THE NORTHMEN IN AMERICA.
To complete the account of the Northmen who dwelt upon the banks of
Ericsfiord, it is necessary to trace some of their voyages to the
West.
Lief, the son of Eric, was a man of restless disposition. Not content
with Greenland, he had visited Europe, and had there studied in the
very practical school which the Northmen took good care always to
have in operation—the art of war. Dissatisfied with paganism, he
accepted the Christian faith, as we have seen, and carried it to his
own country. Afterwards, wearied with the enforced monotony of his
life at Ericsfiord, he determined to discover new lands for himself,
as his father had done before him, and also, like his father, he
sought them in the West. He set sail in the year 1001, soon after
his return from Norway. Crossing what we now call Davis’s Strait, he
first sighted Labrador. Not liking the looks of it, any more than
his father had liked the first sight he had of the east coast of
Greenland, he sailed south until he came to Newfoundland, where he
landed. Thence he proceeded on his voyage, discovering Nova Scotia;
and finally he arrived at a place which he called Wonderstrand, where
he wintered. This was probably the peninsula now called Cape Cod, in
Massachusetts. Thence he returned to Brattahlid, in Ericsfiord, and
ever afterwards bore the name of Lief the Lucky.
His brother Thorwald followed after him the next year, and the
new land was called Vinland (_Vinland hin goda_), from the great
quantities of wild grapes they found there, and of which they made
wine. Thorwald was set upon and killed by savages, whom they called
Skraellings, from their diminutive stature.
A third brother, Thorstein, went in search of Thorwald’s body the
next year, and died without finding it. Then, after this further
disaster, Lief, who had now succeeded Red Eric, his father, in the
government of the colonies of Ericsfiord, resolved no longer to
pursue the enterprise. No settlement had been made, and no profit
had yet accrued to the daring men who had undertaken it. The natives
were very numerous and hostile, and the people could only live in a
fortified camp.
Nothing more would, in all probability, have been attempted, had not
a rich Iceland merchant come to Brattahlid, named Thorfin Karlsefne,
and surnamed the Hopeful. This was in 1006. While at Brattahlid, he
was the guest of Lief, with whom he spent the winter. There was much
feasting, especially at Yule-time, and some love-making besides,
for Thorfin married Gudrid, widow of Thorstein, before spring came.
They spoke much about Vinland, and finally they resolved on a voyage
thither. Accordingly they got together a company of one hundred and
sixty, of whom five were women, Gudrid being one. “Then,” according
to the saga, “they made an agreement with Karlsefne that each should
have equal share they made of gain. They had with them all kinds of
cattle, intending to settle in Vinland.”
They sailed on their voyage in the spring, and came to Wonderstrand,
where Lief had erected houses. These they found; but not liking the
place, they proceeded to Mount Hope Bay, in Rhode Island. But the
natives came out of the woods, and troubled them so much that they
had no peace. Finally a great battle was fought, in which many of
the natives were killed, as were also several of the whites. Some
of the latter fell into the hands of their enemies, and were called
before a council of the tribe, as they supposed, to hear the judgment
of death pronounced upon them. To their great surprise, they found
the council presided over by a man as white as themselves, and who
addressed them in their own language. He wore a long beard, which
was very gray, but in other respects he was dressed like the others.
Through the instrumentality of this man, who appeared to be their
chief, the whites were liberated on condition of their leaving the
country, which they did, after having lived there three years.
This proved to be a most unfortunate speculation for the rich Iceland
merchant. Its only value to him was, that his wife, while there, bore
him a son, whom he called Snorre, and from whom was descended a line
of men famous in Iceland history.
This strange man whom they found at the head of the Skraellings
proved to be Biorn Asbrandson, a native of Bredifiord, in Iceland,
and who had once been a famous viking, or sea-rover, and had drifted
to America, no one knew how. Doubtless it was even before Lief’s
time. He had left Iceland, and was never heard of until Karlsefne
returned, when, from certain articles which this chief of the savages
gave him, with directions how to dispose of them, and from a message
which was to be delivered to Biorn’s former sweetheart, the identity
was established. The man himself would give no explanation of who he
was, or how he came there. Biorn was therefore probably the first
white man to land on the shores of America, if we may except some
Irish monks and others whose adventurous enterprises originated the
idea of a “white man’s land” far away across the sea.
Humboldt, in his Cosmos, basing his observations on Rafn’s
“_Antiquitates Americanæ_,” declares that Biorn undertook the
voyage to the southward from Greenland in 986, the year following
Eric’s colonization of Ericsfiord. There is, however, a discrepancy
between his statement and those of others concerning the course of
Lief, “who,” as Humboldt says, “first saw land one degree south of
Boston, at the island of Nantucket, then Nova Scotia, and lastly
Newfoundland, which was subsequently called Libla Helluland, but
never ‘Vinland.’ The gulf which divides Newfoundland from the mouth
of the great river St. Lawrence was called by the Northmen, who had
settled in Iceland and Greenland, Markland’s Gulf.” Nova Scotia was
called Markland.
The Eric family did not, however, altogether abandon the idea of
reaping some profit from America, even with the death of Thorstein,
for a sister named Freydis went to Vinland in 1011, and for some time
lived in the same place where her brothers had lived before. More
unfortunate than their predecessors, they fell not only to fighting
the natives, but each other, being instigated thereto by Freydis, who
caused a great number of the party to be treacherously murdered in
order that she might get control and reap all the profit; yet no good
came of it after all.
Other expeditions followed some years later; but, so far as we know,
there were no actual settlements made by these Northmen in America.
Yet Bishop Eric went to Vinland in 1121, during his Greenland mission
(which would make it appear as if people were there to visit), in his
ministerial capacity. Occasional voyages were, however, made to the
country, at least as far as Nova Scotia. As late as 1347, we have
written accounts of Greenlanders going from Ericsfiord to Markland to
cut timber.
It will be seen by the foregoing that history presents quite a
number of candidates for being the first discoverers of America.
Who knows what influence these adventurous voyages of the Northmen
may have had upon the discovery of America by Columbus? That great
navigator is stated to have visited Iceland in 1477; and may he not
then have heard of this land of the grape and vine to the westward?
and may not the tales of the Icelanders have encouraged his western
aspirations, which are said to have originated as far back as 1470?
This supposition would not, however, detract from the great merit
of Columbus; for the idea of crossing the Atlantic, and of reaching
Asia by the west, was not original with Columbus, nor even with
his generation. The glory was not in the conception, but in the
execution. It has been said that the name America is “a monument of
man’s ingratitude;” but this is hardly true, since the name Columbus
gave to his own discoveries was, as we all know, West Indies, in the
full belief that he was within reach of the rich treasures of the
Orient; and even after Columbus’s death, and after the conquests
of Cortez, Mexico was marked down upon the maps of the period as a
part of China, and, indeed, the capital city of the Montezumas was
shown to be only a few days’ journey _overland_ from the mouths of
the Ganges. It was not until Balboa had waded into the waters of the
Pacific Ocean, and had thus taken possession of the newly-discovered
sea, that the idea of a new world, or new continent, having been
discovered began to enter into the minds of men. The belief of
Marco Polo, who looked out over the ocean eastward from China, and
the belief of the ambitious Genoese navigator, who looked westward
from the shores of Spain, was the same, and it was shared by every
body: this belief being that the Atlantic Ocean extended from Asia
to Europe; and what we now call America was nowhere at all in their
imaginations.