptance and still hold the field, have completely reversed the
relative status of the different versions. To-day it is the Flatey
Book which is criticized, and on all points where it joins issue with
the rival version the evidence of the latter is preferred. With great
deference to those whose learning has contributed to such a result,
it seems to me that such criticism has gone a great deal too far. Let
us endeavour impartially to consider the main points wherein there is
variance, and thus form our own conclusion as to which story is the
more correct.[73]
_Bjarni Herjulfson._
Herjulf, Bjarni’s father, was undoubtedly a real person, whose name
and pedigree occur in Landnáma, and it appears to be historically
established that he was one of Eric’s companions when Greenland was
colonized in A.D. 985 or 986. A well-known headland in Greenland was
named after him, and in fact no one hitherto has ventured to question
Herjulf’s existence, or his emigration to Greenland.
We start then from the certain fact that Herjulf, Bjarni’s father,
has sailed to Greenland about the summer of 986. If he had a sailor
son, absent in Norway on a trading voyage, that son on his return to
Iceland would almost certainly endeavour to rejoin his parent in the
new colony. All the best available pilots are gone, neither Bjarni
nor his crew have any clear knowledge of the seas they will have to
traverse, and it is with a knowledge of their risk, clearly stated,
that they start sailing west in the direction of Greenland, separated
from them by a distance imperfectly known, and also, if there is the
slightest deviation to the south of Cape Farewell, in the direction of
America. To America we are accordingly informed that they came, driven
thither by suitable winds and weather. From America, without landing,
without any information to impart as to these strange countries, they
returned to Greenland, and Iceland saw no more of Bjarni thenceforward.
As fiction, it is a pointless and barren narrative, whatever may
be its historical interest to persons of a post-Columbian age. It
was evidently disappointing to those who heard and to those who
subsequently wrote the story. So far from being treated as a hero,
as Professor Fischer would have us believe, we are told that Bjarni
received nothing but blame for his lack of enterprise and curiosity on
the occasion which chance and unsuccessful navigation had thrown in his
way. These were not circumstances favourable to the perpetuation of
a story devoid of incident in itself and redounding in no way to the
credit of the chief actor in it. It would not be surprising to find
that even in Greenland Bjarni’s adventure was not long remembered. The
disappearance of the tale from Iceland is _a fortiori_ immensely more
probable. The interest of narrator and audience alike were in that
country exceptionally domestic. It is the rarest possible exception to
hear in Icelandic sagas of the exploits of anyone who had permanently
left the country, and whose life never again threw him in contact with
Icelanders. Bjarni, from the time he set sail from Eyrarbakki, was,
short of a miracle, ‘out of the story’, as the Icelandic narrators
would have put it. That the popular account of the voyages of
Karlsefni and his predecessors should contain no mention of Bjarni is
in accordance with every probability. The alternative appears to me to
violate everything that experience teaches us of the development of
tradition here and elsewhere. A person, possibly it is said fictitious,
at best wholly devoid of interest for Icelandic audiences, is credited
with an extremely featureless voyage, from which he derives no sort
of kudos, the effect of which is—if anything—to some extent to impair
the glory of the Icelander Karlsefni. Such inaccuracy as characterizes
tradition has, it may be said with the utmost confidence, the effect
of merging the exploits of the less well known with those of the more
popular hero: the creation of a fictitious hero in addition to the real
one is, I submit, the reverse of the normal process.
Thus, the legends which grew up about Charlemagne endowed that hero
with the achievements of earlier Frankish kings and chieftains, and
in particular absorbed and confused with Charlemagne his ancestor,
Charles Martel. The national traditions of centuries were annexed and
grouped round Charlemagne and his circle. On a smaller scale, much the
same sort of process can occasionally be traced in saga literature.
For instance, the earlier versions of the Landnámabók mention a
certain Helgi Thorbrandson, who sailed with Eric to Greenland, and was
accordingly less known in Iceland than his brothers, who figure largely
in the Eyrbyggja Saga. This saga, therefore, ignores Helgi, and does
not mention him among the sons of Thorbrand of Alptafjord. Similarly
later editions of Landnáma substitute for Helgi’s name that of his
brother Snorri, who went out later to Greenland, and was better known
in Iceland. The less-known figure disappears and his history becomes
absorbed in that of the better-known character. Such is the normal and
natural working of tradition.
Prof. Gustav Storm, in his _Studier over Vinlandsreiserne_, makes a
great point of the fact that though Bjarni’s voyage is represented
as taking place about A.D. 986 nothing was done in the nature of
further exploration for a period of about sixteen years. I fail to
see the force of this argument. It was not till about a century had
elapsed from the time when Gunnbjörn, son of Ulf Kráka, sighted an
unknown coast to the west of Iceland, that Eric the Red, having made
his adopted country too hot to hold him, followed in his track to
Greenland. The battered and storm-tossed remnant who successfully
accomplished the emigration to Eric’s new colony had little motive,
in Bjarni’s bald description of unattractive coasts sighted from
shipboard, to induce them to tempt Providence again. Leif, Eric’s son
and the explorer of the future, was born in Iceland after the death of
his grandfather, and was in all probability still a child. He is the
only son of Eric mentioned in Landnámabók, which is concerned with the
Icelandic pedigrees only.
On coming of age, and accomplishing the remarkable voyage from
Greenland to Norway, having next carried out the difficult task of
converting his countrymen to Christianity, it was time for him to look
about for fresh worlds to conquer. The old story was recalled, the ship
was manned, and the first real discovery and exploration of the new
countries was effected, an exploit for which, in the Flatey Book as
elsewhere, Leif receives the entire credit, just as his father, and
not Gunnbjörn, is everywhere described as the ‘discoverer’ of Greenland.
_Leif’s Voyage._
Next it is said that whereas, in the Flatey version, Leif’s discovery
is represented as the result of an expedition deliberately equipped
to investigate Bjarni’s reports, it is uniformly described in every
other account as an accidental episode of his return voyage from the
court of Olaf Tryggvason in Norway. Here again it must be remembered
that Leif was by this time a Greenlander, as to the exact details of
whose exploits Iceland was likely to be imperfectly informed and but
little interested. The main facts of his career might be known: that
he was a son of Eric the Red, that he sailed to Norway and introduced
Christianity to Greenland, that he rescued a crew of shipwrecked
persons—more especially if, as related in the Flatey Book, one of these
was the Icelandic heroine Gudrid—that he discovered somehow and at some
time Wineland the Good, and thereby gave rise to Karlsefni’s subsequent
expedition. More exact knowledge was not necessary as a prelude to the
story of the adventures of the Icelandic hero Karlsefni; in fact, in so
far as there is likely to have been any conscious interference with the
truth, it may be observed that the less Leif’s voyage was dwelt on the
greater would be the credit attaching to the later explorer, in whom
alone Icelanders were likely to be generally interested. Such a state
of things was eminently calculated to produce the fusion by tradition
of two voyages into one, which was likely to be more generally known
for two obvious reasons. In the first place, Leif’s voyage to Norway
and his return with Olaf Tryggvason’s mission to Greenland was an
important fact in the history of that proselytizing king. In the
second, it was of interest to the priests who became the historians
both of Iceland and Norway. As I have urged already, merger rather than
expansion is the normal trend of tradition. The ‘man in the street’
at the present day might well be acquainted, for example, with an
incident in the career of Captain Cook, without being able accurately
to assign it to the correct voyage of the navigator, or indeed without
being certain as to the exact number of the voyages for which he was
distinguished. It is far more likely, in my opinion, that such a merger
took place in Leif’s story as usually summarized in Iceland than
that an imaginary and distinct voyage should have been invented and
described with much circumstance and detail.
But, it is said, the Flatey Book’s account stands alone, while that
of Hauk, short as it is, is corroborated elsewhere, by a body of
independent evidence. On examination, however, this body of evidence
shrinks to the dimensions of a single passage, repeated in one context
with unimportant verbal variations in a number of different manuscripts.
The oldest extant version of this passage, that occurring in the Friis
codex of the Book of the Kings of Norway, will be found included in
the Appendix to our translation (p. 74). Another example, from the
great Olaf Tryggvason Saga, may be usefully given here, for purposes of
comparison:
‘That same spring when Olaf the King sent Gizur and Hjalti to
Iceland, as has already been written, he also sent Leif Ericson to
Greenland, to preach Christianity there. The King got him a priest
and other holy men, to baptize the people there and teach them the
right faith. Leif went that summer to Greenland. He took at sea a
ship’s crew, who were then in misfortune, and lay on a completely
broken wreck of a ship, and on that voyage he found Wineland the
Good, and came at the end of that summer to Greenland, and went
home to Brattahlid to his father Eric. Men called him afterwards
Leif the Lucky. But Eric his father said that the account was
balanced, since Leif had preserved and given life to the men of
the ship’s crew, and had brought the hypocrite to Greenland, so he
called the priest.’
A similar passage in the Heimskringla may also be compared.
Besides these we have also a shorter passage in the Kristni Saga, which
has been preserved for us in Hauk’s Book. This last, translated in
the same baldly literal manner, may also be found in the Appendix of
Supplementary Passages, p. 75.
Now the first thing noticeable about all these passages is that
they occur in exactly the same context, the history of King Olaf
Tryggvason’s missionary enterprises. We have further the authority of
Vigfusson for saying that both the Kristni Saga and the Book of Kings,
though in their present shape they have passed through the hands of
various editors, were in their original form products of the pen of
Ari the Learned. We have therefore in all these cases one author, one
context, and substantially one phraseology.
And, setting aside for the moment the exact form of words used, we
may fairly say that the essential meaning of these various passages
is as follows:—Olaf Tryggvason also brought about the conversion of
Greenland. For this purpose he found an excellent agent in Leif, the
son of the founder of that colony, a man who attained distinction in
many ways, for he not only introduced the faith into those benighted
regions but he also earned the title of ‘Lucky’ by the discovery of
Wineland, and a brave and sensational rescue of a crew of shipwrecked
men. It will be observed that Leif’s career is only relevant in this
context in so far as it comes in contact with that of Olaf Tryggvason,
with whom the writer is principally concerned, and all that it was
necessary for him to know, and possibly all that he did know, was the
fact that Leif was Olaf’s missionary and that he had various other
claims to distinction. The when or the how of these various adventures
of Leif were altogether beside the point, and did not need to be
closely investigated. In this way, without any blame attaching to the
original chronicler, even if he was responsible for the present order
of the words, a false idea of the circumstances of Leif’s discovery may
easily have been started in Iceland.
Between the two ‘thættir’ or episodes which make up our story as
incorporated in the Flatey Book Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, the passage
already quoted from other texts appears, slightly edited into
conformity with the Wineland story of the book by the omission of any
reference to that country (see Appendix of Supplementary Passages, p.
75). The editing is incomplete, for the rescue of the crew remains, to
be repeated under different circumstances later on; but inasmuch as
the whole passage is obviously derived from the same source as the
others which have been mentioned, no point can legitimately be made
of this other than that the scribes of the Flatey Book did not carry
the interference with their sources very far, which on the whole only
goes to indicate that the Wineland story as they copied it suffered no
alteration in the process, a fact in favour of this version rather than
otherwise.
It also shows that the thættir were drawn from an independent source.
We may sum up the argument on this branch of the case as follows:
1. Leif was a person who came within the range of Icelandic interest
not because of his exploits in themselves, which rather concerned
Greenland, but because they had a bearing on the history of an
Icelandic hero, Karlsefni, and of a Norse king, Olaf Tryggvason.
2. For this purpose the precise circumstances and date of his Wineland
voyage were quite irrelevant.
3. The accounts therefore which appear of this voyage, both in Hauk’s
account of Wineland and in the sagas of Olaf Tryggvason, are, as we
should expect, extremely short and superficial.
4. The account of Leif given in the Flatey Book, on the other hand, is
extremely circumstantial and detailed and appears to have been written
from a more intimate knowledge of the facts.
5. The normal course of tradition is rather to blend many voyages into
one than to expand one voyage, in one and the same story, into many.
One other point may be mentioned.
Part at all events of the Flatey Book version is accepted by the
majority of those who have studied the subject, especially the
observation recorded of the length of the shortest day, which is indeed
one of the most circumstantial points to be found in any of these
stories. Now assuming this observation to be correctly attributed to
Leif, and it is recorded of no one else, then it is plain that Leif
must have wintered in the new country, and at the most southerly point
in it to which he penetrated. The alternative accounts are one and all
wholly inconsistent with any such idea. According to these, Wineland
was discovered by Leif while endeavouring to return from Norway to
Greenland in the summer of the year 1000. In the first place, at least
two of the texts giving this version of the story state distinctly, and
the others imply, that he arrived in Greenland in the year in which
he set sail. (Cf. Fríssbók: ‘He came in the autumn to Greenland’, and
the passage occurring in the body of the Flatey Book’s Saga of Olaf
Tryggvason: ‘He came at the end of that summer to Greenland.’)
But apart from these statements we may ask ourselves,—is it likely that
Leif would have passed the winter in Wineland, unless he came there on
a definite voyage of exploration? On the hypothesis of accident he had
come, and knew he had come, a tremendous distance out of his way by the
time he made land on the coast of America. Would he have had either the
supplies or the inclination to stay the winter in the newly discovered
land? Supposing that—as the Flatey Book tells us—he arrived first
at Helluland, why should he have sailed south across open sea from
that point if his destination was Greenland? If he followed the coast
he would arrive in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and would come across
nothing resembling the Wineland of the story.[74] And it is incredible
that he should have put directly to sea in the direction opposite
to his objective and happened by chance upon the two more southerly
‘lands’. Again, if we suppose him to have gone through the experience
recorded of Bjarni, is it not still more unlikely that he would have
elected to pass the whole autumn and winter in the very first place
at which he touched, without provisions and so very far from home?
Would he not at least have sailed for Greenland after a very cursory
examination of the country, however much he might have contemplated
returning thither on another occasion? Even if we reject the
circumstantial version of the Flatey Book altogether and attribute the
observation of the sun to Karlsefni, of whom it is nowhere recorded, it
seems to me that the delay necessary to collect the samples of local
products mentioned in Eric’s Saga and Hauk’s Book is most unlikely to
have taken place if the discovery of the country was accidental and the
party desirous of returning to Greenland. For these reasons, therefore,
in addition to those given above, it seems to me that we are justified
in taking the Flatey version as authentic.
Storm, in his _Studier over Vinlandsreisrne_, urges that it was more
likely that Leif, returning from Norway to Greenland, should have been
driven out of his course to America than that Bjarni should have met
the same fate on the shorter journey from Iceland. In the state of
navigation at the time it is course by no means incredible that either
captain should have missed his destination by the necessary margin.
There were practically no limits to the possible deviation in those
days. Thorstein, sailing to Wineland, is said to have been driven by
contrary gales to the neighbourhood both of Iceland and Ireland, and
whether this be true or no it clearly cannot have struck an Icelandic
audience as at all improbable. It has however to be remembered that
Leif, assuming the discovery to have been made on the voyage from
Norway, was retracing a known course, and traversing a known distance;
and if we follow the only version which supplies information on the
point, he, like Karlsefni, was carried first to Helluland, which seems
to argue a direction of the wind which could not be very unfavourable
for his projected destination, Greenland; Bjarni, on the other hand,
set out on a voyage of uncertain length across an unknown sea, and his
landfall in America is stated to have been so far to the south as to
point to really contrary winds. Subject to these remarks I do not think
that there is much in the point, either one way or the other.
_Thorvald._
The next difference to be noted is with regard to the fate of Thorvald
Ericson. The Flatey Book assigns to him an independent voyage, and
a reasonable death at the hands of the savages. The details of this
voyage are given at length, and substantially in a natural and credible
form. The other version of his death is clearly incredible, for it
introduces the agency of a ‘uniped’, fabulous creature, not unknown to
classical legend.
Hauk’s story, moreover, makes Thorvald a companion of Karlsefni, not
an independent explorer. It has further to be noticed that until the
episode of his death it is not certain that the original wording of
this text recognizes Thorvald Ericson at all. Up to the point of
Karlsefni’s expedition the only reference to Eric’s family in either
of the companion texts reads as follows: ‘At that time Eric had a wife
named Thjodhild, and by her _two_ sons, one called Thorstein and the
other Leif’: Thorvald, it will be observed, is not mentioned at all.
In the list of those accompanying Karlsefni, the purer text of Eric’s
Saga again contains no reference to this son of the house. ‘There was
a man named Thorvald’, it runs, ‘who was a connexion by marriage of
Eric the Red.’ Thorvald, the connexion by marriage, is obviously not
Eric’s son, but, as Hauk correctly so far amends the passage, a slip
for ‘_Thorvard_, who married Freydis, an illegitimate daughter of Eric
the Red’. Hauk then interpolates ‘and Thorvald Ericson’ in conformity
with the story of his death which is subsequently introduced. This,
the uniped episode, seems to be later in origin than the main body of
the saga. The melodramatic death-speech of Thorvald is borrowed almost
verbatim from the death-scene of Thormod Kolbrunarskald, as given in
the Heimskringla; so that a Greenlander in Wineland is here represented
as intelligently anticipating the utterance of an Icelander in Norway.
Then again the uniped, as has already been pointed out, is a borrowed
conception: it is not a creature typical of the normal superstitions of
early Scandinavia. The passage, as will be seen on a reference to the
text, where it has been omitted, is in no way necessary to the story,
and the sense is not affected by its absence. It would seem therefore
as if the author of the text on which Hauk’s version is founded, having
derived from another source an exaggerated and romanticized account
of Thorvald’s death in Wineland, interpolated it in the saga without
taking the trouble to make his account of Eric’s family or Karlsefni’s
companions tally with the final form of the story.
Two of the arguments which I have already used apply with equal force
to this part of the question. Thorstein, as the husband of Gudrid,
who subsequently became by her marriage with Karlsefni an Icelandic
heroine, was a person necessary to an Icelandic version of the story.
So was Leif, because his voyage, however and whenever accomplished, was
the reason of Karlsefni’s subsequent exploration. But Thorvald was a
person in no way interesting to Icelanders; he had gone to Greenland
with his father, probably as a child, and was ‘out of the story’. The
other point is the normal trend of tradition. The important voyage, to
Icelanders, was Karlsefni’s, and it was likely in the ordinary course,
like Aaron’s serpent, to swallow up all minor rivals, whose continued
existence was not necessary to its own. The Flatey Book version of
Thorvald’s adventures and death appears to me therefore infinitely more
satisfactory than the other, and the objections to it seem to have but
little weight.
_Freydis._
All that has been said hitherto applies to the second voyage of
Freydis. After Karlsefni’s return to Iceland his interest in Greenland
and in Wineland ceased, and with his own ceased naturally the interest
of the normal Icelandic historian and audience. ‘And that is the end
of this story’, says the author of Eric the Red’s Saga, as he lays
down his pen, having got Karlsefni safe at home, and his Icelandic
descendants duly chronicled. What happened in Greenland later on is no
concern of his. But life in Greenland went on, and it cannot in any way
be said to follow that nothing happened in the family of Eric because
nothing has been recorded in a saga dealing mainly with a different
person. Those who would attack the authenticity of this voyage must
take other ground, and show from the story itself that it is inherently
impossible. The task has no doubt been attempted, but it seems to me
that the saga emerges successfully from the ordeal. The conduct of
Freydis and her husband as described in the Flatey Book is entirely
consistent with their characters as delineated in the rival version.
I am wholly unable to follow the reasoning of Laing, who considers
this incident in itself incredible, though others seem to share his
view. The independence and power for evil possessed by an Icelandic
wife of the saga period are well illustrated in the Njál Saga, where
the wives of Njál and Gunnar respectively carry on a bloody vendetta
with complete immunity to themselves, but at no inconsiderable expense
to their reluctant but powerless husbands, who, though on terms of
complete amity, are continually forced to pay each other compensation
for the murder of members of their households perpetrated by third
parties on the instigation of these women.
Of course the interview between Freydis and Finnbogi cannot be
authentic, as no witness was left but Freydis herself, whose version
would naturally be different, and the details of the story may well
have been worked up by a later hand.
But consider the facts apart from this: Freydis, a woman everywhere
represented as of masculine temper, is married to a wealthy nonentity
named Thorvard. From the contemptuous vituperation which Freydis pours
upon her panic-stricken companions in the skræling fight in Hauk’s Book
we get a fine insight into her character. She and her husband sail to
Wineland with Helgi and Finnbogi, whom she swindles and bullies at
every turn. The crews of the two ships are soon not on speaking terms;
a very little more will lead to a violent encounter. The brothers have
a much better ship than Freydis, and on this ship she, who has got her
way in every other respect, has set her heart. She makes a fruitless
attempt to bargain for the coveted vessel, as Ahab treated first for
Naboth’s vineyard. Her overtures repulsed, she returns in a rage to
her miserable and helpless husband, to whom she represents the conduct
of Helgi and Finnbogi as an insult only to be wiped out in blood. The
henpecked Thorvard is screwed to the sticking-place, he turns out
his men, between whom and the rival crew there is already a quarrel,
smouldering under the cover of an armed neutrality. The camp of the
brothers is attacked, and the men are assassinated. The women remain,
damning witnesses of the outrage, whom nevertheless male chivalry would
spare. ‘Hand me an axe’, says Freydis (‘Infirm of purpose, give me
the daggers’). The coup is not to be ruined by humanitarian scruples:
dead men (and women) tell no tales. The massacre is completed. Surely
it is all consistent with our experience of women of this type in
history and even in modern life. Man draws the line, he is ruled by
convention, there are ‘things no fellow can do’. Woman is a law to
herself, and as a result there are heights to which she climbs where
no man’s ideals will follow, and depths to which she falls from which
men are fortunately protected. With men, treachery and cowardice go
hand in hand; in women a masculine bravery seems merely to kill their
natural delicacy and horror of blood, they can be brave and yet sink
to the lowest excesses of meanness and cruelty. Judith, Jezebel, Lady
Macbeth—how brave they are, and yet how disgracefully treacherous! It
is of course a matter for individual judgement: the touchstone for such
a tale is not to be found among the canons of criticism. To me this
dreadful story reads as one of the most natural, consistent, and human
episodes in history; and though of course such characterization is not
beyond the powers of a brilliant writer of fiction, it seems to me far
more reasonable to accept it as authentic history. Why should this
awful libel disfigure the annals of the distinguished house of Eric the
Red, if there were nothing in it? Who would dare to invent it, if it
were not true?
I contend, then, that on main lines, where the two stories are in
conflict, it is preferable throughout to adopt the version of the
Flatey Book, and that the alleged discrepancies come to nothing more
than this, that the natural development of tradition in Iceland led,
to a great extent, to the ignoring of some elements in the story and
the fusion of others in what, to Icelanders, were the more important
episodes. Some slight additional support to the view which has been
here put forward is supplied by Adam of Bremen’s reference to Wineland,
which has been referred to in another chapter. For he states that this
country has been ‘_a multis repertam_’, that is to say, discovered or
explored by many. This, so far as it goes, is in favour of the Flatey
Book, for a country visited on but two occasions, one of which was
accidental, could hardly be so described.
Even where the narratives are in closer agreement, the Flatey Book
appears to me on the whole the more reliable version.
_Courses._
Especially is this the case with the courses given in the narrative.
According to the Saga of Eric the Red and Hauk’s Book, Karlsefni rarely
sailed in any direction except south. Thus, Greenland to Helluland is
south; Helluland to Markland either south or south-east; Markland to
Keelness south according to Hauk, the companion version being silent;
Straumsfjord to Hóp, once more, south. Now, wherever we place the lands
discovered in America, the situation really calls for a great deal more
west than south for a large part of the voyage. In a statement which
is only approximate, the bearing we need is south-west. This occurs
nowhere in the synoptic versions. Now compare the Flatey Book. Bjarni’s
return is all north-east; the lands therefore lie, as they do in fact,
on a south-westerly line. Leif sails south-west from Markland to
Wineland, and it is implied that his course elsewhere corresponded with
Bjarni’s. This gives us at any rate good foundation for supposing the
data in the Flatey Book to be the more authentic. At the very least
these statements go far to establish the entire independence of the
Flatey version, and to demolish the suggestion already dealt with that
this narrative is merely a perverted embroidery of hints contained in
the other.
It is astonishing to find that Storm and his school prefer the courses
set out in the rival version, and seem to evince great difficulty in
making anything of the Flatey Book’s geography. They even say that the
latter conveys to them the idea of a coast facing north or north-east.
How this is arrived at it is difficult to see. When Bjarni turned in a
north-easterly direction to search for a way home, we are told that he
‘left the land on the port side’. This clearly indicates that the coast
lay to the north of him and faced south, trending away to the north
in a little while so as to disappear from sight. So again Thorvald
from his base in Wineland can go east or west, but to reach ‘the more
northerly part of the country’ he has first to turn east. This conveys
the same idea as Bjarni’s voyage, a south-facing coast, turning to the
north at its eastern extremity. True, there is a word in this voyage
which seems to imply an easterly course after leaving Keelness; this
will be discussed later, but in any case, if it had to be rejected, it
would not justify the views expressed by Storm and his followers as to
the Flatey Book’s geography as a whole.
_The Stranded Whale._
I have incorporated the rival version of Karlsefni’s voyage in the
story as I have rendered it, as the differences are but small, and the
version adopted is less condensed and therefore fuller of information.
I will however give an instance to show that here also the Flatey
version is the more likely to be accurate. Undoubtedly the oldest parts
of the text of either authority are the verses ascribed to Thorhall
the Hunter in the saga adopted by Hauk. These are admitted by the most
exacting critics to bear all the indications of a date corresponding
with their ascribed origin. Even Dr. Nansen allows their genuineness.
Now it will probably have struck the careful reader that the second of
these two poems bears no sort of relation to its context. The verses,
either expressly or by necessary implication, convey the following
facts:
1. They are the utterance of a person who is leaving the New World
behind, to return to his own country.
2. Those whom he is leaving behind him are at Furdustrands.
3. These people are satisfied with a diet of boiled whale, which the
poet considers unattractive.
The text, on the other hand, conveys a totally different set of facts:
1. The verses are composed by a person who is proposing to coast
northwards in search of Wineland.
2. The explorers are at Straumsfjord, far to the south of Furdustrands,
and the main body are proposing to go even further away from that
locality. (I do not, however, attach much importance to this
discrepancy, believing as I do that the name Furdustrands was applied
broadly to a large district in which Straumsfjord may well have been
included.)
3. The one person who appeared pleased with the whale, and indeed
claimed the credit for its appearance, was the author of the poem.
The rest were made ill by it, and on hearing of its supposed origin
refused altogether to eat it.
These differences are clearly quite irreconcilable, and, the poem
being the more reliable authority, the version in the text at this
point must be abandoned. As Storm says, the fact that the author has
plainly misunderstood the verses quoted is in itself evidence of the
greater age of the latter. But in the Flatey Book, though, the account
being much condensed, no mention is made of Thorhall or his verses,
the whale is given a perfectly natural origin, and is eaten without
any contretemps by the whole body of the explorers. We may, however,
reasonably assume that such fare would not be relished by a fastidious
person, and might well provoke the utterance of the sentiments embodied
in the old song. There is at all events no inconsistency between the
text of the Flatey Book and the poem.
There are one or two minor discrepancies which must now be considered.
Leif’s visit to Norway is said in the Flatey Book to have taken place
sixteen years after Eric’s colonization of Greenland. This would date
his arrival after Olaf’s death in September 1000. But Eric had explored
Greenland with an eye to the colony three years before it was actually
inaugurated, and if we take it that the date of the first visit is
referred to as part of the same transaction this point disappears.
_Thori Eastman._
In no other account in Icelandic literature do we find Gudrid mentioned
as the widow or wife of Thori Eastman, i.e. the Norwegian, whom Leif
rescued from the wreck. It is still not improbable that she was
so. Gudrid apparently arrived in Greenland about the time that Leif
was absent on his voyage of discovery, and Thori, from his remarks
as reported in the Flatey Book, seems to have been acquainted with
Brattahlid before his shipwreck, which was not far from the coast of
Greenland. Supposing him to have married Gudrid about this time, we are
told that he died the same winter, and Gudrid would almost immediately
be free to be married, as we are told she was, to Thorstein Ericson;
consequently when Karlsefni married her, which was the important
incident in her career from the point of view of the saga genealogists,
she would be, as all accounts make her, Thorstein’s widow, and the
brief episode of her marriage with the comparatively insignificant
Thori would soon be forgotten, particularly as Thori was a Norwegian,
and therefore of no interest to Icelanders.
_Death of Eric the Red._
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.
Now Karlsefni’s voyage, in spite of some statements to the contrary in
the sagas, cannot have taken place till about a quarter of a century
after Leif’s, whether we date the latter from A.D. 1000, following
Hauk, or 1002, accepting the Flatey Book. This, though not generally
recognized, is clear from the known dates of the descendants of
Karlsefni’s Wineland-born son. Snorri’s grandson, Bishop Thorlak,
was born, as we find in the Annals, in 1085; Bishop Brand the first,
Snorri’s great-grandson, died in 1201. Brand’s mother therefore, of
the same generation as Thorlak, can hardly have been born so early as
1085. Putting the mean date of the birth of Snorri’s children at thirty
years before 1085, which is making a liberal allowance, we get the date
1055. Snorri therefore cannot have been born much before 1025. If the
Flatey Book is correct, Gudrid was married in 1003, and she certainly
was of a marriageable age before leaving Iceland, and was a widow when
Karlsefni married her. Karlsefni’s voyage and the birth of Snorri
should accordingly be placed rather earlier than 1025, say 1020. At
this time Eric would be about 70 years old, and, especially if he was
ageing in 1002, it is most improbable that he survived so long amid the
hardships of life in Greenland.
Again, when King Olaf the Holy, about 1018, wished to get rid of the
troublesome blind king Rörek, and commissioned Thorar Nefjolfson to
take him to Greenland, it was Leif Ericson, and not his father, whom
he designated as consignee. (Vide Heimskringla, Saga of Olaf the Holy,
_c._ 85.)
Finally, it seems strange that Leif should not have accompanied
Karlsefni on his voyage if there was nothing in particular for him
to do in Greenland, whereas if the management of Brattahlid and the
control of the colony had devolved on his shoulders by his father’s
death, the position is quite intelligible.[76]
There is accordingly abundant reason to conclude that on this point
also the Flatey Book is right, and Hauk is wrong.
Other small discrepancies which have not escaped the vigilance of
commentators can be explained as clerical slips, and consequently do
not go to the root of the matter. The alleged improbability of certain
details in both narratives will fall to be discussed hereafter.
It seems to me, however, that too much importance may easily be
attached to the fruits of this sort of microscopic criticism. The
broad fact that we have two quite independent versions telling to all
intents and purposes the same story—at any rate providing material for
a substantially consistent and circumstantial history collated from
both sources—is much more important than the existence of any number
of minor discrepancies. By placing ourselves as far as possible in the
positions both of the actors and chroniclers of these adventures we are
likely, I think, to get a fuller appreciation of the facts as they
were and of the truth with which they have been related than if we pore
with a too studious eye over every line and every word, with a view, if
it be possible, to establish an inevitable but trivial inconsistency.
_A Greenland Saga?_
The reader who has carefully followed the argument so far will at this
point probably be disposed to make some such observation as follows:
You argue that the story is more likely to have lost the additional
facts given in the Flatey Book than to have invented them by the
natural operation of tradition. Well and good. You also point out, with
a certain amount of plausibility, that the probable state of interest
and knowledge in Iceland was just such as to produce precisely those
alterations and omissions from what you consider the true course of
the story, which, according to you, have taken place in what we may
call Hauk’s version. You appear to forget, however, that both texts
are Icelandic, and that this argument ought therefore to apply with
equal force to the Flatey version, where the parts uninteresting to
Icelanders are notwithstanding retained.
My first answer to this would be that it is quite possible that actual
facts might be retained in one version in Iceland, even though not
of great interest to the people of that country, but it is highly
improbable that an Icelandic chronicler would be at the pains to supply
by invention precisely those points in which his audience would feel
the least concern.
My own private conviction, however, is that the Flatey version is in
the main drawn from a Greenland source. Here we are embarking upon
conjecture, a conjecture, by the way, which has been made before, but
it may be interesting shortly to consider the grounds upon which such a
theory is based.
It is in the first place improbable that in the narrow confines of
Iceland two quite independent versions of the same story should
exist side by side. The original story-tellers in this country were
peripatetic, there was a close intercourse between families residing in
different parts of the island, and it would be strange if the tradition
of one district had remained unaffected by that of another. But the
point most universally admitted with regard to these two versions is
that, except for certain introductory and genealogical points derived
from a common source, the Landnámabók, while on the whole the facts
correspond, the stories are obviously independent.
This curious circumstance is at once explained if we suppose the
historian of the Flatey Book to have had access to a saga composed in
Greenland.
Next, it is a marked and unique characteristic of the Flatey manuscript
considered as a whole that the library from which it was derived was
evidently rich in literature treating of the Scandinavian colonies
which existed outside the confines of Iceland. This feature has been
noticed by Vigfusson in his preface to the Orkney Saga in the Rolls
Series (p. xxxii). ‘Its pages’, he writes of the Flatey Book, ‘preserve
more than half of all we know of the older history of the Orkneys,
the Faroes, Greenland, and Vineland (America). Indeed John Haconson
and his two scribes seem for some reason, now unknown, to have paid
particular attention to gathering up every scrap relating to these
neighbour-lands of Outer, or Colonial, Scandinavia.’ It is therefore
precisely in such a work as the Flatey Book that we might expect to
find incorporated a saga derived from an outlandish source such as
I have suggested. We know, too, that the practice of saga-telling
went on in the new colony as in the old, as indeed was _a priori_
probable. In the Saga, of Eric the Red such a form of entertainment
is expressly mentioned as a means whereby the nights of the Arctic
winter were enlivened during the visit of Karlsefni to Brattahlid.
The stock-in-trade of these Greenland story-tellers must inevitably
have included a detailed account of the founder of the colony, thus
supplying a rival ‘Eric’s Saga’ such as I have argued (_supra_, p. 108)
that the Flatey Book is referring to in the passage where ‘Eric’s Saga’
is mentioned. Now, on turning to internal evidence, we shall find that
corroboration of the theory advanced is by no means wanting. Not only
does the Flatey Book, as has been remarked already, supply precisely
those episodes in which Greenland rather than Iceland would be
interested, e.g. Bjarni’s voyage, the circumstances, date, and details
of Leif’s, and the full description of Eric’s family, but conversely,
where Greenland interest would naturally cease, the Flatey Book is far
less rich in detail than its rivals. Take, for example, the case of
Gudrid. To Icelanders this lady was a most important character, the
ancestress of many distinguished men. To Greenlanders she was a girl
who paid a temporary visit to the colony, and was for a few months the
wife of a son of the house of Brattahlid who met with an early death,
before the promise of his youth was fulfilled. She then married the
Icelander, Karlsefni, and disappeared from their ken. Consequently,
though the Icelandic scribe of the Flatey Book has been able to supply
some facts about her descendants in the concluding paragraphs of the
story, we find an extraordinary lack of information on the subject of
Gudrid in this version as compared with the other.
In the Flatey Book she is subordinate in importance to the truculent
Freydis and her henpecked husband. Besides the principal adventures of
this couple we are given a summary of their characters, the mercenary
nature of their union, and the exact place of their abode, which is
described in a phrase of more interest, one would think, to a Greenland
than an Icelandic audience, as ‘Garda, _where the cathedral is now_’.
Of Gudrid’s origin we are told nothing. She appears suddenly in the
Flatey Book as the wife of the Norseman Thori, who was rescued at sea
by Leif. Of this marriage, which is only recorded in this one source,
I have spoken already. Whether it is to be accepted as a fact or no is
not for the moment material, the point is that Gudrid comes abruptly
into the story as a person whose previous history is of no importance.
In the rival versions she is the principal character, who holds the
stage from start to finish. The saga opens with a passage—otherwise
irrelevant—explaining the origin of her family in Iceland, in the
days of her alleged grandfather, Vifil. Next, after Eric the Red has
migrated to Greenland, we have another interlude devoted to explaining
the reasons which brought about her emigration with her father to the
new colony, followed by a description of the sibyl’s séance in which
Gudrid played so important a part, which is so vivid and real as to
give rise to the suspicion that it may have been derived from the
description of Gudrid herself.
Now the usually accepted explanation of the Flatey version is that,
being composed in the north of Iceland, in close proximity to the
religious establishment associated with Gudrid’s piety, and in the
district where Karlsefni’s family were settled, the story is derived
from the reports of the Icelandic explorer. And indeed, the final
paragraphs, wherein the descendants of the pair are duly recorded, may
well be ascribed to a local origin. That some combination of different
sources takes place at this point is indicated by the fact that the
statement ‘many men are descended from Karlsefni’ occurs twice over
in separate places towards the end of the saga. It reads, in fact,
exactly as if the final passage beginning ‘and when Karlsefni was
dead’ was an addition from local sources. But is it not in the last
degree surprising, if the accepted theory be true of the whole story,
that here alone we should be imperfectly informed as to the career and
descent of the local heroine?
Again, if this story is the result of the full report which we are told
that Karlsefni left of his adventures, is it not remarkable that in the
description of this voyage alone the Flatey Book gives place, in point
of circumstance and detail, to the rival account? Not a word is said
of the Icelandic co-adventurers, Bjarni Grimolfson and Snorri; nay, we
are given to understand that Karlsefni had come from Norway, without
stopping on his way in Iceland to join forces with any such companions.
And the whole story of the voyage, unlike the other expeditions
detailed in the Flatey Book, is, when compared with the alternative
account, quite sketchy and meagre. It may well be accurate as far as it
goes, for Karlsefni evidently returned to Greenland before proceeding
home, and many of his companions were Greenlanders, but it is, as one
would expect of a Greenland version of this story, compressed into the
briefest summary.
If the account of the Wineland voyages to be found in the Flatey Book
originated in Greenland, it is evident that it was far less exposed
than the Icelandic sagas to literary and other influences derived from
communication with other countries. Intercourse between Greenland and
the outside world must always have been rare, and the effect of the
edict issued by the King of Norway in 1294 creating trade relations
with Greenland a crown monopoly led very speedily to the decline and
disappearance of the colony, which appears to have been completed about
A.D. 1400. In particular, the edict cut off communication from Iceland.
Only in one respect should we expect to find a Greenland saga affected
by modern developments. And this is just what we actually do find in
the present case.
_Direct Voyages to Norway._
As Dr. Storm has pointed out in the preface to his excellent edition
of the Saga of Eric the Red, the Flatey narrative contains an
extraordinary number of direct voyages between Greenland and Norway.
Apart from Bjarni Herjulfson, there is first Karlsefni’s arrival,
which is here stated to be from Norway; there is his return, direct to
Norway, where he sells his ‘húsa-snotra’ to a German from Bremen; and
finally there is the arrival of the brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi, from
Norway, in the story of Freydis’s expedition.
Now Dr. Storm sees in all this merely an additional count in his
indictment against the Flatey Book. This talk of direct voyages between
Greenland and Norway smacks of the days of the royal monopoly; Germans
from Bremen suggest a date subsequent to the establishment of the
Hanseatic League in Bergen. I think these anachronisms are established
with some degree of certainty; but it also occurs to me that the
mistake is more suggestive of a Greenland than an Icelandic source.
It is difficult to suppose that the infrequent ships which sailed to
Greenland under the royal monopoly in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries did not in fact call at Iceland, which lay directly in their
track. If they did so, they would not suggest to an Icelander the idea
of direct voyages between Norway and Greenland; if they did not, they
would not be present to the Icelandic mind at all. To a Greenlander of
about the period of the Flatey Book’s composition, or even earlier, any
ship which arrived off Greenland would, on the other hand, be ‘a ship
from Norway’; i.e. a ship bringing his necessary supplies from the only
available source. And, as the original sagas handed down to him would
hardly be concerned very much with the origin or destination of the
ships which came to Greenland, the error of introducing Norway might
easily creep in.
So too with the episode of the Bremen merchant. It smacks of the
fourteenth century, and it is obvious that the doings of Karlsefni
after leaving Greenland would not be accurately known to an inhabitant
of that country. But it seems not improbable that the Greenlanders,
being without timber, continued to visit the new lands to obtain
such commodities, especially for use in ship-building, and indeed the
Icelandic Annals for 1347 contain an allusion to a ship coming from
Markland. It must be remembered that ‘mösur’ wood is not elsewhere
specifically mentioned in the Flatey Book account, which makes it
probable that this passage is from a different source from the main
narrative. But, at a later date, some anonymous Greenlander may well
have sold a ‘húsa-snotra’, which appears to have been something
connected with a ship, to a German at Bergen or elsewhere, and, in
conformity with the tendency to which allusion has been made of
attributing the actions of lesser-known characters to those more
distinguished, the transaction may easily have come to be associated
with Karlsefni, as the principal hero of the Wineland tradition, and
the only one who after his return left the coasts of Greenland.
All this points to Greenland as the country where the Flatey Book
version of the story originated, and if this be so it not only accounts
for several inconsistencies in the rival versions, but renders it
likely that the account here preserved escaped the contamination which
affected the later Icelandic sagas, through the influence of foreign
literature.
III. THE STORIES AS HISTORY
It has now, I think, been established that the Norse discovery of
America is an historical fact, and that the broad lines of the story
have a substantial claim to be regarded as history. While so much has
been and must be generally admitted, there is still a considerable
difference of opinion as to how far the details of any and which of
the versions are to be treated as part of an authentic record, and
how far, if at all, the saga has become contaminated with external
and mythological influences. Some writers, such as Rafn and Horsford,
have treated these records with a credulity to which no early work
of history is probably entitled; others, of whose views Dr. Nansen
is perhaps the most distinguished exponent, consider the admissible
element of truth to have been so overlaid with fiction and imported
mythology that the details can no longer make any claim to be regarded
as historical. ‘It will therefore be seen’, says the writer last
referred to, ‘that the whole narrative of the Wineland voyages is a
mosaic of one feature after another gathered from East and West.’[77]
Between these two schools of opinion it is necessary for us to pick
our way, and in doing so I propose to devote the largest part of
my attention to the arguments of Dr. Nansen, which set out most
skilfully, and with a wealth of research which it would be difficult to
equal, the point of view which is most directly opposed to my own.
_Admixture of the Supernatural._
Of course in the writings of so primitive and superstitious an age,
based upon oral traditions of an even earlier date, we cannot expect
to find a standard of historical accuracy equal to that of the present
day. The authors, however truthful in intention, had not reached a
stage of enlightenment enabling them to winnow fact from myth, both
elements appearing to them to be equally credible. As Livy candidly
postulated in the case of Rome, some licence must be conceded to
antiquity in the dressing-up of early history by an admixture of
superstition with the facts it seeks to record. ‘To suppose’, says
Dasent, in his admirable introduction to the Njál Saga, ‘that a
story told in the eleventh century, when phantoms, and ghosts, and
wraiths were implicitly believed in, and when dreams and warnings and
tokens were part of every man’s creed, should be wanting in these
marks of genuineness, is simply to require that one great proof of
its truthfulness should be wanting.’ In other words, one would be
entitled to regard the authenticity of any history alleged to be early
with great suspicion, if no traces of the supernatural were to be
found in it. Such things are to be seen in contemporary chronicles of
early times no less than in histories written long after the events
described; the evidence might not be sufficient to satisfy a member of
the Psychical Research Society, but it was good enough for those who
lived in primitive and credulous times. The ghosts and miracles of
such history, not in Iceland alone but everywhere, are not conscious
inventions on the part of the historian, and do not really damage his
credit.
It will be observed, in the narratives here under consideration, that
the great bulk of the supernatural happenings is confined to the
part dealing with Greenland, the part, that is, which is in the main
most conclusively established. Greenland of course was intended to
be a permanent colony, and consequently for some time communication,
of a more or less intermittent character, was maintained between
that country and Scandinavia. As a further result of this protracted
occupation of the country, traces were left which remain at the present
time. Ruins of houses and churches have been discovered, together with
the bones of horses, cattle, and other animals. Had the circumstances
been different, had Greenland been merely the object of fleeting visits
such as those of the explorers of Wineland, it may well be doubted
whether the scepticism with which some have been disposed to regard the
alleged exploration of the latter would not have been extended to the
former. We should have had our attention drawn to supernatural episodes
such as that of the apparitions in Lysefjord (see Thorstein’s voyage),
the inclement climate of the locality and the inappropriateness of the
name Greenland would have been insisted on, and the mention of horses
and cattle would not improbably have been regarded as incredible. But
the successful colonization of Greenland is an historical fact, and
its story is chronicled in precisely those sagas which are here under
consideration with regard to Wineland. It is therefore _prima facie_
unlikely that writings found to be historical so far as it is possible
to test them, in one respect should suddenly develop a character mainly
fictitious, as alleged by Dr. Nansen and others.
_Character of Early History._
Still it must be admitted that the historians of these early times, in
Iceland as elsewhere, were not so scientific in their methods as those
of the present day. The word History still retained its derivative
kinship with Story; the Muse presiding over this branch of literature
had not yet settled down in the humdrum _ménage_ of meticulous
professors. Like the classical and scriptural historians, the Icelandic
chroniclers considered themselves at liberty to clothe the dry bones
of their material, and even to present in the lively form of dialogue
speeches of which the substance only could have been known. If, for
example, the saga-writer has to chronicle the discovery of wild grapes,
it is quite natural for him to assume that a sailor who found the means
of intoxication ready to his hand did not neglect his opportunities.
This explains the conduct of the German, Tyrker, in the Flatey Book,
a great stumbling-block to some commentators. In the same category
comes Hauk’s account of the incantations of Thorhall the Hunter; it
is an expansion of a stranded-whale episode from the hint given in
Thorhall’s verses, and a very careless and inconsistent one at that.
Other absurdities can be explained in the same way, and the names of
such places as Keelness may have suggested the conflicting stories told
to account for them.
Again, if the historian had ready to hand a picturesque anecdote
from a different source, but manifestly connected with the principal
theme, which could be fitted into the main story, he would have little
hesitation in using it, though the unscientific joinery would be often
painfully evident. Hake and Hekja, for instance, whether or no they
have an historical basis, are manifestly introduced in the wrong place,
before any vines had really been discovered, and the limits of the
inserted passage are made glaringly apparent by the fact that the last
words of the preceding matter are substantially repeated immediately
afterwards (‘gerðiz vágskorit lanðit’ ... ‘er varð fjarðskorit’). Such
interpolations are frequently of great interest, as affording what
really amounts to independent confirmation of the story: they show it
to have been widely discussed and accepted at an early date, but they
hardly redound to the credit of the first amalgamating editor.
_Dr. Nansen’s Position._
A certain degree of caution is necessary, therefore, in the scientific
investigation of this as of all early historical documents. But Dr.
Nansen is not content with such reservations as these. He goes so far
in the direction of scepticism that the reader wonders in the end that
the frail remnants to which he clings are sufficient to hold this
author to any belief in the Norse discovery of America. His arguments,
if sound, play havoc with the very foundations of the story, and if he
sits unmoved among the ruins it is fair to doubt if he will find many
to share his attitude, or to trust to the tottering remains. It is
advisable, therefore, to examine Dr. Nansen’s arguments rather closely,
and to see whether the records which we are investigating are really
as unreliable as he has suggested.
_Minor Objections._
It would take a disproportionate allowance of space to deal in detail
with all the smaller and more incidental points in the argument. Some
of them will be found noticed elsewhere in the present volume, and
one or two may here be mentioned as typical. Dr. Nansen suggests, for
example, that the statement in the Icelandic Annals for 1121 that
Eric, Bishop of Greenland, went out to seek (leita) Wineland, shows
that Wineland was at that date not a known but a legendary country,
for ‘leita’ can only apply to a search for that the existence of which
is undetermined. For instances of a use of the word which entirely
upset such an argument it is not necessary to look outside the sagas
dealing with the present subject, where we find that Aud the Wealthy
‘fór at leita Íslands’ (went to seek Iceland), at a time when her own
brother was already settled there, and long after the foundation of the
Icelandic colony.
Again, Dr. Nansen asks us to see ‘an air of myth and invention’ in the
numerous Thor-names—Thorvald, Thorhall, Thorstein, Thorfin, &c.—which
are undoubtedly to be found in this story. To find, however, such
names conferred on men born in heathendom seems to me to prove less
than nothing, particularly when we find in the index of names to the
Landnámabók no fewer than fourteen pages in double columns devoted to
men and women whose names began with Thor.
_Occurrence of Number Three._
Of perhaps greater importance is the resemblance to fairy-tale which
Dr. Nansen seeks to establish from the frequent occurrence of the
number three.[78] This feature is not conspicuous in the Flatey Book
version, which gives us no fewer than six voyages—Bjarni, Leif,
Thorvald, Thorstein, Karlsefni, and Freydis—while the distances between
the lands are not given as equal in all cases. In the companion
version it is true that the figure three plays or can be made to play
a considerable part, yet it is doubtful if so much use can fairly be
made of the point as Dr. Nansen argues. There are three voyages—Leif’s,
Thorstein’s, Karlsefni’s; but the fact that the second alone is
unsuccessful robs the number of the significance which we should
expect in fairy-tale. Karlsefni’s expedition consists of three ships,
but this is explained by the circumstance that two of these belonged
to the visitors to Greenland, while one was manned by the local
contingent. Each ship had two leaders—not one or three—and the crews
totalled 160 men, so that the figure three is here only to be found
by selection from other quite arbitrary numbers. That three countries
are visited is only true if we take the nomenclature of the Flatey
Book; in the companion account we may rather say that five places are
mentioned—Helluland, Markland, Furdustrands, Straumsfjord, and Hóp.
With regard to the number of days’ voyage between the different places
visited, no emphasis is laid on the number three; the figure recorded
is two, and in some cases a long while. If it is said that two days’
voyage involves an arrival on the third day, then no use can fairly
be made of the three days’ search for Thorhall on the island, who was
found on the fourth day. Dr. Nansen draws attention to the fact that
three meetings with skrælings are recorded, but this is only true of
the skrælings at Hóp; it omits the five skrælings found sleeping by the
sea, and those whose boys were captured in Markland. If the episode
at Hóp is to be treated by itself, it is not a fair argument to say
that there were three casualties, for only two men were killed at this
time, with four of the savages. If Thorvald’s death at the hands of
the uniped is to be included, it would be reasonable to take the total
loss to the expedition from all causes, which would comprise Thorhall
the Hunter and his eight or nine companions, and Bjarni Grimolfson with
about half his crew. Altogether the uniformity of fairy-tale seems
conspicuously absent, and the mystic figure, appearing as it does with
other numbers which Dr. Nansen ignores, is explicable on quite rational
hypotheses.
_The Wild Grapes._
Turning now to the broader issues of Dr. Nansen’s argument, they
may be summarized as follows. The wild grapes and corn are rejected
altogether, and traced to legends of the Insulae Fortunatae in Isidore
Hispalensis and classical sources. Most of the other salient features
of the narrative, the whale, the bird-island, and above all the
skrælings, are treated as derived in the main from Irish legend.
The alleged classical and Celtic influences it will be convenient to
consider separately.
I may state at the outset that I believe there is something in Dr.
Nansen’s argument from the unusual form of the name Vínland hit Goða,
which however in its complete form is hardly to be found in the text of
the sagas.
I think it quite possible that this is an Icelandic form of the
classical Insulae Fortunatae, but I differ from the author under
consideration in concluding, for my part, that the Norsemen, or those
who recorded their achievements, identified the newly discovered
country with these legendary islands, or considered that the name was
appropriate, because of the commodities actually found in America.
It seems to me that herein may have lain the great importance attached
to the discovery of the grapes, &c., things of which Scandinavians had
little knowledge and could make but little use.
That wild grapes, at all events, were discovered I regard as
indisputable. Before the introduction of Christian learning into
Iceland and Greenland, which could hardly have been far advanced at the
time of the actual voyages, it cannot be said that any knowledge of
Isidore or the Insulae Fortunatae is likely to have existed in these
countries.
Now the verses of Thorhall the Hunter are admitted by all authorities
to bear the marks of contemporary composition. And it cannot be
disputed that the first of these verses contains an allusion to the
discovery of the grape and is very strong evidence that information of
this discovery had penetrated to Greenland at a date earlier than that
of the voyage in which the author took part. It is hardly possible,
in my opinion, to exaggerate the significance of a contemporary
composition which says in effect ‘I had been told before I started
that I should find vines, but I have not done so’. The latter part of
the verse is immaterial, for it may well have been the case, as indeed
is stated in the saga, that the vine region had not at this stage been
reached by the expedition; the point is that such a region appears to
have been discovered by some predecessor of Thorhall, who composed his
verse at a period when knowledge of the Fortunate Islands can hardly
have penetrated to the Icelandic or Greenland Colonies. It is moreover
not without importance that the briefest accounts of Leif’s voyage
contain allusions to the discovery of a ‘Wineland’, showing that this
was in fact the salient feature of the discovery in the minds of those
who heard of it, even if the name was not conferred by the explorers
themselves.
Then too we have the evidence of Adam of Bremen, to which allusion
has been made in the chapter on sources. Adam, indeed, is likely
to have been well acquainted with the classical allusions to the
Fortunate Isles, but the same can hardly be predicated of his informant
King Svein of Denmark, and the Danes whose ‘_certa relatio_’ is
contrasted by this author, and as I think purposely contrasted, with
the ‘_fabulosa opinio_’ on which the existence of such a country
had hitherto rested. Adam’s testimony, dating from about 1070, may
therefore be regarded as very strong and practically contemporary
corroboration of the discovery of the vines alluded to in these sagas.
Again, it is clear that by the time of Ari the Learned, who was born
in 1067, the name Wineland had become definitely attached to a country
discovered in the west by the Norse explorers, whose existence and
position were well enough known to be understood in a casual allusion.
It seems to me in the last degree improbable that, by the time Ari
wrote, so large an accretion of legend should have collected round
the story of the discovery as to account for the name containing an
allusion to wine if grapes had not in fact been discovered there. The
style of Ari’s writings, as indeed of all the earlier sagas, is the
most independent and natural to be found in the whole of literature;
this is due to the absence in these times of almost all external
influence. It is clear too that Ari was well qualified for the duties
of an historian by a most discriminating judgement as to the merits of
his sources of information; he is constantly giving us the names and
qualifications of the persons from whom his statements are derived,
and their knowledge not infrequently goes back to the period now under
consideration; hence it is impossible to ignore the value of a mention
of a land of vines or wine in the work of this early and conscientious
authority.
But it is further to be observed that if the Norsemen discovered
America—and it is generally agreed that they did—the commodities of
which the sagas speak were in fact there, waiting to be discovered.
Precisely the same two things—wild grapes and cereals—struck almost
every one of the rediscoverers and later explorers of this continent.
The coincidence of a mention of wild vines and corn in the mythical
lands of classical writers is just as strong an argument against the
truthfulness of these later explorers as of the Norsemen, yet no one
doubts their word, corroborated as it is by the facts known to us at
the present day. The whole force of Dr. Nansen’s argument under this
head rests upon this coincidence; in fact, he summarizes it in these
words: ‘The resemblance between this description (Isidore’s of the
Fortunate Isles) and that of Wineland is so close that it cannot be
explained away as fortuitous.’[79] Yet the resemblance is just as close
between the passage cited and many in the reports of later explorers,
where it is quite certainly fortuitous.
A few examples of such passages may here be given:
_Cartier._—(Brion Island.) ‘We found it full of goodly trees, meadows,
fields of wild corn.’
(North Point, Prince Edward Island.) ‘We landed there this day in four
places to see the trees, which are wonderfully fair, &c.,—many others
to us unknown.—The lands where there are no woods are very fair, and
all so full of wild corn, like rye, that it seems to have been sown and
cultivated there.’
(Baye de Chaleur.) ‘Their land is more temperate in heat than the land
of Spain—and there is not here any little spot void of woods and made
up of sand, which may not be full of wild grain, which has an ear like
rye, and the kernel like oats.’
(St. Lawrence River.) ‘On both sides of it we found the fairest and
best lands to look at that it may be possible to behold—full of the
goodliest trees in the world, and so many vines loaded with grapes
along the said river that it seems that they may rather have been
planted there by the hand of man than otherwise: but because they are
not cultivated nor pruned, the grapes are not so big and sweet as ours.’
Again, ‘Finest trees in the world: to wit, oaks, elms, &c., and, what
are better, a great many vines, which had so great abundance of grapes
that the crew came aboard all loaded down with them.’
_Champlain._—(Richmond Island.) ‘Many vineyards bearing beautiful
grapes in their season.’
(Cape Anne.) ‘We found in this place a great many vines, the green
grapes on which were a little larger than peas.’
(Gloucester Bay.) ‘We saw some very fine grapes just ripe.’
_Charles Leigh._—‘Concerning the nature and fruitfulnesse of Brion’s
Island, Isle Blanche, and of Ramea, they do by nature yeeld exceeding
plenty of wood, great store of wild corne like barley, &c.’
_Hudson._—(Near Cape Cod.) ‘They went on land, and found goodly grapes
and rose-trees, and brought them aboard with them.’
_Denys._—(St. John’s River.) ‘There is found here also a great quantity
of wild grapes.’
It may further be noticed that both Champlain and Cartier conferred
on different places the name Île de Bacchus, from the circumstance
that grapes were found there. This name, particularly as it is used of
different localities, seems quite as much open to Dr. Nansen’s attack
as the Norsemen’s Vínland hit Goða. One can imagine the force with
which the eminent explorer could point out the manifest connexion with
classical sources, and the close resemblance between this nomenclature
and that of the legendary islands from which he thinks the Norsemen
drew their vines. If then the resemblance in these cases is fortuitous,
as it clearly is, what becomes of Dr. Nansen’s argument?
_The Corn._
It will be noticed that in the passages above cited not only the vine
but the wild corn also makes its appearance. It is clear, therefore,
that any argument based on analogy or resemblance to these features of
the Fortunate Islands is quite inconclusive. Nevertheless the case for
the vines is, it must be admitted, considerably stronger than that for
the corn. In the first place, no mention of the latter commodity occurs
in the Flatey version, if the reference to ‘a wooden corn-barn’ be
explicable on another hypothesis, as I have endeavoured to indicate in
treating of Thorvald’s voyage.
In the second place, most of the later explorers seem to have meant by
‘wild corn’ something in the nature of lyme-grass (_Arundo arenaria_).
But there is a difficulty in accepting this plant as the ‘wild wheat’
of the Icelanders, since lyme-grass, under the name of ‘melur’, was
well known to this people; a reference to the method employed in
comparatively recent times in preparing flour from it will be found in
Troil’s _Letters on Iceland_ at page 105. It is true that Professor
Fernald of Boston, in his paper on the plants of Wineland, identifies
not only the corn, but the vines and the mösur wood, with commodities
known to the Norsemen in their own countries, but this has always
seemed to me to add to the already insuperable difficulties in the way
of accepting his theories, to which I shall have occasion to revert
later on.
All the same, I am inclined to think that something in the nature of
lyme-grass may be indicated by the wild corn, and if so perhaps we
may here trace to some extent the influence of the classical legends
on which Dr. Nansen lays stress. One may imagine, without much
straining of probability, that on hearing of the vines learned people
would ask leading questions as to the existence of corn, and so the
lyme-grass, hitherto considered, as we see from the Flatey Book, to
be comparatively unimportant, might have reappeared under a new name.
One can certainly imagine the schoolmaster, Adam of Bremen, in his
cross-examination of the Danes from whom his information was derived,
on hearing of the vines, making some inquiry as to the existence of
some sort of wild corn, and being quite truthfully told that it did
exist.
However this may be, the identification of the wild corn will always
be an insoluble problem. The older commentators on these sagas used to
consider that maize was indicated, but this is not, properly speaking,
a wild plant, and moreover bears singularly little resemblance to any
European cereal. The later school mostly identifies the corn of the
sagas with wild rice, but this is open to the objection that it is an
aquatic plant. On the whole, therefore, while I think the discovery of
the vine is indisputable, and was the cause rather than the effect of
any trace of the influence of the legends of the Insulae Fortunatae to
be met with in the sagas, I confess, in spite of the coincidence of the
reports of later explorers, to regarding the corn as a more difficult
problem.
In any case it seems to me that the absence of all mention of wild
corn in the Flatey Book version has a most significant bearing on Dr.
Nansen’s argument. For in practically all references to the Fortunate
Islands the corn and the vines are so closely connected that a borrower
from such sources could hardly take the one without the other.
E.g. Horace, _Epodes_, xvi. 41:
‘Beata
petamus arva, divites et insulas;
reddit ubi _Cererem_ tellus inarata quotannis,
et imputata floret usque _vinea_’;
and Isidore, _Etymologiarum_ xiv. 6:
‘Fortuitis _vitibus_ iuga collium vestiuntur; ad herbarum vicem
_messis_.’
The existence, therefore, of a circumstantial account of Wineland,
which contains no mention of wild corn, makes any derivative connexion
between the descriptions of this country and the Insulae Fortunatae,
apart from all other difficulties, exceedingly improbable.
_Celtic Legends._
When we turn to the other features of the saga, we find Dr. Nansen
displaying even greater resource and ingenuity in finding parallels in
the folk-lore of other lands. The argument from analogy is proverbially
untrustworthy, but it is at the same time rather difficult to combat
effectively where, as in the present case, it is impossible to set
out the full number of alleged resemblances with which Dr. Nansen’s
industry in research has provided him. Samples are open to the charge
of unfair selection. I should doubt, for example, whether even Dr.
Nansen himself, though he emphasizes the parallel with a marginal
heading, can attach any real importance to such an instance as the
following:
‘The great river that Brandan found in the Terra Repromissionis,
and that ran through the middle of the island, may be compared to
the stream that Karlsefni found at Hóp in Wineland, which fell
into a lake and thence into the sea.... But the river which
divided the Terra Repromissionis ... was evidently originally the
river of death, Styx or Acheron in Greek mythology (Gjöll in Norse
mythology). One might be tempted to suppose that, in the same way
as the whole description of Wineland has been dechristianized
from the Terra Repromissionis, the realistic, and therefore often
rationalizing, Icelanders have transformed the river in the
promised land, the ancient river of death, into the stream at
Hóp.’[80]
A striking parallel to this parallel leaps at once to the mind of the
irreverent. ‘There is a river in Macedon, and there is also moreover
a river at Monmouth: it is called Wye at Monmouth; but it is out of
my prains what is the name of the other river; but ’tis all one, ’tis
so like as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both’
(_Henry V_, Act IV, sc. vii).
In so far as there were ‘salmons in both’, it must I think be conceded
by the impartial reader that Fluellen’s analogy is more striking than
Dr. Nansen’s.
Before considering further examples of the resemblances which Dr.
Nansen has sought to establish, a few words may be said which are of
general application to the whole. As in the instance above cited,
Dr. Nansen’s analogies are practically all drawn from the mythical
‘imramha’ or voyages which form a definite class in early Irish
literature. This class merges gradually at a later period into vision
literature, where a vision of Paradise takes the place of a voyage
into the wonderlands of the unseen world. But in its earlier form,
with which Dr. Nansen is mainly concerned, the imramh took the form
of a kind of Odyssey, in course of which the voyagers discovered
many new and wonderful countries. It is manifest therefore that many
elements must necessarily be present from which analogies with any
voyage of discovery, however genuine, can be deduced. Unless, then,
the similarities to be found are more striking than anything which can
be explained from these necessary coincidences, we should, I submit,
attach but little importance to them. We should remember also that the
Icelander, however realistic or rational, is not likely to have been
a discriminating borrower or to have rejected fabulous elements quite
credible in a superstitious age. Thus we should expect, if extensive
loans were taken from a literature exceptionally rich in the monstrous
and marvellous, to find at any rate a good many definite instances
where these characteristics have been retained without much alteration.
I have said that Irish literature was exceptionally rich in the
monstrous and marvellous. This indeed is a characteristic insisted upon
by Mr. W. B. Yeats in his admirable introduction to Lady Gregory’s
_Cuchulain of Muirthemne_ as the great distinction between Celtic and
Scandinavian writings. ‘The Irish story-teller’, he says, ‘could not
interest himself with an unbroken interest in the way men like himself
burned a house or won wives no more wonderful than themselves. His
mind constantly escaped out of daily circumstance, as a bough that
has been held down by a weak hand suddenly straightens itself out.
His imagination was always running off to Tir-nan-Oge, to the land of
Promise, which is as near to the country-people of to-day as it was
to Cuchulain and his companions.’ ‘Just so,’ says Dr. Nansen, ‘and
therefore when the Icelander borrowed he rationalized.’ But had he the
necessary critical discrimination to enable him to reject the fabulous?
Was he so free from superstitious beliefs as to be able to discredit
the mythical? By no means. Nothing is clearer than that he was highly
superstitious, believing intensely in ghosts, and portents of all
kinds: in fact, he believed in them so thoroughly that they almost
ceased to be portentous from the matter-of-fact way in which he thought
of them. For all he knew, the wildest flights of the Celtic imagination
might be sober truth, and as truth he would have set them down if
they had concerned him. But if they were no part of the story he was
telling, they could be left out of it.
Now if we examine one of these Irish stories, we shall find the
marvellous elements to be the very bones and sinews of the tale.
Eliminate these and nothing is left which it would not be easy to
parallel from the records of any voyage of discovery. There is nothing
characteristic to which any resemblance can be traced, except these
clearly mythical features. Take as an example the summary of Maelduin’s
voyage given on p. 336 of the first volume of Dr. Nansen’s work. First
we hear how ‘swarms of ants, as large as foals, came down to the beach
and showed a desire to eat’ the crew and the boat.
‘This land’, says Dr. Nansen, ‘is the parallel to Helluland, where
there were a number of Arctic foxes.’ Now there seems to me no
reason why an Icelandic writer of the thirteenth century should have
discredited the possibility of these Brobdingnagian ants. Yet he
describes merely Arctic foxes, animals differing in every way about
as widely from these ants as could well be imagined. They are not
insects, they are not large, they are not dangerous or formidable. They
are animals actually to be found in the northern parts of the American
continent, and the locality where they are found is correctly described
as a land of rocks, and not a beach at all. Is it credible that the one
story, accurate in every particular, could have been derived by the
exercise of any amount of imagination from the other? Set your children
to rationalize Maelduin’s story, and see if you will get the ants
turned to foxes in any single case.
Next we hear of ‘a great lofty island with terraces around it and
rows of trees on which there were many large birds’. ‘This island’,
says Dr. Nansen, ‘might correspond to the wooded Markland, with its
many animals, where Karlsefni and his people killed a bear.’ Then
where is the island, or where are the terraces, or the loftiness, or
the birds, none of them features, one would have thought, which the
most rationalistic need have hesitated to retain? We have, on the
contrary, a low-lying land, apparently mainland, wooded indeed, but
otherwise unlike in every single particular. Next we read of a sandy
island, inhabited by a beast like a horse with dog’s paws and claws.
Next a flat island with marks of horses’ hoofs as large as a ship’s
sail, nutshells of marvellous size, and traces of human occupation.
Next comes a lofty island with a great house sumptuously furnished,
into which the waves of the sea threw salmon. Here Dr. Nansen might
claim, with Fluellen, ‘salmons in both’, but this has not usually been
regarded as a convincing analogy. Lastly we are told of an island
encompassed by a great cliff with a single tree growing on it. A
branch of this Maelduin caught, and held for three days while sailing
by the island, at the end of which time there were three apples at the
end of the branch. Not even grapes! I am not sure, in spite of some
ambiguous phrases, that in quoting this long passage Dr. Nansen wishes
to emphasize many similarities beyond the recurrence of a certain
number of periods of three days. But the description is convenient
for my purposes as affording a characteristic example of the type of
legend from which it is suggested that most of the features of the saga
were derived. And I ask myself in vain where is the slightest trace to
be found of one story in the other, except that both are voyages of
discovery?
_Correspondence with actual Facts._
Or the case may be put thus: If the fauna and natural products
described are merely the monstrosities of Celtic fiction taken
with a grain of Icelandic salt, how comes it that they invariably
correspond with the actual facts of the countries to which the earliest
discoverers of America would most probably have come?
Indisputably this is the case until we come to Straumsfjord, though not
much stress can be laid on the circumstance that descriptions so brief
and general as those of Helluland and Markland happen to be accurate.
The episode of the Irish runners appears indeed to have been inserted
out of its proper order, and while not impossible may embody a distinct
and less reliable tradition, and in the case of the whale incident the
details given by Hauk may be rejected in favour of the simpler account
given in the Flatey Book.