CHAPTER II.

PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.

There is something solemn and impressive in the spectacle of human life

thus going on for countless ages in the Eastern and Western halves of

our planet, each all unknown to the other and uninfluenced by it. The

contact between the two worlds practically begins in 1492.

[Sidenote: The Chinese.]

[Sidenote: The Irish.]

[Sidenote: Cousin, of Dieppe.]

By this statement it is not meant to deny that occasional visitors may

have come and did come before that famous date from the Old World to the

New. On the contrary I am inclined to suspect that there may have been

more such occasional visits than we have been wont to suppose. For the

most part, however, the subject is shrouded in the mists of obscure

narrative and fantastic conjecture. When it is argued that in the fifth

century of the Christian era certain Buddhist missionary priests came

from China by way of Kamtchatka and the Aleutian islands, and kept on

till they got to a country which they called Fusang, and which was

really Mexico, one cannot reply that such a thing was necessarily and

absolutely impossible; but when other critics assure us that, after all,

Fusang was really Japan, perhaps one feels a slight sense of

relief.[160] So of the dim whispers of voyages to America undertaken by

the Irish, in the days when the cloisters of sweet Innisfallen were a

centre of piety and culture for northwestern Europe,[161] we may say

that this sort of thing has not much to do with history, or history with

it. Irish anchorites certainly went to Iceland in the seventh

century,[162] and in the course of this book we shall have frequent

occasion to observe that first and last there has been on all seas a

good deal of blowing and drifting done. It is credibly reported that

Japanese junks have been driven ashore on the coasts of Oregon and

California;[163] and there is a story that in 1488 a certain Jean

Cousin, of Dieppe, while sailing down the west coast of Africa, was

caught in a storm and blown across to Brazil.[164] This was certainly

quite possible, for it was not so very unlike what happened in 1500 to

Pedro Alvarez de Cabral, as we shall hereafter see;[165] nevertheless,

the evidence adduced in support of the story will hardly bear a critical

examination.[166]

[Footnote 160: This notion of the Chinese visiting Mexico was

set forth by the celebrated Deguignes in 1761, in the _Mémoires

de l'Académie des Inscriptions_, tom. xxviii. pp. 506-525. Its

absurdity was shown by Klaproth, "Recherches sur le pays de Fou

Sang," _Nouvelles annales des voyages_, Paris, 1831, 2e série,

tom. xxi. pp. 58-68; see also Klaproth's introduction to

_Annales des empereurs du Japon_, Paris, 1834, pp. iv.-ix.;

Humboldt, _Examen critique de l'histoire de la géographie du

nouveau continent_, Paris, 1837, tom. ii. pp. 62-84. The fancy

was revived by C. G. Leland ("Hans Breitmann"), in his

_Fusang_, London, 1875, and was again demolished by the

missionary, S. W. Williams, in the _Journal of the American

Oriental Society_, vol. xi., New Haven, 1881.]

[Footnote 161: On the noble work of the Irish church and its

missionaries in the sixth and seventh centuries, see

Montalembert, _Les moines d'Occident_, tom. ii. pp. 465-661;

tom. iii. pp. 79-332; Burton's _History of Scotland_, vol. i.

pp. 234-277; and the instructive map in Miss Sophie Bryant's

_Celtic Ireland_, London, 1889, p. 60. The notice of the

subject in Milman's _Latin Christianity_, vol. ii. pp. 236-247,

is entirely inadequate.]

[Footnote 162: The passion for solitude led some of the

disciples of St. Columba to make their way from Iona to the

Hebrides, and thence to the Orkneys, Shetlands, Færoes, and

Iceland, where a colony of them remained until the arrival of

the Northmen in 874. See Dicuil, _Liber de mensura Orbis Terræ_

(A. D. 825), Paris, 1807; Innes, _Scotland in the Middle Ages_,

p. 101; Lanigan, _Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, chap.

iii.; Maurer, _Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte des Germanischen

Nordens_, i. 35. For the legend of St. Brandan, see Gaffarel,

_Les voyages de St. Brandan_, Paris, 1881.]

[Footnote 163: C. W. Brooks, of San Francisco, cited in

Higginson, _Larger History of the United States_, p. 24.]

[Footnote 164: Desmarquets, _Mémoires chronologiques pour

servir à l'histoire de Dieppe_, Paris, 1785, tom. i. pp. 91-98;

Estancelin, _Recherches sur les voyages et découvertes des

navigateurs normands_, etc., Paris, 1832, pp. 332-361.]

[Footnote 165: See below, vol. ii. p. 96.]

[Footnote 166: As Harrisse says, concerning the alleged voyages

of Cousin and others, "Quant aux voyages du Dieppois Jean

Cousin en 1488, de João Ramalho en 1490, et de João Vaz

Cortereal en 1464 ou 1474, le lecteur nous pardonnera de les

passer sous silence." _Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1884, tom. i.

p. 307.]

[Sidenote: Those stories are of little value;]

It is not my purpose to weary the reader with a general discussion of

these and some other legends or rumours of pre-Columbian visitors to

America. We may admit, at once, that "there is no good reason why any

one of them may not have done" what is claimed, but at the same time the

proof that any one of them _did_ do it is very far from

satisfactory.[167] Moreover the questions raised are often of small

importance, and belong not so much to the serious workshop of history as

to its limbo prepared for learned trifles, whither we will hereby

relegate them.[168]

[Footnote 167: Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, i. 59.]

[Footnote 168: Sufficiently full references may be found in

Watson's _Bibliography of the Pre-Columbian Discoveries of

America_, appended to Anderson's _America not discovered by

Columbus_, 3d ed., Chicago, 1883, pp. 121-164; and see the

learned chapters by W. H. Tillinghast on "The Geographical

Knowledge of the Ancients considered in relation to the

Discovery of America," and by Justin Winsor on "Pre-Columbian

Explorations," in _Narr. and Crit. Hist._, vol. i.]

[Sidenote: but the case of the Northmen is entirely different.]

[Sidenote: The Viking exodus from Norway.]

[Sidenote: Founding of Iceland, A. D. 874.]

But when we come to the voyages of the Northmen in the tenth and

eleventh centuries, it is quite a different affair. Not only is this a

subject of much historic interest, but in dealing with it we stand for a

great part of the time upon firm historic ground. The narratives which

tell us of Vinland and of Leif Ericsson are closely intertwined with the

authentic history of Norway and Iceland. In the ninth century of our era

there was a process of political consolidation going on in Norway,

somewhat as in England under Egbert and his successors. After a war of

twelve years, King Harold Fairhair overthrew the combined forces of the

Jarls, or small independent princes, in the decisive naval battle of

Hafursfiord in the year 872. This resulted in making Harold the feudal

landlord of Norway. Allodial tenures were abolished, and the Jarls were

required to become his vassals. This consolidation of the kingdom was

probably beneficial in its main consequences, but to many a proud spirit

and crafty brain it made life in Norway unendurable. These bold Jarls

and their Viking[169] followers, to whom, as to the ancient Greeks, the

sea was not a barrier, but a highway,[170] had no mind to stay at home

and submit to unwonted thraldom. So they manned their dragon-prowed

keels, invoked the blessing of Wodan, god of storms, upon their

enterprise, and sailed away. Some went to reinforce their kinsmen who

were making it so hot for Alfred in England[171] and for Charles the

Bald in Gaul; some had already visited Ireland and were establishing

themselves at Dublin and Limerick; others now followed and found homes

for themselves in the Hebrides and all over Scotland north of glorious

Loch Linnhe and the Murray frith; some made their way through the blue

Mediterranean to "Micklegard," the Great City of the Byzantine Emperor,

and in his service wielded their stout axes against Magyar and

Saracen;[172] some found their amphibious natures better satisfied upon

the islands of the Atlantic ridge,--the Orkneys, Shetlands, and

Færoes, and especially noble Iceland. There an aristocratic republic

soon grew up, owning slight and indefinite allegiance to the kings of

Norway.[173] The settlement of Iceland was such a wholesale colonization

of communities of picked men as had not been seen since ancient Greek

times, and was not to be seen again until Winthrop sailed into

Massachusetts Bay. It was not long before the population of Iceland

exceeded 50,000 souls. Their sheep and cattle flourished, hay crops were

heavy, a lively trade--with fish, oil, butter, skins, and wool, in

exchange for meal and malt--was kept up with Norway, Denmark, and the

British islands, political freedom was unimpaired,[174] justice was (for

the Middle Ages) fairly well administered, naval superiority kept all

foes at a distance; and under such conditions the growth of the new

community in wealth[175] and culture was surprisingly rapid. In the

twelfth century, before literature had begun to blossom in the modern

speech of France or Spain or Italy, there was a flourishing literature

in prose and verse in Iceland. Especial attention was paid to history,

and the "Landnáma-bók," or statistical and genealogical account of the

early settlers, was the most complete and careful work of the kind which

had ever been undertaken by any people down to quite recent times. Few

persons in our day adequately realize the extent of the early Icelandic

literature or its richness. The poems, legends, and histories earlier

than the date when Dante walked and mused in the streets of Florence

survive for us now in some hundreds of works, for the most part of rare

and absorbing interest. The "Heimskringla," or chronicle of Snorro

Sturleson, written about 1215, is one of the greatest history books in

the world.[176]

[Footnote 169: The proper division of this Old Norse word is

not into _v[=i]-king_, but into _v[)i]k-ing_. The first

syllable means a "bay" or "fiord," the second is a patronymic

termination, so that "vikings" are "sons of the fiord,"--an

eminently appropriate and descriptive name.]

[Footnote 170: Curtius (_Griechische Etymologie_, p. 237)

connects [Greek: pontos] with [Greek: patos]; compare the

Homeric expressions [Greek: hygra keleutha, ichthyoenta

keleutha], etc.]

[Footnote 171: The descendants of these Northmen formed a very

large proportion of the population of the East Anglian

counties, and consequently of the men who founded New England.

The East Anglian counties have been conspicuous for resistance

to tyranny and for freedom of thought. See my _Beginnings of

New England_, p. 62.]

[Footnote 172: They were the Varangian guard at Constantinople,

described by Sir Walter Scott in _Count Robert of Paris_. About

this same time their kinsmen, the Russ, moving eastward from

Sweden, were subjecting Slavic tribes as far as Novgorod and

Kief, and laying the foundations of the power that has since,

through many and strange vicissitudes, developed into Russia.

See Thomsen, _The Relations between Ancient Russia and

Scandinavia_, Oxford, 1877.]

[Footnote 173: Fealty to Norway was not formally declared until

1262.]

[Footnote 174: The settlement of Iceland is celebrated by

Robert Lowe in verses which show that, whatever his opinion may

have been in later years as to the use of a classical

education, his own early studies must always have been a source

of comfort to him:--

[Greek: Chaire kai en nephelaisi kai en niphadessi bareiais

Kai pyri kai seismois nêse saleuomenê

Enthade gar basilêos hyperbion hybrin alyxas

Dêmos Hyperboreôn, kosmou ep' eschatiê,

Autarkê bioton theiôn t' erethismata Mousôn

Kai thesmous hagnês heuren eleutherias.]

These verses are thus rendered by Sir Edmund Head (_Viga Glums

Saga_, p. v.):--

"Hail, Isle! with mist and snowstorms girt around,

Where fire and earthquake rend the shattered ground,--

Here once o'er furthest ocean's icy path

The Northmen fled a tyrant monarch's wrath:

Here, cheered by song and story, dwelt they free,

And held unscathed their laws and liberty."

Laing (_Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 57) couples Iceland and New

England as the two modern colonies most distinctly "founded on

principle and peopled at first from higher motives than want or

gain."]

[Footnote 175: Just what was then considered wealth, for an

individual, may best be understood by a concrete instance. The

historian Snorro Sturleson, born in 1178, was called a rich

man. "In one year, in which fodder was scarce, he lost 120 head

of oxen without being seriously affected by it." The fortune

which he got with his first wife Herdisa, in 1199, was

equivalent nominally to $4,000, or, according to the standard

of to-day, about $80,000. Laing, _Heimskringla_, vol. i. pp.

191, 193.]

[Footnote 176: Laing's excellent English translation of it was

published in London in 1844. The preliminary dissertation, in

five chapters, is of great value. A new edition, revised by

Prof. Rasmus Anderson, was published in London in 1889. Another

charming book is Sir George Dasent's _Story of Burnt Njal_,

Edinburgh, 1861, 2 vols., translated from the _Njals Saga_.

Both the saga itself and the translator's learned introduction

give an admirable description of life in Iceland at the end of

the tenth century, the time when the voyages to America were

made. It is a very instructive chapter in history.

The Icelanders of the present day retain the Old Norse

language, while on the Continent it has been modified into

Swedish and Norwegian-Danish. They are a well-educated people,

and, in proportion to their numbers, publish many books.]

[Sidenote: Discovery of Greenland, 876.]

[Sidenote: Eric's Colony in Greenland, 986.]

Now from various Icelandic chronicles[177] we learn that in 876, only

two years after the island commonwealth was founded, one of the

settlers named Gunnbjörn was driven by foul weather to some point on the

coast of Greenland, where he and his crew contrived to pass the winter,

their ship being locked in ice; when the spring set them free, they

returned to Iceland. In the year 983 Eric the Red, a settler upon Öxney

(Ox-island) near the mouth of Breidafiord, was outlawed for killing a

man in a brawl. Eric then determined to search for the western land

which Gunnbjörn had discovered. He set out with a few followers, and in

the next three years these bold sailors explored the coasts of Greenland

pretty thoroughly for a considerable distance on each side of Cape

Farewell. At length they found a suitable place for a home, at the head

of Igaliko fiord, not far from the site of the modern Julianeshaab.[178]

It was fit work for Vikings to penetrate so deep a fiord and find out

such a spot, hidden as it is by miles upon miles of craggy and

ice-covered headlands. They proved their sagacity by pitching upon one

of the pleasantest spots on the gaunt Greenland coast; and there upon a

smooth grassy plain may still be seen the ruins of seventeen houses

built of rough blocks of sandstone, their chinks caulked up with clay

and gravel. In contrast with most of its bleak surroundings the place

might well be called Greenland, and so Eric named it, for, said he, it

is well to have a pleasant name if we would induce people to come

hither. The name thus given by Eric to this chosen spot has been

extended in modern usage to the whole of the vast continental region

north of Davis strait, for the greater part of which it is a flagrant

misnomer.[179] In 986 Eric ventured back to Iceland, and was so

successful in enlisting settlers for Greenland that on his return voyage

he started with five and twenty ships. The loss from foul weather and

icebergs was cruel. Eleven vessels were lost; the remaining fourteen,

carrying probably from four to five hundred souls, arrived safely at the

head of Igaliko fiord, and began building their houses at the place

called Brattahlid. Their settlement presently extended over the head of

Tunnudliorbik fiord, the next deep inlet to the northwest; they called

it Ericsfiord. After a while it extended westward as far as Immartinek,

and eastward as far as the site of Friedrichsthal; and another distinct

settlement of less extent was also made about four hundred miles to the

northwest, near the present site of Godthaab. The older settlement,

which began at Igaliko fiord, was known as the East Bygd;[180] the

younger settlement, near Godthaab, was called the West Bygd.

[Footnote 177: A full collection of these chronicles is given

in Rafn's _Antiquitates Americanæ_, Copenhagen, 1837, in the

original Icelandic, with Danish and Latin translations. This

book is of great value for its full and careful reproduction of

original texts; although the rash speculations and the want of

critical discernment shown in the editor's efforts to determine

the precise situation of Vinland have done much to discredit

the whole subject in the eyes of many scholars. That is,

however, very apt to be the case with first attempts, like

Rafn's, and the obvious defects of his work should not be

allowed to blind us to its merits. In the footnotes to the

present chapter I shall cite it simply as "Rafn;" as the exact

phraseology is often important, I shall usually cite the

original Icelandic, and (for the benefit of readers unfamiliar

with that language) shall also give the Latin version, which

has been well made, and quite happily reflects the fresh and

pithy vigour of the original. An English translation of all the

essential parts may be found in De Costa, _Pre-Columbian

Discovery of America by the Northmen_, 2d ed., Albany, 1890;

see also Slafter, _Voyages of the Northmen to America_, Boston,

1877 (Prince Society). An Icelandic version, interpolated in

Peringskiold's edition of the _Heimskringla_, 1697, is

translated in Laing, vol. iii. pp. 344-361.

The first modern writer to call attention to the Icelandic

voyages to Greenland and Vinland was Arngrim Jónsson, in his

_Crymogoea_, Hamburg, 1610, and more explicitly in his

_Specimen Islandiæ historicum_, Amsterdam, 1643. The voyages

are also mentioned by Campanius, in his _Kort beskrifning om

provincien Nya Swerige uti America_, Stockholm, 1702. The

first, however, to bring the subject prominently before

European readers was that judicious scholar Thormodus Torfæus,

in his two books _Historia Vinlandiæ antiquæ_, and _Historia

Gronlandiæ antiquæ_, Copenhagen, 1705 and 1706. Later writers

have until very recently added but little that is important to

the work of Torfæus. In the voluminous literature of the

subject the discussions chiefly worthy of mention are Forster's

_Geschichte der Entdeckungen und Schiffahrten im Norden_,

Frankfort, 1784, pp. 44-88; and Humboldt, _Examen critique_,

etc., Paris, 1837, tom. i. pp. 84-104; see, also, Major,

_Select Letters of Columbus_, London, 1847 (Hakluyt Soc.) pp.

xii.-xxi. The fifth chapter of Samuel Laing's preliminary

dissertation to the _Heimskringla_, which is devoted to this

subject, is full of good sense; for the most part the shrewd

Orkneyman gets at the core of the thing, though now and then a

little closer knowledge of America would have been useful to

him. The latest critical discussion of the sources, marking a

very decided advance since Rafn's time, is the paper by Gustav

Storm, professor of history in the University of Christiania,

"Studier over Vinlandsreiserne," in _Aarbøger for Nordisk

Oldkyndighed og Historie_, Copenhagen, 1887, pp. 293-372.

Since this chapter was written I have seen an English

translation of the valuable paper just mentioned, "Studies on

the Vineland Voyages," in _Mémoires de la société royale des

antiquaires du Nord_, Copenhagen, 1888, pp. 307-370. I have

therefore in most cases altered my footnote references below,

making the page-numbers refer to the English version (in which,

by the way, some parts of the Norwegian original are, for no

very obvious reason, omitted). By an odd coincidence there

comes to me at the same time a book fresh from the press, whose

rare beauty of mechanical workmanship is fully equalled by its

intrinsic merit, _The Finding of Wineland the Good--the History

of the Icelandic Discovery of America_, edited and translated

from the earliest records by Arthur Middleton Reeves, London,

1890. This beautiful quarto contains phototype plates of the

original Icelandic vellums in the _Hauks-bók_, the MS. AM. 557,

and the _Flateyar-bók_, together with the texts carefully

edited, an admirable English translation, and several chapters

of critical discussion decidedly better than anything that has

gone before it. On reading it carefully through, it seems to me

the best book we have on the subject in English, or perhaps in

any language.

Since the above was written, the news has come of the sudden

and dreadful death of Mr. Reeves, in the railroad disaster at

Hagerstown, Indiana, February 25, 1891. Mr. Reeves was an

American scholar of most brilliant promise, only in his

thirty-fifth year.]

[Footnote 178: Rink, _Danish Greenland_, p. 6.]

[Footnote 179: We thus see the treacherousness of one of the

arguments cited by the illustrious Arago to prove that the

Greenland coast must be colder now than in the tenth century.

The Icelanders, he thinks, called it "a green land" because of

its verdure, and therefore it must have been warmer than at

present. But the land which Eric called green was evidently

nothing more than the region about Julianeshaab, which still

has plenty of verdure; and so the argument falls to the ground.

See Arago, _Sur l'état thermométrique du globe terrestre_, in

his _Oeuvres_, tom. v. p. 243. There are reasons, however, for

believing that Greenland was warmer in the tenth century than

at present. See below, p. 176.]

[Footnote 180: The map is reduced from Rafn's _Antiquitates

Americanæ_, tab. xv. The ruins dotted here and there upon it

have been known ever since the last rediscovery of Greenland in

1721, but until after 1831 they were generally supposed to be

the ruins of the West Bygd. After the fifteenth century, when

the old colony had perished, and its existence had become a

mere literary tradition, there grew up a notion that the names

East Bygd and West Bygd indicated that the two settlements must

have been respectively eastward and westward of Cape Farewell;

and after 1721 much time was wasted in looking for vestiges of

human habitations on the barren and ice-bound eastern coast. At

length, in 1828-31, the exploring expedition sent out by the

Danish government, under the very able and intelligent Captain

Graah, demonstrated that both settlements were west of Cape

Farewell, and that the ruins here indicated upon the map are

the ruins of the East Bygd. It now became apparent that a

certain description of Greenland by Ivar Bardsen--written in

Greenland in the fourteenth century, and generally accessible

to European scholars since the end of the sixteenth, but not

held in much esteem before Captain Graah's expedition--was

quite accurate and extremely valuable. From Bardsen's

description, about which we shall have more to say hereafter,

we can point out upon the map the ancient sites with much

confidence. Of those mentioned in the present work, the

bishop's church, or "cathedral" (a view of which is given

below, p. 222), was at Kakortok. The village of Gardar, which

gave its name to the bishopric, was at Kaksiarsuk, at the

northeastern extremity of Igaliko fiord. Opposite Kaksiarsuk,

on the western fork of the fiord, the reader will observe a

ruined church; that marks the site of Brattahlid. The fiord of

Igaliko was called by the Northmen Einarsfiord; and that of

Tunnudliorbik was their Ericsfiord. The monastery of St. Olaus,

visited by Nicolò Zeno (see below, p. 240), is supposed by Mr.

Major to have been situated near the Iisblink at the bottom of

Tessermiut fiord, between the east shore of the fiord and the

small lake indicated on the map.]

[Illustration: The East Bygd, or Eastern Settlement of the Northmen in

Greenland.]

This colonization of Greenland by the Northmen in the tenth century is

as well established as any event that occurred in the Middle Ages. For

four hundred years the fortunes of the Greenland colony formed a part,

albeit a very humble part, of European history. Geographically speaking,

Greenland is reckoned as a part of America, of the western

hemisphere, and not of the eastern. The Northmen who settled in

Greenland had, therefore, in this sense found their way to America.

Nevertheless one rightly feels that in the history of geographical

discovery an arrival of Europeans in Greenland is equivalent merely to

reaching the vestibule or ante-chamber of the western hemisphere. It is

an affair begun and ended outside of the great world of the red men.

But the story does not end here. Into the world of the red men the

voyagers from Iceland did assuredly come, as indeed, after once getting

a foothold upon Greenland, they could hardly fail to do. Let us pursue

the remainder of the story as we find it in our Icelandic sources of

information, and afterwards it will be proper to inquire into the

credibility of these sources.

[Sidenote: Voyage of Bjarni Herjulfson, 986.]

One of the men who accompanied Eric to Greenland was named Herjulf,

whose son Bjarni, after roving the seas for some years, came home to

Iceland in 986 to drink the Yuletide ale with his father. Finding him

gone, he weighed anchor and started after him to Greenland, but

encountered foggy weather, and sailed on for many days by guess-work

without seeing sun or stars. When at length he sighted land it was a

shore without mountains, showing only small heights covered with dense

woods. It was evidently not the land of fiords and glaciers for which

Bjarni was looking. So without stopping to make explorations he turned

his prow to the north and kept on. The sky was now fair, and after

scudding nine or ten days with a brisk breeze astern, Bjarni saw the

icy crags of Greenland looming up before him, and after some further

searching found his way to his father's new home.[181] On the route he

more than once sighted land on the larboard.

[Footnote 181: In Herjulfsfiord, at the entrance to which the

modern Friedrichsthal is situated. Across the fiord from

Friedrichsthal a ruined church stands upon the cape formerly

known as Herjulfsness. See map.]

[Sidenote: Conversion of the Northmen to Christianity.]

This adventure of Bjarni's seems not to have excited general curiosity

or to have awakened speculation. Indeed, in the dense geographical

ignorance of those times there is no reason why it should have done so.

About 994 Bjarni was in Norway, and one or two people expressed some

surprise that he did not take more pains to learn something about the

country he had seen; but nothing came of such talk till it reached the

ears of Leif, the famous son of Eric the Red. This wise and stately

man[182] spent a year or two in Norway about 998. Roman missionary

priests were then preaching up and down the land, and had converted the

king, Olaf Tryggvesson, great-grandson of Harold Fairhair. Leif became a

Christian and was baptised, and when he returned to Greenland he took

priests with him who converted many people, though old Eric, it is said,

preferred to go in the way of his fathers, and deemed boisterous

Valhalla, with its cups of wassail, a place of better cheer than the New

Jerusalem, with its streets of gold.

[Footnote 182: "Leifr var mikill madhr ok sterkr, manna

sköruligastr at sjá, vitr madhr ok gódhr hófsmadhr um alla

hluti," i. e. "Leif was a large man and strong, of noble

aspect, prudent and moderate in all things." Rafn, p. 33.]

[Sidenote: Leif Ericsson's voyage, 1000.]

[Sidenote: Helluland.]

[Sidenote: Markland.]

[Sidenote: Vinland.]

Leif's zeal for the conversion of his friends in Greenland did not so

far occupy his mind as to prevent him from undertaking a voyage of

discovery. His curiosity had been stimulated by what he had heard about

Bjarni's experiences, and he made up his mind to go and see what the

coasts to the south of Greenland were like. He sailed from

Brattahlid--probably in the summer or early autumn of the year

1000[183]--with a crew of five and thirty men. Some distance to the

southward they came upon a barren country covered with big flat stones,

so that they called it Helluland, or "slate-land." There is little room

for doubt that this was the coast opposite Greenland, either west or

east of the strait of Belle Isle; in other words, it was either Labrador

or the northern coast of Newfoundland. Thence, keeping generally to the

southward, our explorers came after some days to a thickly wooded coast,

where they landed and inspected the country. What chiefly impressed them

was the extent of the forest, so that they called the place Markland, or

"wood-land." Some critics have supposed that this spot was somewhere

upon the eastern or southern coast of Newfoundland, but the more general

opinion places it somewhere upon the coast of Cape Breton island or

Nova Scotia. From this Markland our voyagers stood out to sea, and

running briskly before a stiff northeaster it was more than two days

before they came in sight of land. Then, after following the coast for a

while, they went ashore at a place where a river, issuing from a lake,

fell into the sea. They brought their ship up into the lake and cast

anchor. The water abounded in excellent fish, and the country seemed so

pleasant that Leif decided to pass the winter there, and accordingly his

men put up some comfortable wooden huts or booths. One day one of the

party, a "south country" man, whose name was Tyrker,[184] came in from a

ramble in the neighbourhood making grimaces and talking to himself in

his own language (probably German), which his comrades did not

understand. On being interrogated as to the cause of his excitement,

he replied that he had discovered vines loaded with grapes, and was much

pleased at the sight inasmuch as he had been brought up in a vine

country. Wild grapes, indeed, abounded in this autumn season, and Leif

accordingly called the country Vinland. The winter seems to have passed

off very comfortably. Even the weather seemed mild to these visitors

from high latitudes, and they did not fail to comment on the unusual

length of the winter day. Their language on this point has been so

construed as to make the length of the shortest winter day exactly nine

hours, which would place their Vinland in about the latitude of Boston.

But their expressions do not admit of any such precise construction; and

when we remember that they had no accurate instruments for measuring

time, and that a difference of about fourteen minutes between sunrise

and sunset on the shortest winter day would make all the difference

between Boston and Halifax, we see how idle it is to look for the

requisite precision in narratives of this sort, and to treat them as one

would treat the reports of a modern scientific exploring expedition.

[Footnote 183: The year seems to have been that in which

Christianity was definitely established by law in Iceland,

viz., A. D. 1000. The chronicle _Thattr Eireks Raudha_ is

careful about verifying its dates by checking one against

another. See Rafn, p. 15. The most masterly work on the

conversion of the Scandinavian people is Maurer's _Die

Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthume_, Munich,

1855; for an account of the missionary work in Iceland and

Greenland, see vol. i. pp. 191-242, 443-452.]

[Footnote 184: The name means "Turk," and has served as a

touchstone for the dullness of commentators. To the Northmen a

"Southman" would naturally be a German, and why should a German

be called a Turk? or how should these Northmen happen to have

had a Turk in their company? Mr. Laing suggests that he may

have been a Magyar. Yes; or he may have visited the Eastern

Empire and taken part in a fight _against_ Turks, and so have

got a soubriquet, just as Thorhall Gamlason, after returning

from Vinland to Iceland, was ever afterward known as "the

Vinlander." That did not mean that he was an American redskin.

See below, p. 203. From Tyrker's grimaces one commentator

sagely infers that he had been eating grapes and got drunk; and

another (even Mr. Laing!) thinks it necessary to remind us that

all the grape-juice in Vinland would not fuddle a man unless it

had been fermented,--and then goes on to ascribe the absurdity

to our innocent chronicle, instead of the stupid annotator. See

_Heimskringla_, vol. i. p. 168.]

[Sidenote: Voyages of Thorvald and Thorstein, 1002-05.]

In the spring of 1001 Leif returned to Greenland with a cargo of

timber.[185] The voyage made much talk. Leif's brother Thorvald caught

the inspiration,[186] and, borrowing Leif's ship, sailed in 1002, and

succeeded in finding Vinland and Leif's huts, where his men spent two

winters. In the intervening summer they went on an exploring expedition

along the coast, fell in with some savages in canoes, and got into a

fight in which Thorvald was killed by an arrow. In the spring of 1004

the ship returned to Brattahlid. Next year the third brother, Thorstein

Ericsson, set out in the same ship, with his wife Gudrid and a crew of

thirty-five men; but they were sore bestead with foul weather, got

nowhere, and accomplished nothing. Thorstein died on the voyage, and his

widow returned to Greenland.

[Footnote 185: On the homeward voyage he rescued some

shipwrecked sailors near the coast of Greenland, and was

thenceforward called Leif the Lucky (et postea cognominatus est

Leivus Fortunatus). The pleasant reports from the newly found

country gave it the name of "Vinland the Good." In the course

of the winter following Leif's return his father died.]

[Footnote 186: "Jam crebri de Leivi in Vinlandiam profectione

sermones serebantur, Thorvaldus vero, frater ejus, nimis pauca

terræ loca explorata fuisse judicavit." Rafn, p. 39.]

[Sidenote: Thorfinn Karlsefni, and his unsuccessful attempt to found a

colony in Vinland, 1007-10.]

In the course of the next summer, 1006, there came to Brattahlid from

Iceland a notable personage, a man of craft and resource, wealthy withal

and well born, with the blood of many kinglets or jarls flowing in his

veins. This man, Thorfinn Karlsefni, straightway fell in love with the

young and beautiful widow Gudrid, and in the course of the winter there

was a merry wedding at Brattahlid. Persuaded by his adventurous bride,

whose spirit had been roused by the reports from Vinland and by her

former unsuccessful attempt to find it, Thorfinn now undertook to visit

that country in force sufficient for founding a colony there.

Accordingly in the spring of 1007 he started with three or four

ships,[187] carrying one hundred and sixty men, several women, and quite

a cargo of cattle. In the course of that year his son Snorro was born in

Vinland,[188] and our chronicle tells us that this child was three years

old before the disappointed company turned their backs upon that land of

promise and were fain to make their way homeward to the fiords of

Greenland. It was the hostility of the natives that compelled Thorfinn

to abandon his enterprise. At first they traded with him, bartering

valuable furs for little strips of scarlet cloth which they sought most

eagerly; and they were as terribly frightened by his cattle as the

Aztecs were in later days by the Spanish horses.[189] The chance

bellowing of a bull sent them squalling to the woods, and they did not

show themselves again for three weeks. After a while quarrels arose, the

natives attacked in great numbers, many Northmen were killed, and in

1010 the survivors returned to Greenland with a cargo of timber and

peltries. On the way thither the ships seem to have separated, and one

of them, commanded by Bjarni Grimolfsson, found itself bored by worms

(the _teredo_) and sank, with its commander and half the crew.[190]

[Footnote 187: Three is the number usually given, but at least

four of their ships would be needed for so large a company; and

besides Thorfinn himself, three other captains are

mentioned,--Snorro Thorbrandsson, Bjarni Grimolfsson, and

Thorhall Gamlason. The narrative gives a picturesque account of

this Thorhall, who was a pagan and fond of deriding his

comrades for their belief in the new-fangled Christian notions.

He seems to have left his comrades and returned to Europe

before they had abandoned their enterprise. A further reference

to him will be made below, p. 203.]

[Footnote 188: To this boy Snorro many eminent men have traced

their ancestry,--bishops, university professors, governors of

Iceland, and ministers of state in Norway and Denmark. The

learned antiquarian Finn Magnusson and the celebrated sculptor

Thorwaldsen regarded themselves as thus descended from Thorfinn

Karlsefni.]

[Footnote 189: Compare the alarm of the Wampanoag Indians in

1603 at the sight of Martin Pring's mastiff. Winsor, _Narr. and

Crit. Hist._, iii. 174.]

[Footnote 190: The fate of Bjarni was pathetic and noble. It

was decided that as many as possible should save themselves in

the stern boat. "Then Bjarni ordered that the men should go in

the boat by lot, and not according to rank. As it would not

hold all, they accepted the saying, and when the lots were

drawn, the men went out of the ship into the boat. The lot was

that Bjarni should go down from the ship to the boat with one

half of the men. Then those to whom the lot fell went down from

the ship to the boat. When they had come into the boat, a young

Icelander, who was the companion of Bjarni, said: 'Now thus do

you intend to leave me, Bjarni?' Bjarni replied, 'That now

seems necessary.' He replied with these words: 'Thou art not

true to the promise made when I left my father's house in

Iceland.' Bjarni replied: 'In this thing I do not see any other

way'; continuing, 'What course can you suggest?' He said: 'I

see this, that we change places and thou come up here and I go

down there.' Bjarni replied: 'Let it be so, since I see that

you are so anxious to live, and are frightened by the prospect

of death.' Then they changed places, and he descended into the

boat with the men, and Bjarni went up into the ship. It is

related that Bjarni and the sailors with him in the ship

perished in the worm sea. Those who went in the boat went on

their course until they came to land, where they told all these

things." De Costa's version from _Saga Thorfinns Karlsefnis_,

Rafn, pp. 184-186.]

[Sidenote: Freydis, and her evil deeds in Vinland, 1011-12.]

Among Karlsefni's companions on this memorable expedition was one

Thorvard, with his wife Freydis, a natural daughter of Eric the Red.

About the time of their return to Greenland in the summer of 1010, a

ship arrived from Norway, commanded by two brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi.

During the winter a new expedition was planned, and in the summer of

1011 two ships set sail for Vinland, one with Freydis, Thorvard, and a

crew of 30 men, the other with Helgi and Finnbogi, and a crew of 35 men.

There were also a number of women. The purpose was not to found a colony

but to cut timber. The brothers arrived first at Leif's huts and had

begun carrying in their provisions and tools, when Freydis, arriving

soon afterward, ordered them off the premises. They had no right, she

said, to occupy her brother's houses. So they went out and built other

huts for their party a little farther from the shore. Before their

business was accomplished "winter set in, and the brothers proposed to

have some games for amusement to pass the time. So it was done for a

time, till discord came among them, and the games were given up, and

none went from one house to the other; and things went on so during a

great part of the winter." At length came the catastrophe. Freydis one

night complained to her husband that the brothers had given her evil

words and struck her, and insisted that he should forthwith avenge the

affront. Presently Thorvard, unable to bear her taunts, was aroused to a

deed of blood. With his followers he made a night attack upon the huts

of Helgi and Finnbogi, seized and bound all the occupants, and killed

the men one after another in cold blood. Five women were left whom

Thorvard would have spared; as none of his men would raise a hand

against them, Freydis herself took an axe and brained them one and all.

In the spring of 1012 the party sailed for Brattahlid in the ship of

the murdered brothers, which was the larger and better of the two.

Freydis pretended that they had exchanged ships and left the other party

in Vinland. With gifts to her men, and dire threats for any who should

dare tell what had been done, she hoped to keep them silent. Words were

let drop, however, which came to Leif's ears, and led him to arrest

three of the men and put them to the torture until they told the whole

story. "'I have not the heart,' said Leif, 'to treat my wicked sister as

she deserves; but this I will foretell them [Freydis and Thorvard] that

their posterity will never thrive.' So it went that nobody thought

anything of them save evil from that time."

[Sidenote: The whole story is eminently probable.]

With this grewsome tale ends all account of Norse attempts at exploring

or colonizing Vinland, though references to Vinland by no means end

here.[191] Taking the narrative as a whole, it seems to me a sober,

straightforward, and eminently probable story. We may not be able to say

with confidence exactly where such places as Markland and Vinland were,

but it is clear that the coasts visited on these southerly and

southwesterly voyages from Brattahlid must have been parts of the coast

of North America, unless the whole story is to be dismissed as a figment

of somebody's imagination. But for a figment of the imagination, and of

European imagination withal, it has far too many points of

verisimilitude, as I shall presently show.

[Footnote 191: The stories of Gudleif Gudlaugsson and Ari

Marsson, with the fanciful speculations about "Hvitramannaland"

and "Irland it Mikla," do not seem worthy of notice in this

connection. They may be found in De Costa, _op. cit._ pp.

159-177; and see Reeves, _The Finding of Wineland the Good_,

chap. v.]

[Sidenote: Voyage into Baffin's Bay, 1135.]

In the first place, it is an extremely probable story from the time that

Eric once gets settled in Brattahlid. The founding of the Greenland

colony is the only strange or improbable part of the narrative, but that

is corroborated in so many other ways that we know it to be true; as

already observed, no fact in mediæval history is better established.

When I speak of the settlement of Greenland as strange, I do not mean

that there is anything strange in the Northmen's accomplishing the

voyage thither from Iceland. That island is nearer to Greenland than to

Norway, and we know, moreover, that Norse sailors achieved more

difficult things than penetrating the fiords of southern Greenland. Upon

the island of Kingitorsook in Baffin's Bay (72° 55' N., 56° 5' W.) near

Upernavik, in a region supposed to have been unvisited by man before the

modern age of Arctic exploration, there were found in 1824 some small

artificial mounds with an inscription upon stone:--"Erling Sighvatson

and Bjarni Thordharson and Eindrid Oddson raised these marks and cleared

ground on Saturday before Ascension Week, 1135." That is to say, they

took symbolic possession of the land.[192]

[Footnote 192: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 152.]

[Sidenote: A Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord, in Norway.]

In order to appreciate how such daring voyages were practicable, we must

bear in mind that the Viking "ships" were probably stronger and more

seaworthy, and certainly much swifter, than the Spanish vessels of the

time of Columbus. One was unearthed a few years ago at Sandefiord in

Norway, and may be seen at the museum in Christiania. Its pagan owner

had been buried in it, and his bones were found amidships, along with

the bones of a dog and a peacock, a few iron fish-hooks and other

articles. Bones of horses and dogs, probably sacrificed at the funeral

according to the ancient Norse custom, lay scattered about. This craft

has been so well described by Colonel Higginson,[193] that I may as well

quote the passage in full:--

[Footnote 193: See his _Larger History of the United States_,

pp. 32-34.]

[Sidenote: Description of the ship.]

She "was seventy-seven feet eleven inches at the greatest length, and

sixteen feet eleven inches at the greatest width, and from the top of

the keel to the gunwale amidships she was five feet nine inches deep.

She had twenty ribs, and would draw less than four feet of water. She

was clinker-built; that is, had plates slightly overlapped, like the

shingles on the side of a house. The planks and timbers of the frame

were fastened together with withes made of roots, but the oaken boards

of the side were united by iron rivets firmly clinched. The bow and

stern were similar in shape, and must have risen high out of water, but

were so broken that it was impossible to tell how they originally ended.

The keel was deep and made of thick oak beams, and there was no trace of

any metallic sheathing; but an iron anchor was found almost rusted to

pieces. There was no deck and the seats for rowers had been taken out.

The oars were twenty feet long, and the oar-holes, sixteen on each side,

had slits sloping towards the stern to allow the blades of the oars to

be put through from inside. The most peculiar thing about the ship was

the rudder, which was on the starboard or right side, this side being

originally called 'steerboard' from this circumstance. The rudder was

like a large oar, with long blade and short handle, and was attached,

not to the side of the boat, but to the end of a conical piece of wood

which projected almost a foot from the side of the vessel, and almost

two feet from the stern. This piece of wood was bored down its length,

and no doubt a rope passing through it secured the rudder to the ship's

side. It was steered by a tiller attached to the handle, and perhaps

also by a rope fastened to the blade. As a whole, this disinterred

vessel proved to be anything but the rude and primitive craft which

might have been expected; it was neatly built and well preserved,

constructed on what a sailor would call beautiful lines, and eminently

fitted for sea service. Many such vessels may be found depicted on the

celebrated Bayeux tapestry; and the peculiar position of the rudder

explains the treaty mentioned in the Heimskringla, giving to Norway all

lands lying west of Scotland between which and the mainland a vessel

could pass with her rudder shipped.... This was not one of the very

largest ships, for some of them had thirty oars on each side, and

vessels carrying from twenty to twenty-five were not uncommon. The

largest of these were called Dragons, and other sizes were known as

Serpents or Cranes. The ship itself was often so built as to represent

the name it bore: the dragon, for instance, was a long low vessel, with

the gilded head of a dragon at the bow, and the gilded tail at the

stern; the moving oars at the side might represent the legs of the

imaginary creature, the row of shining red and white shields that were

hung over the gunwale looked like the monster's scales, and the sails

striped with red and blue might suggest his wings. The ship preserved at

Christiania is described as having had but a single mast, set into a

block of wood so large that it is said no such block could now be cut in

Norway. Probably the sail was much like those still carried by large

open boats in that country,--a single square on a mast forty feet

long.[194] These masts have no standing rigging, and are taken down when

not in use; and this was probably the practice of the Vikings."

[Footnote 194: Perhaps it may have been a square-headed lug,

like those of the Deal galley-punts; see Leslie's _Old Sea

Wings, Ways, and Words, in the Days of Oak and Hemp_, London,

1890, p. 21.]

[Sidenote: The climate of Greenland.]

In such vessels, well stocked with food and weapons, the Northmen were

accustomed to spend many weeks together on the sea, now and then

touching land. In such vessels they made their way to Algiers and

Constantinople, to the White Sea, to Baffin's Bay. It is not, therefore,

their voyage to Greenland that seems strange, but it is their success in

founding a colony which could last for more than four centuries in that

inhospitable climate. The question is sometimes asked whether the

climate of Greenland may not have undergone some change within the last

thousand years.[195] If there has been any change, it must have been

very slight; such as, perhaps, a small variation in the flow of ocean

currents might occasion. I am inclined to believe that there may have

been such a change, from the testimony of Ivar Bardsen, steward of the

Gardar bishopric in the latter half of the fourteenth century, or about

halfway between the time of Eric the Red and our own time. According to

Bardsen there had long been a downward drifting of ice from the north

and a consequent accumulation of bergs and floes upon the eastern coast

of Greenland, insomuch that the customary route formerly followed by

ships coming from Iceland was no longer safe, and a more southerly route

had been generally adopted.[196] This slow southward extension of the

polar ice-sheet upon the east of Greenland seems still to be going on at

the present day.[197] It is therefore not at all improbable, but on the

contrary quite probable, that a thousand years ago the mean annual

temperature of the tip end of Greenland, at Cape Farewell, was a few

degrees higher than now.[198] But a slight difference of this sort

might have an important bearing upon the fortunes of a colony planted

there. For example, it would directly affect the extent of the hay crop.

Grass grows very well now in the neighbourhood of Julianeshaab. In

summer it is still a "green land," with good pasturage for cattle, but

there is difficulty in getting hay enough to last through the nine

months of winter. In 1855 "there were in Greenland 30 to 40 head of

horned cattle, about 100 goats, and 20 sheep;" but in the ancient

colony, with a population not exceeding 6,000 persons, "herds of cattle

were kept which even yielded produce for exportation to Europe."[199] So

strong a contrast seems to indicate a much more plentiful grass crop

than to-day, although some hay might perhaps have been imported from

Iceland in exchange for Greenland exports, which were chiefly whale oil,

eider-down, and skins of seals, foxes, and white bears.

[Footnote 195: Some people must have queer notions about the

lapse of past time. I have more than once had this question put

to me in such a way as to show that what the querist really had

in mind was some vague impression of the time when oaks and

chestnuts, vines and magnolias, grew luxuriantly over a great

part of Greenland! But that was in the Miocene period, probably

not less than a million years ago, and has no obvious bearing

upon the deeds of Eric the Red.]

[Footnote 196: Bardsen, _Descriptio Groenlandiæ_, appended to

Major's _Voyages of the Venetian Brothers_, etc., pp. 40, 41;

and see below, p. 242.]

[Footnote 197: Zahrtmann, _Journal of Royal Geographical

Society_, London, 1836, vol. v. p. 102. On this general subject

see J. D. Whitney, "The Climate Changes of Later Geological

Times," in _Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at

Harvard College_, Cambridge, 1882, vol. vii. According to

Professor Whitney there has also been a deterioration in the

climate of Iceland.]

[Footnote 198: One must not too hastily infer that the mean

temperature of points on the American coast south of Davis

strait would be affected in the same way. The relation between

the phenomena is not quite so simple. For example, a warm early

spring on the coast of Greenland increases the discharge of

icebergs from its fiords to wander down the Atlantic ocean; and

this increase of floating ice tends to chill and dampen the

summers at least as far South as Long Island, if not farther.]

[Footnote 199: Rink's _Danish Greenland_, pp. 27, 96, 97.]

[Sidenote: With the Northmen once in Greenland, the discovery of the

American continent was almost inevitable.]

[Sidenote: Voyages for timber.]

When once the Northmen had found their way to Cape Farewell, it would

have been marvellous if such active sailors could long have avoided

stumbling upon the continent of North America. Without compass or

astrolabe these daring men were accustomed to traverse long stretches of

open sea, trusting to the stars; and it needed only a stiff

northeasterly breeze, with persistent clouds and fog, to land a westward

bound "dragon" anywhere from Cape Race to Cape Cod. This is what appears

to have happened to Bjarni Herjulfsson in 986, and something quite like

it happened to Henry Hudson in 1609.[200] Curiosity is a motive quite

sufficient to explain Leif's making the easy summer voyage to find out

what sort of country Bjarni had seen. He found it thickly wooded, and as

there was a dearth of good timber both in Greenland and in Iceland, it

would naturally occur to Leif's friends that voyages for timber, to be

used at home and also to be exported to Iceland, might turn out to be

profitable.[201] As Laing says, "to go in quest of the wooded countries

to the southwest, from whence driftwood came to their shores, was a

reasonable, intelligible motive for making a voyage in search of the

lands from whence it came, and where this valuable material could be got

for nothing."[202]

[Footnote 200: See Read's _Historical Inquiry concerning Henry

Hudson_, Albany, 1866, p. 160.]

[Footnote 201: "Nú tekst umrædha at nýju um Vínlandsferdh,

thviat sú ferdh thikir bædhi gódh til fjár ok virdhíngar," i.

e. "Now they began to talk again about a voyage to Vinland, for

the voyage thither was both gainful and honourable." Rafn, p.

65.]

[Footnote 202: _Heimskringla_, i, 168.]

[Sidenote: Ear-marks of truth in the narrative.]

If now we look at the details of the story we shall find many ear-marks

of truth in it. We must not look for absolute accuracy in a narrative

which--as we have it--is not the work of Leif or Thorfinn or any of

their comrades, but of compilers or copyists, honest and careful as it

seems to me, but liable to misplace details and to call by wrong names

things which they had never seen. Starting with these modest

expectations we shall find the points of verisimilitude numerous. To

begin with the least significant, somewhere on our northeastern coast

the voyagers found many foxes.[203] These animals, to be sure, are found

in a great many countries, but the point for us is that in a southerly

and southwesterly course from Cape Farewell these sailors are said to

have found them. If our narrators had been drawing upon their

imaginations or dealing with semi-mythical materials, they would as

likely as not have lugged into the story elephants from Africa or

hippogriffs from Dreamland; mediæval writers were blissfully ignorant of

all canons of probability in such matters.[204] But our narrators simply

mention an animal which has for ages abounded on our northeastern

coasts. One such instance is enough to suggest that they were following

reports or documents which emanated ultimately from eye-witnesses and

told the plain truth. A dozen such instances, if not neutralized by

counter-instances, are enough to make this view extremely probable; and

then one or two instances which could not have originated in the

imagination of a European writer will suffice to prove it.

[Footnote 203: "Fjöldi var thar melrakka," i. e. "ibi vulpium

magnus numerus erat," Rafn, p. 138.]

[Footnote 204: It is extremely difficult for an impostor to

concoct a narrative without making blunders that can easily be

detected by a critical scholar. For example, the Book of

Mormon, in the passage cited (see above, p. 3), in supremely

blissful ignorance introduces oxen, sheep, and silk-worms, as

well as the knowledge of smelting iron, into pre-Columbian

America.]

Let us observe, then, that on coming to Markland they "slew a

bear;"[205] the river and lake (or bay) in Vinland abounded with salmon

bigger than Leif's people had ever seen;[206] on the coast they caught

halibut;[207] they came to an island where there were so many eider

ducks breeding that they could hardly avoid treading on their eggs;[208]

and, as already observed, it was because of the abundance of wild grapes

that Leif named the southernmost country he visited Vinland.

[Footnote 205: "Thar í drápu their einn björn," i. e. "in qua

ursum interfecerunt," id. p. 138.]

[Footnote 206: "Hvorki skorti thar lax í ánni nè í vatninu, ok

stærra lax enn their hefdhi fyrr sèdh," i. e. "ibi neque in

fluvio neque in lacu deerat salmonum copia, et quidem majoris

corporis quam antea vidissent," id. p. 32.]

[Footnote 207: "Helgir fiskar," i. e. "sacri pisces," id. p.

148. The Danish phrase is "helleflyndre," i. e. "holy

flounder." The English _halibut_ is _hali_ = _holy_ + _but_ =

_flounder_. This word _but_ is classed as Middle English, but

may still be heard in the north of England. The fish may have

been so called "from being eaten particularly on holy days"

(_Century Dict._ s.v.); or possibly from a pagan superstition

that water abounding in flat fishes is especially safe for

mariners (Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ ix. 70); or possibly from some

lost folk-tale about St. Peter (Maurer, _Isländische Volkssagen

der Gegenwart_, Leipsic, 1860, p. 195).]

[Footnote 208: "Svâ var mörg ædhr í eynni, at varla mátti gánga

fyri eggjum," i. e. "tantus in insula anatum mollissimarum

numerus erat, ut præ ovis transiri fere non posset," id. p.

141. Eider ducks breed on our northeastern coasts as far south

as Portland, and are sometimes in winter seen as far south as

Delaware. They also abound in Greenland and Iceland, and, as

Wilson observes, "their nests are crowded so close together

that a person can scarcely walk without treading on them....

The Icelanders have for ages known the value of eider down, and

have done an extensive business in it." See Wilson's _American

Ornithology_, vol. iii. p. 50.]

[Sidenote: Northern limit of the vine.]

From the profusion of grapes--such that the ship's stern boat is said on

one occasion to have been filled with them[209]--we get a clue, though

less decisive than could be wished, to the location of Vinland. The

extreme northern limit of the vine in Canada is 47°, the parallel which

cuts across the tops of Prince Edward and Cape Breton islands on the

map.[210] Near this northern limit, however, wild grapes are by no means

plenty; so that the coast upon which Leif wintered must apparently have

been south of Cape Breton. Dr. Storm, who holds that Vinland was on the

southern coast of Nova Scotia, has collected some interesting testimony

as to the growth of wild grapes in that region, but on the whole the

abundance of this fruit seems rather to point to the shores of

Massachusetts Bay.[211]

[Footnote 209:

{"Svâ er sagt at eptirbátr theirra var fylldr

af vinberjurn."}

{ So it-is-said that afterboat their was filled

of vine-berries.}

Rafn, p. 36.]

[Footnote 210: Storm, "Studies on the Vinland Voyages,"

_Mémoires de la société royale des antiquaires du Nord_,

Copenhagen, 1888, p. 351. The limit of the vine at this

latitude is some distance inland; near the shore the limit is a

little farther south, and in Newfoundland it does not grow at

all. Id. p. 308.]

[Footnote 211: The attempt of Dr. Kohl (_Maine Hist. Soc._, New

Series, vol. i.) to connect the voyage of Thorfinn with the

coast of Maine seems to be successfully refuted by De Costa,

_Northmen in Maine_, etc., Albany, 1870.]

[Sidenote: Length of the winter day.]

We may now observe that, while it is idle to attempt to determine

accurately the length of the winter day, as given in our chronicles,

nevertheless since that length attracted the attention of the voyagers,

as something remarkable, it may fairly be supposed to indicate a

latitude lower than they were accustomed to reach in their trading

voyages in Europe. Such a latitude as that of Dublin, which lies

opposite Labrador, would have presented no novelty to them, for voyages

of Icelanders to their kinsmen in Dublin, and in Rouen as well, were

common enough. Halifax lies about opposite Bordeaux, and Boston a little

south of opposite Cape Finisterre, in Spain, so that either of these

latitudes would satisfy the conditions of the case; either would show a

longer winter day than Rouen, which was about the southern limit of

ordinary trading voyages from Iceland. At all events, the length of day

indicates for Vinland a latitude south of Cape Breton.

[Sidenote: Indian corn.]

The next point to be observed is the mention of "self-sown

wheat-fields."[212] This is not only an important ear-mark of truth in

the narrative, but it helps us somewhat further in determining the

position of Vinland. The "self-sown" cereal, which these Icelanders

called "wheat," was in all probability what the English settlers six

hundred years afterward called "corn," in each case applying to a new

and nameless thing the most serviceable name at hand. In England "corn"

means either wheat, barley, rye, and oats collectively, or more

specifically wheat; in Scotland it generally means oats; in America it

means maize, the "Indian corn," the cereal peculiar to the western

hemisphere. The beautiful waving plant, with its exquisitely tasselled

ears, which was one of the first things to attract Champlain's

attention, could not have escaped the notice of such keen observers as

we are beginning to find Leif and Thorfinn to have been. A cereal like

this, requiring so little cultivation that without much latitude of

speech it might be described as growing wild, would be interesting to

Europeans visiting the American coast; but it would hardly occur to

European fancy to invent such a thing. The mention of it is therefore a

very significant ear-mark of the truth of the narrative. As regards the

position of Vinland, the presence of maize seems to indicate a somewhat

lower latitude than Nova Scotia. Maize requires intensely hot summers,

and even under the most careful European cultivation does not flourish

north of the Alps. In the sixteenth century its northern-most limit on

the American coast seems to have been at the mouth of the Kennebec

(44°), though farther inland it was found by Cartier at Hochelaga, on

the site of Montreal (45° 30'). A presumption is thus raised in favour

of the opinion that Vinland was not farther north than Massachusetts

Bay.[213]

[Footnote 212:

{"Sjálfsána hveitiakra" }

{ } Rafn, p. 147.

{ Self-sown wheat-acres }]

[Footnote 213: Dr. Storm makes perhaps too much of this

presumption. He treats it as decisive against his own opinion

that Vinland was the southern coast of Nova Scotia, and

accordingly he tries to prove that the self-sown corn was not

maize, but "wild rice" (_Zizania aquatica_). _Mémoires_, etc.,

p. 356. But his argument is weakened by excess of ingenuity.]

[Sidenote: Winter weather in Vinland.]

This presumption is supported by what is said about the climate of

Vinland, though it must be borne in mind that general statements about

climate are apt to be very loose and misleading. We are told that it

seemed to Leif's people that cattle would be able to pass the winter out

of doors there, for there was no frost and the grass was not much

withered.[214] On the other hand, Thorfinn's people found the winter

severe, and suffered from cold and hunger.[215] Taken in connection with

each other, these two statements would apply very well to-day to our

variable winters on the coast southward from Cape Ann. The winter of

1889-90 in Cambridge, for example, might very naturally have been

described by visitors from higher latitudes as a winter without frost

and with grass scarcely withered. Indeed, we might have described it so

ourselves. On Narragansett and Buzzard's bays such soft winter weather

is still more common; north of Cape Ann it is much less common. The

severe winter (_magna hiems_) is of course familiar enough anywhere

along the northeastern coast of America.

[Footnote 214: "Thar var svâ gódhr landskostr at thví er theim

sýndist, at thar mundi eingi fènadhr fódhr thurfa á vetrum;

thar kvomu eingi frost á vetrum, ok lítt rènudhu thar grös," i.

e. "tanta autem erat terræ bonitas, ut inde intelligere esset,

pecora hieme pabulo non indigere posse, nullis incidentibus

algoribus hiemalibus, et graminibus parum flaccescentibus."

Rafn, p. 32.]

[Footnote 215: "Thar voru their um vetrinn; ok gjördhist vetr

mikill, en ekki fyri unnit ok gjördhist íllt til matarins, ok

tókust af veidhirnar," i. e. "hic hiemarunt; cum vero magna

incideret hiems, nullumque provisum esset alimentum, cibus

coepit deficere capturaque cessabat," Id. p. 174.]

[Sidenote: Probable situation of Vinland.]

On the whole, we may say with some confidence that the place described

by our chroniclers as Vinland was situated somewhere between Point

Judith and Cape Breton; possibly we may narrow our limits and say that

it was somewhere between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. But the latter

conclusion is much less secure than the former. In such a case as this,

the more we narrow our limits the greater our liability to error.[216]

While by such narrowing, moreover, the question may acquire more

interest as a bone of contention among local antiquarians, its value for

the general historian is not increased.

[Footnote 216: A favourite method of determining the exact

spots visited by the Northmen has been to compare their

statements regarding the shape and trend of the coasts, their

bays, headlands, etc., with various well-known points on the

New England coast. It is a tempting method, but unfortunately

treacherous, because the same general description will often

apply well enough to several different places. It is like

summer boarders in the country struggling to tell one another

where they have been to drive,--past a school-house, down a

steep hill, through some woods, and by a saw-mill, etc.]

[Sidenote: "Savages" unknown to mediæval Europeans.]

[Sidenote: The natives of Vinland.]

But we have not yet done with the points of verisimilitude in our story.

We have now to cite two or three details that are far more striking than

any as yet mentioned,--details that could never have been conjured up by

the fancy of any mediæval European. We must bear in mind that "savages,"

whether true savages or people in the lower status of barbarism, were

practically unknown to Europeans before the fifteenth century. There

were no such people in Europe or in any part of Asia or Africa visited

by Europeans before the great voyages of the Portuguese. Mediæval

Europeans knew nothing whatever about people who would show surprise at

the sight of an iron tool[217] or frantic terror at the voice of a

bull, or who would eagerly trade off valuable property for worthless

trinkets. Their imagination might be up to inventing hobgoblins and

people with heads under their shoulders,[218] but it was not up to

inventing such simple touches of nature as these. Bearing this in mind,

let us observe that Thorfinn found the natives of Vinland eager to give

valuable furs[219] in exchange for little strips of scarlet cloth to

bind about their heads. When the Northmen found the cloth growing scarce

they cut it into extremely narrow strips, but the desire of the natives

was so great that they would still give a whole skin for the smallest

strip. They wanted also to buy weapons, but Thorfinn forbade his men to

sell them. One of the natives picked up an iron hatchet and cut wood

with it; one after another tried and admired it; at length one tried it

on a stone and broke its edge, and then they scornfully threw it

down.[220] One day while they were trading, Thorfinn's bull ran out

before them and bellowed, whereupon the whole company was instantly

scattered in headlong flight. After this, when threatened with an attack

by the natives, Thorfinn drew up his men for a fight and put the bull in

front, very much as Pyrrhus used elephants--at first with success--to

frighten the Romans and their horses.[221]

[Footnote 217: It is not meant that stone implements did not

continue to be used in some parts of Europe far into the Middle

Ages. But this was not because iron was not perfectly well

known, but because in many backward regions it was difficult to

obtain or to work, so that stone continued in use. As my

friend, Mr. T. S. Perry, reminds me, Helbig says that

stone-pointed spears were used by some of the English at the

battle of Hastings, and stone battle-axes by some of the Scots

under William Wallace at the end of the thirteenth century.

_Die Italiker in der Poebene_, Leipsic, 1879, p. 42. Helbig's

statement as to Hastings is confirmed by Freeman, _Norman

Conquest of England_, vol. iii. p. 473.]

[Footnote 218: My use of the word "inventing" is, in this

connection, a slip of the pen. Of course the tales of "men

whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," the Sciopedæ,

etc., as told by Sir John Mandeville, were not invented by the

mediæval imagination, but copied from ancient authors. They may

be found in Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, lib. vii., and were mentioned

before his time by Ktesias, as well as by Hecatæus, according

to Stephanus of Byzantium. Cf. Aristophanes, _Aves_, 1553;

Julius Solinus, _Polyhistor_, ed. Salmasius, cap. 240. Just as

these sheets are going to press there comes to me Mr. Perry's

acute and learned _History of Greek Literature_, New York,

1890, in which this subject is mentioned in connection with the

mendacious and medical Ktesias:--These stories have probably

acquired a literary currency "by exercise of the habit, not

unknown even to students of science, of indiscriminate copying

from one's predecessors, so that in reading Mandeville we have

the ghosts of the lies of Ktesias, almost sanctified by the

authority of Pliny, who quoted them and thereby made them a

part of mediæval folk-lore--and from folk-lore, probably, they

took their remote start" (p. 522).]

[Footnote 219: "En that var grávara ok safvali ok allskonar

skinnavara" (Rafn, p. 59),--i. e. gray fur and sable and all

sorts of skinwares; in another account, "skinnavöru ok algrá

skinn," which in the Danish version is "skindvarer og ægte

graaskind" (id. p. 150),--i. e. skinwares and genuine gray

furs. Cartier in Canada and the Puritans in Massachusetts were

not long in finding that the natives had good furs to sell.]

[Footnote 220: Rafn, p. 156.]

[Footnote 221: Much curious information respecting the use of

elephants in war may be found in the learned work of the

Chevalier Armandi, _Histoire militaire des éléphants_, Paris,

1843. As regards Thorfinn's bull, Mr. Laing makes the kind of

blunder that our British cousins are sometimes known to make

when they get the Rocky Mountains within sight of Bunker Hill

monument. "A continental people in that part of America," says

Mr. Laing, "could not be strangers to the much more formidable

bison." _Heimskringla_, p. 169. Bisons on the Atlantic coast,

Mr. Laing?! And then his comparison quite misses the point; a

bison, if the natives had been familiar with him, would not

have been at all formidable as compared to the bull which they

had never before seen. A horse is much less formidable than a

cougar, but Aztec warriors who did not mind a cougar were

paralyzed with terror at the sight of men on horseback. It is

the unknown that frightens in such cases. Thorfinn's natives

were probably familiar with such large animals as moose and

deer, but a deer isn't a bull.]

[Sidenote: Meaning of the epithet "Skrælings."]

These incidents are of surpassing interest, for they were attendant upon

the first meeting (in all probability) that ever took place between

civilized Europeans and any people below the upper status of

barbarism.[222] Who were these natives encountered by Thorfinn? The

Northmen called them "Skrælings," a name which one is at first sight

strongly tempted to derive from the Icelandic verb _skrækja_, identical

with the English _screech_. A crowd of excited Indians might most

appropriately be termed Screechers.[223] This derivation, however, is

not correct. The word _skræling_ survives in modern Norwegian, and means

a feeble or puny or _insignificant_ person. Dr. Storm's suggestion is in

all probability correct, that the name "Skrælings," as applied to the

natives of America, had no ethnological significance, but simply meant

"inferior people;" it gave concise expression to the white man's opinion

that they were "a bad lot." In Icelandic literature the name is usually

applied to the Eskimos, and hence it has been rashly inferred that

Thorfinn found Eskimos in Vinland. Such was Rafn's opinion, and since

his time the commentators have gone off upon a wrong trail and much

ingenuity has been wasted.[224] It would be well to remember, however,

that the Europeans of the eleventh century were not ethnologists; in

meeting these inferior peoples for the first time they were more likely

to be impressed with the broad fact of their inferiority than to be nice

in making distinctions. When we call both Australians and Fuegians

"savages," we do not assert identity or relationship between them; and

so when the Northmen called Eskimos and Indians by the same disparaging

epithet, they doubtless simply meant to call them savages.

[Footnote 222: The Phoenicians, however (who in this connection

may be classed with Europeans), must have met with some such

people in the course of their voyages upon the coasts of

Africa. I shall treat of this more fully below, p. 327.]

[Footnote 223: As for Indians, says Cieza de Leon, they are all

noisy (alharaquientos). _Segunda Parte de la Crónica del Peru_,

cap. xxiii.]

[Footnote 224: For example, Dr. De Costa refers to Dr. Abbott's

discoveries as indicating "that the Indian was preceded by a

people like the Eskimos, whose stone implements are found in

the Trenton gravel." _Pre-Columbian Discovery_, p. 132. Quite

so; but that was in the Glacial Period (!!), and when the edge

of the ice-sheet slowly retreated northward, the Eskimo, who is

emphatically an Arctic creature, doubtless retreated with it,

just as he retreated from Europe. See above, p. 18. There is

not the slightest reason for supposing that there were any

Eskimos south of Labrador so lately as nine hundred years ago.]

[Sidenote: Personal appearance of the Skrælings.]

Our chronicle describes the Skrælings of Vinland as swarthy in hue,

ferocious in aspect, with ugly hair, big eyes, and broad cheeks.[225]

This will do very well for Indians, except as to the eyes. We are

accustomed to think of Indian eyes as small; but in this connection it

is worthy of note that a very keen observer, Marc Lescarbot, in his

minute and elaborate description of the physical appearance of the

Micmacs of Acadia, speaks with some emphasis of their large eyes.[226]

Dr. Storm quite reasonably suggests that the Norse expression may refer

to the size not of the eye-ball, but of the eye-socket, which in the

Indian face is apt to be large; and very likely this is what the

Frenchman also had in mind.

[Footnote 225: "Their voru svartir menn ok illiligir, ok havdhu

íllt hár á höfdhi. Their voru mjök eygdhir ok breidhir í

kinnum," i. e. "Hi homines erant nigri, truculenti specie,

foedam in capite comam habentes, oculis magnis et genis latis."

Rafn, p. 149. The Icelandic _svartr_ is more precisely rendered

by the identical English _swarthy_ than by the Latin _niger_.]

[Footnote 226: "Mais quãt à noz Sauvages, pour ce qui regarde

les ïeux ilz ne les ont ni bleuz, ni verds, mais noirs pour la

pluspart, ainsi que les cheveux; & neantmoins ne sont petits,

cõme ceux des anciens Scythes, mais d'une grandeur bien

agréable." Lescarbot, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, Paris,

1612, tom. ii. p. 714.]

[Sidenote: The Skrælings of Vinland were Indians,--very likely

Algonquins.]

These Skrælings were clad in skins, and their weapons were bows and

arrows, slings, and stone hatchets. In the latter we may now, I think,

be allowed to recognize the familiar tomahawk; and when we read that, in

a sharp fight with the natives, Thorbrand, son of the commander Snorro,

was slain, and the woman Freydis afterward found his corpse in the

woods, with a flat stone sticking in the head, and his naked sword lying

on the ground beside him, we seem to see how it all happened.[227] We

seem to see the stealthy Indian suddenly dealing the death-blow, and

then obliged for his own safety to dart away among the trees without

recovering his tomahawk or seizing the sword. The Skrælings came up the

river or lake in a swarm of canoes, all yelling at the top of their

voices (_et illi omnes valde acutum ululabant_), and, leaping ashore,

began a formidable attack with slings and arrows. The narrative calls

these canoes "skin-boats" (_hudhkeipar_), whence it has been inferred

that the writer had in mind the _kayaks_ and _umiaks_ of the

Eskimos.[228] I suspect that the writer did have such boats in mind, and

accordingly used a word not strictly accurate. Very likely his

authorities failed to specify a distinction between bark-boats and

skin-boats, and simply used the handiest word for designating canoes as

contrasted with their own keeled boats.[229]

[Footnote 227: "Hún fann fyrir sèr mann daudhan, thar var

Thorbrandr Snorrason, ok stódh hellusteinn í höfdhi honum;

sverdhit lá bert í hjá honum," i. e. "Illa incidit in mortuum

hominem, Thorbrandum Snorrii filium, cujus capiti lapis planus

impactus stetit; nudus juxta eum gladius jacuit." Rafn, p.

154.]

[Footnote 228: These Eskimo skin-boats are described in Rink's

_Danish Greenland_, pp. 113, 179.]

[Footnote 229: Cf. Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 366, 367.]

One other point which must be noticed here in connection with the

Skrælings is a singular manoeuvre which they are said to have practised

in the course of the fight. They raised upon the end of a pole a big

ball, not unlike a sheep's paunch, and of a bluish colour; this ball

they swung from the pole over the heads of the white men, and it fell to

the ground with a horrid noise.[230] Now, according to Mr. Schoolcraft,

this was a mode of fighting formerly common among the Algonquins, in New

England and elsewhere. This big ball was what Mr. Schoolcraft calls the

"balista," or what the Indians themselves call the "demon's head." It

was a large round boulder, sewed up in a new skin and attached to a

pole. As the skin dried it enwrapped the stone tightly; and then it was

daubed with grotesque devices in various colours. "It was borne by

several warriors who acted as balisteers. Plunged upon a boat or canoe,

it was capable of sinking it. Brought down upon a group of men on a

sudden, it produced consternation and death."[231] This is a most

remarkable feature in the narrative, for it shows us the Icelandic

writer (here manifestly controlled by some authoritative source of

information) describing a very strange mode of fighting, which we know

to have been characteristic of the Algonquins. Karlsefni's men do not

seem to have relished this outlandish style of fighting; they retreated

along the river bank until they came to a favourable situation among

some rocks, where they made a stand and beat off their swarming

assailants. The latter, as soon as they found themselves losing many

warriors without gaining their point, suddenly turned and fled to their

canoes, and paddled away with astonishing celerity. Throughout the

account it seems to me perfectly clear that we are dealing with Indians.

[Footnote 230: "That sá their Karlsefni at Skrælíngar færdhu

upp á stöng knött stundar mykinn thví nær til at jafna sem

saudharvömb, ok helzt blán at lit, ok fleygdhu af stönginni upp

á landit yfir lidh theirra Karlsefnis, ok lèt illilega vidhr,

thar sem nidhr kom. Vidh thetta sló ótta myklum á Karlsefni ok

allt lidh hans, svâ at thá fýsti engis annars enn flýja, ok

halda undan upp medh ánni, thvíat theim thótti lidh Skrælínga

drífa at sèr allum megin, ok lètta eigi, fyrr enn their koma

til hamra nokkurra, ok veittu thar vidhrtöku hardha," i. e.

"Viderunt Karlsefniani quod Skrælingi longurio sustulerunt

globum ingentem, ventri ovillo haud absimilem, colore fere

cæruleo; hune ex longurio in terram super manum Karlsefnianorum

contorserunt, qui ut decidit, dirum sonuit. Hac re terrore

perculsus est Karlsefnius suique omnes, ut nihil aliud cuperent

quam fugere et gradum referre sursum secundum fluvium:

credebant enim se ab Skrælingis undique circumveniri. Hinc non

gradum stitere, priusquam ad rupes quasdam pervenissent, ubi

acriter resistebant." Rafn, p. 153.]

[Footnote 231: Schoolcraft, _Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge_,

Philadelphia, 1860, 6 vols. 4to, vol. i. p. 89; a figure of

this weapon is given in the same volume, plate xv. fig. 2, from

a careful description by Chingwauk, an Algonquin chief.]

[Sidenote: The uniped.]

The coexistence of so many unmistakable marks of truth in our narratives

may fairly be said to amount to a demonstration that they must be

derived, through some eminently trustworthy channel, from the statements

of intelligent eye-witnesses who took part in the events related. Here

and there, no doubt, we come upon some improbable incident or a touch of

superstition, such as we need not go back to the eleventh century to

find very common among seamen's narratives; but the remarkable thing in

the present case is that there are so few such features. One fabulous

creature is mentioned. Thorfinn and his men saw from their vessel a

glittering speck upon the shore at an opening in the woods. They hailed

it, whereupon the creature proceeded to perform the quite human act of

shooting an arrow, which killed the man at the helm. The narrator calls

it a "uniped," or some sort of one-footed goblin,[232] but that is

hardly reasonable, for after the shooting it went on to perform the

further quite human and eminently Indian-like act of running away.[233]

Evidently this discreet "uniped" was impressed with the desirableness of

living to fight another day. In a narrative otherwise characterized by

sobriety, such an instance of fancy, even supposing it to have come down

from the original sources, counts for as much or as little as Henry

Hudson's description of a mermaid.[234]

[Footnote 232: Rafn, p. 160; De Costa, p. 134; Storm, p. 330.]

[Footnote 233: Here the narrator seems determined to give us a

genuine smack of the marvellous, for when the fleeing uniped

comes to a place where his retreat seems cut off by an arm of

the sea, he runs (glides, or hops?) across the water without

sinking. In Vigfusson's version, however, the marvellous is

eliminated, and the creature simply runs over the stubble and

disappears. The incident is evidently an instance where the

narrative has been "embellished" by introducing a feature from

ancient classical writers. The "Monocoli," or one-legged

people, are mentioned by Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 2: "Item

hominum genus qui Monocoli vocarentur, singulis cruribus, miræ

pernicitatis ad saltum." Cf. Aulus Gellius, _Noctes Atticæ_,

viii. 4.]

[Footnote 234: Between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, June 15,

1608. For the description, with its droll details, see _Purchas

his Pilgrimes_, iii. 575.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Misleading associations with the word "saga."]

[Sidenote: Unfortunate comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon.]

[Sidenote: The story of the Trojan War, as we have it, is pure

folk-lore.]

It is now time for a few words upon the character of the records upon

which our story is based. And first, let us remark upon a possible

source of misapprehension due to the associations with which a certain

Norse word has been clothed. The old Norse narrative-writings are called

"sagas," a word which we are in the habit of using in English as

equivalent to legendary or semi-mythical narratives. To cite a "saga" as

authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as

inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale; and I cannot help suspecting that

to some such misleading association of ideas is due the particular form

of the opinion expressed some time ago by a committee of the

Massachusetts Historical Society,--"that there is the same sort of

reason for believing in the existence of Leif Ericsson that there is for

believing in the existence of Agamemnon. They are both traditions

accepted by later writers, and there is no more reason for regarding as

true the details related about the discoveries of the former than there

is for accepting as historic truth the narrative contained in the

Homeric poems." The report goes on to observe that "it is antecedently

probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part of the

eleventh century; and this discovery is confirmed by the same sort of

historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon

which our belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests."[235]

The second of these statements is characterized by critical moderation,

and expresses the inevitable and wholesome reaction against the rash

enthusiasm of Professor Rafn half a century ago, and the vagaries of

many an uninstructed or uncritical writer since his time. But the first

statement is singularly unfortunate. It would be difficult to find a

comparison more inappropriate than that between Agamemnon and Leif,

between the Iliad and the Saga of Eric the Red. The story of the Trojan

War and its heroes, as we have it in Homer and the Athenian dramatists,

is pure folk-lore as regards form, and chiefly folk-lore as regards

contents. It is in a high degree probable that this mass of folk-lore

surrounds a kernel of plain fact, that in times long before the first

Olympiad an actual "king of men" at Mycenæ conducted an expedition

against the great city by the Simois, that the Agamemnon of the poet

stands in some such relation toward this chieftain as that in which the

Charlemagne of mediæval romance stands toward the mighty Emperor of the

West.[236] Nevertheless the story, as we have it, is simply folk-lore.

If the Iliad and Odyssey contain faint reminiscences of actual events,

these events are so inextricably wrapped up with mythical phraseology

that by no cunning of the scholar can they be construed into history.

The motives and capabilities of the actors and the conditions under

which they accomplish their destinies are such as exist only in

fairy-tales. Their world is as remote from that in which we live as the

world of Sindbad and Camaralzaman; and this is not essentially altered

by the fact that Homer introduces us to definite localities and familiar

customs as often as the Irish legends of Finn M'Cumhail.[237]

[Footnote 235: _Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc._, December, 1887.]

[Footnote 236: I used this argument twenty years ago in

qualification of the over-zealous solarizing views of Sir G. W.

Cox and others. See my _Myths and Mythmakers_, pp. 191-202; and

cf. Freeman on "The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early

English History," in his _Historical Essays_, i. 1-39.]

[Footnote 237: Curtin, _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, pp.

12, 204, 303; Kennedy, _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts_,

pp. 203-311.]

[Sidenote: The Saga of Eric the Red is not folk-lore.]

It would be hard to find anything more unlike such writings than the

class of Icelandic sagas to which that of Eric the Red belongs. Here we

have quiet and sober narrative, not in the least like a fairy-tale, but

often much like a ship's log. Whatever such narrative may be, it is not

folk-lore. In act and motive, in its conditions and laws, its world is

the every-day world in which we live. If now and then a "uniped" happens

to stray into it, the incongruity is as conspicuous as in the case of

Hudson's mermaid, or a ghost in a modern country inn; whereas in the

Homeric fabric the supernatural is warp and woof. To assert a likeness

between two kinds of literature so utterly different is to go very far

astray.

[Sidenote: Mythical and historical sagas.]

As already observed, I suspect that misleading associations with the

word "saga" may have exerted an unconscious influence in producing this

particular kind of blunder,--for it is nothing less than a blunder.

Resemblance is tacitly assumed between the Iliad and an Icelandic saga.

Well, between the Iliad and _some_ Icelandic sagas there is a real and

strong resemblance. In truth these sagas are divisible into two well

marked and sharply contrasted classes. In the one class belong the Eddic

Lays, and the _mythical sagas_, such as the Volsunga, the stories of

Ragnar, Frithiof, and others; and along with these, though totally

different in source, we may for our present purpose group the _romantic

sagas_, such as Parceval, Remund, Karlamagnus, and others brought from

southern Europe. These are alike in being composed of legendary and

mythical materials; they belong essentially to the literature of

folk-lore. In the other class come the _historical sagas_, such as those

of Njal and Egil, the Sturlunga, and many others, with the numerous

biographies and annals.[238] These writings give us history, and often

very good history indeed. "Saga" meant simply any kind of literature in

narrative form; the good people of Iceland did not happen to have such a

handy word as "history," which they could keep entire when they meant it

in sober earnest and chop down into "story" when they meant it

otherwise. It is very much as if we were to apply the same word to the

Arthur legends and to William of Malmesbury's judicious and accurate

chronicles, and call them alike "stories."

[Footnote 238: Nowhere can you find a more masterly critical

account of Icelandic literature than in Vigfusson's

"Prolegomena" to his edition of _Sturlunga Saga_, Oxford, 1878,

vol. i. pp. ix.-ccxiv. There is a good but very brief account

in Horn's _History of the Literature of the Scandinavian

North_, transl. by R. B. Anderson, Chicago, 1884, pp. 50-70.]

[Sidenote: The western or Hauks-bók version of Eric the Red's Saga.]

The narrative upon which our account of the Vinland voyages is chiefly

based belongs to the class of historical sagas. It is the Saga of Eric

the Red, and it exists in two different versions, of which one seems to

have been made in the north, the other in the west, of Iceland. The

western version is the earlier and in some respects the better. It is

found in two vellums, that of the great collection known as _Hauks-bók_

(AM. 544), and that which is simply known as AM. 557 from its catalogue

number in Arni Magnusson's collection. Of these the former, which is the

best preserved, was written in a beautiful hand by Hauk Erlendsson,

between 1305 and 1334, the year of his death. This western version is

the one which has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of

Thorfinn Karlsefni." It is the one to which I have most frequently

referred in the present chapter.[239]

[Footnote 239: It is printed in Rafn, pp. 84-187, and in

_Grönlands historiske Mindesmærker_, i. 352-443. The most

essential part of it may now be found, under its own name, in

Vigfusson's _Icelandic Prose Reader_, pp. 123-140.]

[Sidenote: The northern or Flateyar-bók version.]

The northern version is that which was made about the year 1387 by the

priest Jón Thórdharson, and contained in the famous compilation known as

the _Flateyar-bók_, or "Flat Island Book."[240] This priest was editing

the saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson, which is contained in that

compilation, and inasmuch as Leif Ericsson's presence at King Olaf's

court was connected both with the introduction of Christianity into

Greenland and with the discovery of Vinland, Jón paused, after the

manner of mediæval chroniclers, and inserted then and there what he knew

about Eric and Leif and Thorfinn. In doing this, he used parts of the

original saga of Eric the Red (as we find it reproduced in the western

version), and added thereunto a considerable amount of material

concerning the Vinland voyages derived from other sources. Jón's version

thus made has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of Eric the

Red."[241]

[Footnote 240: It belonged to a man who lived on Flat Island,

in one of the Iceland fiords.]

[Footnote 241: It is printed in Rafn, pp. 1-76, under the title

"Thættir af Eireki Rauda ok Grænlendíngum." For a critical

account of these versions, see Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 319-325; I

do not, in all respects, follow him in his depreciation of the

Flateyar-bók version.]

[Sidenote: Presumption against sources not contemporary.]