WINELAND THE GOOD, THE FORTUNATE ISLES, AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
[Sidenote: The oldest authorities on Wineland]
Icelandic literature contains many remarkable statements about countries
to the south-west or south of the Greenland settlements. They are called:
"Helluland" (i.e., slate- or stone-land), "Markland" (i.e., wood-land),
"Furðustrandir" (i.e., marvel-strands), and "Vínland" (also written
"Vindland" or "Vinland"). Yet another, which lay to the west of Ireland,
was called "Hvítramanna-land" (i.e., the white men's land). Even if
certain of these countries are legendary, as will presently be shown, it
must be regarded as a fact that in any case the Greenlanders and
Icelanders reached some of them, which lay on the north-eastern coast of
America; and they thus discovered the continent of North America, besides
Greenland, about five hundred years before Cabot (and Columbus).
While Helluland, Markland and Furðustrandir are first mentioned in
authorities of the thirteenth century, "Vinland" occurs already in Adam of
Bremen, about 1070 (see above, pp. 195 ff.). Afterwards the name occurs in
Icelandic literature: first in Are Frode's "Islendingabók," about 1130,
where we are only told that in Greenland traces were found of the same
kind of people as "inhabited Wineland" ("Vínland hefer bygt"; see above,
p. 260); it is next mentioned together with Hvítramanna-land in the
"Landnámabók," where it may have been taken from Are Frode, as the
latter's uncle, Thorkel Gellisson, is given as the authority. It has been
thought that the original statement was contained in a lost work of Are's;
in any case it must belong to the period before his death in 1148. We are
only told that Hvítramanna-land lay to the west in the ocean near
Vin(d)land; but the passage is important, because, as will be discussed
later, it clearly shows that the statements about Wineland in the oldest
Icelandic authorities were derived from Ireland. The next mention of
Wineland is in "Kristni-saga" (before 1245) and "Heimskringla," where it
is only said that Leif the Lucky found Wineland the Good. It should be
remarked that while thus in the oldest authorities Wineland is only
mentioned casually and in passing, it is not until we come to the Saga of
Eric the Red, of the thirteenth century, and the Flateyjarbók's
"Grönlendinga-þáttr," of the fourteenth, that we find any description of
the country, and of voyages to it and to Helluland and Markland. But two
verses, reproduced in the first of these sagas, are certainly considerably
older than the saga itself; and they speak of the country where there was
wine to drink instead of water, and of Furðustrandir where they boil
whales' flesh.
It may be added that in the "Eyrbyggja-saga" (of about 1250) it is
said that "Snorre went with Karlsevne to Wineland the Good, and when
they fought with the Skrælings there in Wineland, Snorre's son
Thorbrand fell in the fight." In the "Grettis-saga" (about 1290),
Thorhall Gamlason, one of those who took part in this expedition, is
called "Vindlendingr" or "Viðlendingr" (which should doubtless be
"Vinlendingr" in each case). If we add to this that in the Icelandic
geography which is known from various MSS. of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, but which is attributed in part (although hardly
the section about Greenland, Wineland, etc.) to Abbot Nikulás Bergsson
of Thverá (ob. 1159), Helluland, Markland and Vinland are mentioned as
lying to the south of Greenland (see later), then we shall have given
all the certain ancient authorities in which Wineland occurs [cf. G.
Storm, 1887, pp. 10 ff.]; but possibly the runic stone from Ringerike
is to be added (see later).
[Sidenote: The formation of the saga]
Before I recapitulate the most important features of these voyages, as
they are described more particularly in the Saga of Eric the Red, I must
premise that I look upon the narratives somewhat in the light of
historical romances, founded upon legend and more or less uncertain
traditions. Gustav Storm in his critical review of the Wineland voyages
[1887] has separated the older authorities, which he regarded as
altogether trustworthy, from the later narratives in the Flateyjarbók's
"Grönlendinga-þáttr," which he thought were to be rejected. The last-named
was written about 1387, while Eric the Red's Saga, which we are to regard
as trustworthy, must according to Storm have been written between 1270 and
1300.[292] The accounts of the discovery of Wineland and of the voyages
thither are very conflicting in these two authorities; while the latter
has only two voyages (after the discovery), the former has divided them
into five; while one mentions Leif Ericson as the discoverer of the
country, the other gives Bjarne Herjulfsson, and so on. We are led to ask
whether it is reasonable to suppose that the traditions should have been
handed down by word of mouth in such a remarkably unaltered and
uncorrupted state during the first 250 or 300 years, when they have been
transformed and confused to such an extent scarcely a hundred years later.
This must rather prove that there was no fixed tradition, but that the
tales became split up into more and more varying forms. Perhaps it will be
answered that the Saga of Eric the Red was composed in the golden age of
saga-writing, whereas the Flateyjarbók belongs to the period of
decline.[293] But it cannot be psychologically probable that human nature
in Iceland should suddenly have undergone so great a change, that while
the saga-tellers of the fourteenth century were disposed to invent
romances, they should not have had any tendency thereto throughout the
three preceding centuries. It is particularly natural that many
alterations and additions should be made when, as here, the narratives are
concerned with distant waters which lay so far out of the ordinary course
of voyages, and which for a long time had ceased to be known in Iceland
when the sagas were put into writing. Features belonging to the
description of other quarters of the globe were also inserted. Tales which
in this way live in oral tradition and gradually develop into sagas,
without any written word to support them, and to some extent even without
any known localities to which they can be attached, are to be regarded as
living organisms dependent on accidental influence, which absorb into
themselves any suitable material as they may find it; a resemblance of
name between persons may thus contribute, or a similarity of situations,
or events which bear the same foreign stamp. The narratives of the
Wineland voyages exhibit, as we shall see, sure traces of influences of
this kind.
[Sidenote: Leif Ericson]
In the year 999, according to the saga, Leif, the son of Eric the Red,
sailed from Greenland to Norway. This is the first time we hear of so long
a sea-voyage being attempted,[294] and it shows in any case that this long
passage was not unknown to the Icelanders and Norwegians. Formerly the
passage to Greenland had been by way of Iceland, thence to the east coast
of Greenland, southwards along the coast, and round Hvarf. But capable
seamen like the intrepid Leif thought they could avoid so many changes of
course and arrive in Norway by sailing due east from the southern point of
Greenland. Thereby Leif Ericson becomes the personification of the first
ocean-voyager in history, who deliberately and with a settled plan steered
straight across the open Atlantic, without seeking to avail himself of
harbours on the way. It also appears clearly enough from the sailing
directions for navigation of northern waters, which have come down to us,
that voyages were made across the ocean direct from Norway to Greenland.
It must be remembered that the compass was unknown, and that all the ships
of that time were without fixed decks. This was an exploit equal to the
greatest in history; it is the beginning of ocean voyages.
[Illustration: From an Icelandic MS. (Jónsbók), sixteenth century]
Leif's plan of reaching Norway direct was not wholly successful according
to the saga; he was driven out of his course to the Hebrides. They stayed
there till late in the summer, waiting for a fair wind. Leif there fell in
love with a woman of high lineage, Thorgunna. When he sailed she begged to
be allowed to go with him; but Leif answered that he would not carry off a
woman of her lineage in a strange country, when he had so few men with
him. It was of no avail that she told him she was with child, and the
child was his. He gave her a gold ring, a Greenland mantle of frieze, and
a belt of walrus ivory, and sailed away from the Hebrides with his men and
arrived in Norway in the autumn (999). Leif became Olaf Tryggvason's man,
and spent the winter at Nidaros. He adopted Christianity and promised the
king to try to introduce the faith into Greenland. For this purpose he was
given a priest when he sailed. In the spring, as soon as he was ready, he
set out again to sail straight across the Atlantic to Greenland. It has
undoubtedly been thought that he chose the course between the Faroes (61°
50' N. lat.) and Shetland (60° 50' N. lat.) to reach Cape Farewell, and
afterwards this became the usual course for the voyage from Norway to
Greenland. But he was driven out of his course, and
"for a long time drifted about in the sea, and came upon countries of
which before he had no suspicion. There were self-sown wheat-fields,
and vines grew there; there were also the trees that are called
'masur' ('mǫsurr'),[295] and of all these they had some specimens
(some trees so large that they were laid in houses" [i.e., used as
house-beams]).
This land was "Vínland hit Góða." As it was assumed that the wild vine
(Vitis vulpina) grew in America as far north as 45° N. lat. and along the
east coast, the historians have thought to find in this a proof that Leif
Ericson must have been on the coast of America south of this latitude;
but, as we shall see later, these features--the self-sown wheat-fields,
the vines and the lofty trees--are probably borrowed from elsewhere.
"On his homeward voyage Leif found some men on a wreck, and took them
home with him and gave them all shelter for the winter. He showed so
much nobility and goodness, he introduced Christianity into the
country, and he rescued the men; he was then called 'Leifr hinn
Heppni' [the Lucky]. Leif came to land in Eric's fjord, and went home
to Brattalid; there they received him well." This was the same autumn
[1000].
So concise is the narrative of the voyage by which the first discovery of
America by Europeans is said to have been made.[296]
[Sidenote: Thorstein Ericson]
Curiously enough, the saga tells us nothing more of Leif as a sailor. He
appears after this to have lived in peace in Greenland, and he took over
Brattalid after his father's death. On the other hand, we hear that his
brother Thorstein made an attempt to find Wineland, which Leif had
discovered. After Leif's return home "there was much talk that they ought
to seek the land that Leif had found. The leader was Thorstein Ericson, a
good man, and wise, and friendly." We hear earlier in the saga, where
Leif's voyage to Norway is related, that both of Eric's sons "were capable
men; Thorstein was at home with his father, and there was not a man in
Greenland who was thought to be so manly as he." We hear nothing about
Leif's taking part in the new voyage; it looks as if it had been
Thorstein's turn to go abroad. But
"Eric was asked, and they trusted in his good fortune and foresight
being greatest. He was against it, but did not say no, as his friends
exhorted him so to it. They therefore fitted out the ship which
Thorbjörn [Vivilsson] had brought out to Greenland;[297] and twenty
men were chosen for it; they took little goods with them, but more
arms and provisions. The morning that Eric left home, he took a little
chest, and therein was gold and silver; he hid this property and then
went on his way; but when he had gone a little distance he fell from
his horse, broke his ribs and hurt his shoulder, and said, 'Ah yes!'
After this accident he sent word to his wife that she should take up
the property that he had hidden; he had now, said he, been punished
for hiding it. Then they sailed out of Eric's fjord with gladness, and
thought well of their prospects. They drifted about the sea for a long
time and did not arrive where they desired. They came in sight of
Iceland, and they had also birds from Ireland; their ship was carried
eastwards over the ocean. They came back in the autumn and were then
weary and very worn. And they came in the late autumn to Eric's fjord.
Then said Eric: 'In the summer we sailed from the fjords more
light-hearted than we now are, and yet we now have good reason to be
so.' Thorstein said: 'It would be a worthy deed to take charge of the
men who are homeless, and to provide them with lodging.' Eric
answered: 'Thy words shall be followed.' All those who had no other
place of abode were now allowed to accompany Eric and Thorstein.
Afterwards they took land and went home."
In the autumn (1001) Thorstein celebrated his marriage with Thorbjörm
Vivilsson's daughter Gudrid, at Brattalid, and it "went off well." They
afterwards went home to Thorstein's property on the Lysefjord, which was
the southernmost fjord in the Western Settlement; probably that which is
now called Fiskerfjord (near Fiskernes) in about 63° N. lat. There
Thorstein died during the winter of an illness (scurvy ?) which put an end
to many on the property, and Gudrid next summer returned to Eric, who
received her well. Her father died also, and she inherited all his
property.
[Sidenote: Karlsevne in Greenland]
That autumn (1002) Thorfinn Karlsevne came from Iceland to Eric's fjord in
Greenland, with one ship and forty men. He was on a trading voyage, and
was looked upon as a skilful sailor and merchant, was of good family and
rich in goods. Together with him was Snorre Thorbrandsson. Another ship,
with Bjarne Grimolfsson and Thorhall Gamlason and a crew likewise of forty
men, had accompanied them from Iceland.
"Eric rode to the ships, and others of the men of the country, and
there was a friendly agreement between them. The captains bade Eric
take what he wished of the cargo. But Eric in return showed great
generosity, in that he invited both these crews home to spend the
winter at Brattalid. This the merchants accepted and went with Eric."
"The merchants were well content in Eric's house that winter, but when
Yule was drawing nigh, Eric began to be less cheerful than was his
wont." When Karlsevne asked: "Is there anything that oppresses thee,
Eric?" and tried to find out the reason of his being so dispirited, it
came out that it was because he had nothing for the Yule-brew; and it
would be said that his guests had never had a worse Yule than with
him. Karlsevne thought there was no difficulty about that; they had
malt, and meal, and corn in the ships, and thereof, said he, "thou
shalt have all thou desirest, and make such a feast as thy generosity
demands." Eric accepted this. "The Yule banquet was prepared, and it
was so magnificent that men thought they had scarcely ever seen so
fine a feast."
Even if the tale is unhistorical, it gives a glimpse of the life and the
hard conditions in Greenland; they only had grain occasionally when a ship
arrived; for the most part they lived on what they caught, and when that
failed, as we are told was the case in 999, there was famine. But to be
without the Yule-brew was a misfortune to an Icelander; nevertheless we
learn from the Foster-brothers' Saga that "Yule-drink was rare in
Greenland," and that a man might become famous by holding a feast, as did
Thorkel, the grandson of Eric the Red, in 1026.
After Yule, Karlsevne was married to Eric's daughter-in-law, Gudrid.
"The feast was then prolonged, and the marriage was celebrated. There
was great merry-making at Brattalid that winter; there was much
playing at draughts, and making mirth with tales and much else to
divert the company."
[Illustration: From an Icelandic MS. (Jónsbók), fifteenth century]
[Sidenote: Karlsevne's voyage to Wineland]
There was a good deal of talk about going to look for Wineland the Good,
and it was said that it might be a fertile country. The result was that
Karlsevne and Snorre got their ship ready to search for Wineland in the
summer. Bjarne and Thorhall also joined the expedition with their ship and
the crew that had accompanied them. Besides these, there came on a third
ship a man named Thorvard--married to Eric the Red's illegitimate daughter
Freydis, who also went--and Thorhall, nicknamed Veidemand (the Hunter).
"He had been on hunting expeditions with Eric for many summers and was
a man of many crafts. Thorhall was a big man, dark and troll-like; he
was well on in years, obstinate, silent and reserved in everyday life,
but crafty and slanderous, ever rejoicing in evil. He had had little
to do with the faith since it came to Greenland. Thorhall had little
friendship for his fellow men, yet Eric had long associated with him.
He was in the same ship with Thorvald and Thorvard, because he had
wide knowledge of the uninhabited regions. They had the ship that
Thorbjörn [Vivilsson] had brought out to Greenland [and that Thorstein
Ericson had used for his unlucky voyage two years before]. Most of
those on board that ship were Greenlanders. On their ships there were
altogether forty men over a hundred."[298]
Eric the Red and Leif were doubtless supposed to have assisted both
actively and with advice during the fitting-out, even though they would
not take part in the voyage. It is mentioned later that they gave
Karlsevne two Scottish runners that Leif had received from King Olaf
Tryggvason.
The three ships sailed first "to the Western Settlement and thence to
Bjarneyjar" (the Bear Islands).[299] The most natural explanation of the
saga making them begin their expedition by sailing in this direction (to
the north-west and north)--whereas the land they were in search of lay to
the south-west or south--may be that the Icelandic saga-writer (of the
thirteenth century), ignorant of the geography of Greenland, assumed that
the Western Settlement must lie due west of the Eastern; and as the
voyagers were to look for countries in the south-west, he has made them
begin by proceeding to the farthest point he had heard of on this coast,
Bjarneyjar, so that they might have a prospect of better luck than
Thorstein, who had sailed out from Eric's fjord. When it is said that
Thorhall the Hunter accompanied Eric's son and son-in-law because of his
wide knowledge of the uninhabited regions, it must be the regions beyond
the Western Settlement that are meant, and the saga-writer must have
thought that these extended westward or in the direction of the new
countries. It must also be remembered that in the spring and early summer
there is frequently drift-ice off the Eastern Settlement, from Cape
Farewell for a good way north-westward along the coast. The course would
then naturally lie to the north-west of this ice--that is, towards the
Western Settlement. But it may also be supposed that they had to begin by
going northward to get seals and provision themselves with food and oil
(fuel), which might be necessary for a long and unknown voyage. This
explanation is, however, less probable.
From Bjarneyjar they put to sea with a north wind. They were at sea,
according to the saga, for two "dœgr."[300]
"There they found land, and rowed along it in boats, and examined the
country, and found there [on the shore] many flat stones so large
that two men might easily lie stretched upon them sole to sole. There
were many white foxes there.[301] They gave the land a name and called
it 'Helluland.'"
It may be the coast of Labrador that is here intended, and not Baffin
Land, since the statement that they sailed thither with a north wind must
doubtless imply that the coast lay more or less in a southerly and not in
a westerly direction from Bjarneyjar. From Helluland
"they sailed for two 'dœgr' towards the south-east and south, and then
a land lay before them, and upon it were great forests and many
beasts. An island lay to the south-east off the land, and there they
found a polar bear,[302] and they called the island 'Bjarney'; but the
country they called 'Markland' [i.e., Wood-land] on account of the
forest."
The name Markland suits Newfoundland best; it had forests down to the
sea-shore when it was rediscovered about 1500, and even later.
When they had once more sailed for
"two 'dœgr' they sighted land and sailed under the land. There was a
promontory where they first came. They cruised along the shore, which
they kept to starboard [i.e., to the west]. It was without harbours
and there were long strands and stretches of sand. They went ashore in
boats, and found there on the promontory a ship's keel, and called it
'Kjalarnes' [i.e., Keel-ness]; they also gave the strands a name and
called them 'Furðustrandir' [i.e., the marvel-strands or the
wonderful, strange strands], because it took a long time to sail past
them."[303]
This may apply, as Storm points out, to the eastern side of Cape Breton
Island; but in that case they must have steered west-south-west from the
south-eastern promontory of Markland (Newfoundland). Kjalarnes must then
be Cape Breton itself. That they should have found a ship's keel there
sounds strange; if this is not an invention we must suppose that it was
driven ashore from a wreck; no doubt it happened often enough that vessels
were lost on the voyage to Greenland. When Eric, according to the
Landnámabók, sailed with twenty-five ships, many of them were lost.
Wreckage would be carried by the currents from Greenland into the Labrador
current, and by this southward past Markland. But it is more probable that
the origin of the name was entirely different; that, for example, the
promontory had the shape of a ship's keel, and that the account of the
keel found has been developed much later.[304] This is confirmed by the
fact that the "Grönlendinga-þáttr" gives a wholly different explanation of
the name from that in Eric's Saga.
South of Furðustrandir "the land was indented by bays ('vágskorit'),
and they steered the ships into a bay." Here they landed the two Scots
(the man "Haki" and the woman "Hekja") whom Karlsevne had received
from Leif and Eric, and who ran faster than deer. They "bade them run
southward and examine the condition of the country, and return before
three 'dœgr' were past. They had such garments as they called 'kiafal'
[or 'biafal']; it was made so that there was a hood above, and it
[i.e., 'the kiafal'] was open at the sides, and without sleeves, and
caught up between the legs, fastened there with a button and a loop;
otherwise they were bare. They cast anchor and lay there a while; and
when three days were past they came running down from the land, and
one of them had grapes in his hand, the other self-sown wheat.
Karlsevne said that they seemed to have found a fertile country."
They then sailed on until they came to a fjord, into which they steered
the ships.
"There was an island outside, and round the island strong currents.
They called it 'Straumsey.' There were so many birds there that one
could hardly put one's foot between the eggs. They held on up the
fjord, and called it 'Straumsfjord,' and unloaded the ships and
established themselves there. They had with them all kinds of cattle,
and sought to make use of the land. There were mountains there, and
fair was the prospect. They did nothing else but search out the land.
There was much grass. They stayed there the winter, and it was very
long; but they had not taken thought of anything, and were short of
food, and their catch decreased. Then they went out to the island,
expecting that there they might find some fishing or something might
drift up [i.e., a whale be driven ashore ?]. There was, however,
little to be caught for food, but their cattle throve there. Then they
made vows to God that He might send them something to eat; but no
answer came so quickly as they had hoped." The heathen Thorhall the
Hunter then disappeared for three "dœgr," and doubtless held secret
conjurations with the red-bearded One (i.e., Thor). A little later a
whale was driven ashore, and they ate of it, but were all sick. When
they found out how things were with Thorhall and Thor, "they cast it
out over the cliff and prayed to God for mercy. They then made a catch
of fish, and there was no lack of food. In the spring [1004] they
entered Straumsfjord and had catches from both lands [i.e., both sides
of the fjord], hunting on the mainland, eggs on the island, and fish
in the sea."
This description gives a good insight both into the Norsemen's manner of
equipping themselves for voyages to unknown countries, and into their
superstition.
It looks as if a dissension now arose between the wayward Thorhall the
Hunter and the rest, since he wanted to look for Wineland to the north of
Furðustrandir, beyond Kjalarnes.
"But Karlsevne wished to go south along the coast and eastward. He
thought the land became broader the farther south it bore;[305] but
it seemed to him most expedient to try both ways" [i.e., both south
and north].
Thorhall then parted from them; but there were no more than nine men in
his company. Perhaps they were desirous of going home; for from an old
lay, which the saga attributes to Thorhall, it appears that he was
discontented with the whole stay there: he abuses the country, where the
warriors had promised him the best of drinks, but where wine never touched
his lips, and he had to take a bucket himself and fetch water to drink.
And before they hoisted sail Thorhall quoth this lay:
"Let us go homeward,
where we shall find fellow-countrymen:
let us with our ship seek
the broad ways of the sea,
while the hopeful
warriors (those who praise
the land) on Furðustrandir
stay and boil whales' flesh."
"Then they parted [from Karlsevne, who had accompanied them out] and
sailed north of Furðustrandir and Kjalarnes, and then tried to beat
westward. Then the westerly storm caught them and they drifted to
Ireland, and there they were made slaves and ill-treated. There
Thorhall lost his life, as merchants have reported."
The last statement shows that according to Icelandic geographical ideas
the country round Kjalarnes lay directly opposite Ireland and in the same
latitude.
Karlsevne, with Snorre, Bjarne, and the rest, left Straumsfjord and sailed
southward along the coast [1004].
"They sailed a long time and until they came to a river, which flowed
down from the interior into a lake and thence into the sea. There were
great sandbanks before the mouth of the river, and it could only be
entered at high water. Karlsevne and his people then sailed to the
mouth of the river and called the country 'Hóp' [i.e., a small closed
bay]. There they found self-sown wheat-fields, where the land was
low, but vines wherever they saw heights ('en vínviðr allt þar sem
holta kendi'). Every beck ('lökr') was full of fish. They dug trenches
on the shore below high-water mark, and when the tide went out there
were halibuts in the trenches. In the forest there was a great
quantity of beasts of all kinds. They were there half a month amusing
themselves, and suspecting nothing. They had their cattle with them.
But early one morning, when they looked about them, they saw nine
hide-boats ('huðkeipa'), and wooden poles were being waved on the
ships [i.e., the hide-boats], and they made a noise like
threshing-flails and went the way of the sun. Karlsevne's men took
this to be a token of peace and bore a white shield towards them. Then
the strangers rowed towards them, and wondered, and came ashore. They
were small [or black ?][306] men, and ugly, and they had ugly hair on
their heads; their eyes were big, and they were broad across the
cheeks. And they stayed there awhile, and wondered, then rowed away
and went south of the headland."
This then would be the description of the first meeting in history between
Europeans and the natives of America. With all its brevity it gives an
excellent picture; but whether we can accept it is doubtful. As we shall
see later, the Norsemen probably did meet with Indians; but the
description of the latter's appearance must necessarily have been coloured
more and more by greater familiarity with the Skrælings of Greenland when
the sagas were put into writing. The big eyes will not suit either of
them, and are rather to be regarded as an attribute of trolls and
underground beings; gnomes and old fairy men have big, watery eyes. The
ugly hair is also an attribute of the underground beings.
"Karlsevne and his men had built their houses above the lake, some
nearer, some farther off. Now they stayed there that winter. No snow
fell at all, and all the cattle were out at pasture. But when spring
came they saw early one morning a number of hide-boats rowing from the
south past the headland, so many that it seemed as if the sea had been
sown with coal in front of the bay, and they waved wooden poles on
every boat. Then they set up shields and held a market, and the people
wanted most to buy red cloth; they also wanted to buy swords and
spears, but this was forbidden by Karlsevne and Snorre." The
Skrælings[307] gave them untanned skins in exchange for the cloth, and
trade was proceeding briskly, until "an ox, which Karlsevne had, ran
out of the wood and began to bellow. The Skrælings were scared and ran
to their boats (keipana) and rowed south along the shore. After that
they did not see them for three weeks. But when that time was past,
they saw a great multitude of Skræling boats coming from the south, as
though driven on by a stream. Then all the wooden poles were waved
against the sun ('rangsölis,' wither-shins), and all the Skrælings
howled loudly. Then Karlsevne and his men took red shields and bore
them towards them. The Skrælings leapt from their boats and then they
made towards each other and fought; there was a hot exchange of
missiles. The Skrælings also had catapults ('valslongur'). Karlsevne
and his men saw that the Skrælings hoisted up on a pole a great ball
('knottr') about as large as a sheep's paunch, and seeming blue[308]
in colour, and slung it from the pole up on to the land over
Karlsevne's people, and it made an ugly noise when it came down. At
this great terror smote Karlsevne and his people, so that they had no
thought but of getting away and up the river, for it seemed to them
that the Skrælings were assailing them on all sides; and they did not
halt until they had reached certain crags. There they made a stout
resistance. Freydis came out and saw that they were giving way. She
cried out: 'Wherefore do ye run away from such wretches, ye gallant
men? I thought it likely that ye could slaughter them like cattle, and
had I but arms I believe I should fight better than any of you.' None
heeded what she said. Freydis tried to go with them, but she fell
behind, for she was with child. She nevertheless followed them into
the wood, but the Skrælings came after her. She found before her a
dead man, Thorbrand Snorrason, and a flat stone ('hellustein') was
fixed in the head of him. His sword lay unsheathed by him, and she
took it up to defend herself with it. Then the Skrælings came at her.
She takes her breasts out of her sark and whets the sword on them. At
that the Skrælings are afraid and run away back to their boats, and go
off. Karlsevne and his men meet her and praise her happy device. Two
men of Karlsevne's fell, and four of the Skrælings; but nevertheless
Karlsevne had suffered defeat. They now go to their houses, bind up
their wounds, and consider what swarm of people it was that came
against them from the land. It seemed to them now that there could
have been no more than those who came from the boats, and that the
other people must have been glamour. The Skrælings also found a dead
man, and an axe lay beside him; one of them took up the axe and struck
at a tree, and so one after another, and it seemed to delight them
that it bit so well. Then one took and smote a stone with it; but when
the axe broke, he thought it was of no use, if it did not stand
against stone, and he cast it from him."
"Karlsevne and his men now thought they could see that although the
land was fertile, they would always have trouble and disquiet with the
people who dwelt there before. Then they prepared to set out, and
intended to go to their own country. They sailed northward and found
five Skrælings sleeping in fur jerkins ('skinnhjúpum'), and they had
with them kegs with deer's marrow mixed with blood. They thought they
could understand that they were outlaws; they killed them. Then they
found a headland and a multitude of deer, and the headland looked like
a crust of dried dung, from the deer lying there at night. Now they
came back to Straumsfjord, and there was abundance of everything. It
is reported by some that Bjarne and Gudrid remained behind there, and
a hundred men with them, and did not go farther; but they say that
Karlsevne and Snorre went southward with forty men and were no longer
at Hóp than barely two months, and came back the same summer."
[Illustration: From an Icelandic MS. (Jónsbók), fourteenth century]
Karlsevne went with one ship to search for Thorhall the Hunter. He sailed
to the north of Kjalarnes, westwards, and south along the shore (Storm
thought on the eastern side of Cape Breton Island to the northern side of
Nova Scotia), and they found a river running from east to west into the
sea.
Here Thorvald Ericson was shot one morning from the shore with an
arrow which they thought came from a Uniped [legendary creature with
one foot] whom they pursued but did not catch. The arrow struck
Thorvald in the small intestines. He drew it out, saying: "There is
fat in the bowels; a good land have we found, but it is doubtful
whether we shall enjoy it." Thorvald died of this wound a little
later. "They then sailed away northward again and thought they sighted
'Einfötinga-land' [the Land of Unipeds]. They would no longer risk the
lives of their men," and "they went back and stayed in Straumsfjord
the third winter. Then the men became very weary [so that they fell
into disagreement]; those who were wifeless quarrelled with those who
had wives."[309]
The fourth summer [1006] they sailed from Wineland with a south wind and
came to Markland.
There they found five Skrælings, and caught of them two boys, while
the grown-up ones, a bearded man and two women, "escaped and sank into
the earth. The boys they took with them and taught them their
language, and they were baptized. They called their mother 'Vætilldi'
and their father 'Vægi.' They said that kings governed in
Skrælinga-land; one of them was called 'Avalldamon,' the other
'Valldidida.' They said that there were no houses, and the people lay
in rock-shelters or caves. They said there was another great country
over against their country, and men went about there in white clothing
and cried aloud, and carried poles before them, to which strips were
fastened. This is thought to be 'Hvitramanna-land' [i.e., the white
men's land] or Great-Ireland." Then Karlsevne and his men came to
Greenland and stayed the winter with Eric the Red [1006-1007].
"But Bjarne Grimolfsson [on the other ship] was carried out into the
Irish Ocean [the Atlantic between Markland and Ireland] and they came
into the maggot-sea ('maðk-sjá'); they did not know of it until the
ship was worm-eaten under them," and ready to sink. "They had a
long-boat ('eptirbát') that was coated with seal-tar, and men say that
the sea-maggot will not eat wood that is coated with seal-tar." "But
when they tried it, the boat would not hold more than half the ship's
company." They all wanted to go in it; but Bjarne then proposed that
they should decide who should go in the boat by casting lots and not
by precedence, and this was agreed to. The lots fell so that Bjarne
was amongst those who were to go in the boat. "When they were in it, a
young Icelander, who had accompanied Bjarne from home, said: 'Dost
thou think, Bjarne, to part from me here?' Bjarne answers: 'So it must
be.' He says: 'This was not thy promise when I came with thee from
Iceland....' Bjarne answers: 'Nor shall it be so; go thou in the boat,
but I must go in the ship, since I see that thy life is so dear to
thee.' Bjarne then went on board the ship, and this man in the boat,
and they kept on their course until they came to Dyflinar [Dublin] in
Ireland, and there told this tale. But most men believe that Bjarne
and his companions lost their lives in the maggot-sea, since they were
not heard of again."
Thorfinn Karlsevne returned in the following summer (1007) to Iceland with
Gudrid and their son Snorre, who was born at Straumsfjord in Wineland the
first winter they were there. Karlsevne afterwards lived in Iceland.
[Sidenote: The composite and legendary character of the whole saga]
If we now review critically the Saga of Eric the Red and the whole of this
tale of Karlsevne's voyage, together with the other accounts of Wineland
voyages, we shall find one feature after another that is legendary or that
must have been borrowed from elsewhere. If we examine first of all the
relation of the various authorities to the events they narrate, we must be
struck by the fact that in the oldest authorities, such as the Landnáma,
Eric the Red has only two sons, Leif and Thorstein, whereas in Eric's
Saga and in the "Grönlendinga-þáttr," for the sake of the trilogy of
legend, he has begotten three sons, besides an illegitimate daughter. In
the oldest MS., Hauk's Landnámabók, Leif is only mentioned in one place,
and nothing more is said of him than that he was Eric's son and inherited
Brattalid from his father; he is not given the nickname "heppni" (the
lucky), and it is not mentioned that he had discovered Wineland, nor that
he had introduced Christianity. In the Sturlubók he is again mentioned in
one place as the son of Tjodhild and Eric, and there has the nickname "en
hepni"; but neither is there here any mention of the discovery of Wineland
or the introduction of Christianity [cf. Landnámabók, ed. F. Jónsson,
1900, pp. 35, 156, 165]. As this passage is not found in Hauk's Landnáma,
it may be an addition in the later MS., which was wanting in the original
Landnámabók. In the great saga of St. Olaf[310] (chapter 70)--where King
Olaf asks the Icelander Thorarinn Nevjolfsson to take the blind king Rörek
to Greenland to "Leif Ericson"--the latter again is not called the Lucky,
nor is Wineland or its discovery mentioned. This saga was written,
according to the editors, about 1230. As neither this nickname nor the
tales of Leif's discovery of Wineland are found earlier than in the
Kristni-saga and Heimskringla, it looks as if these features did not
appear till later. There is a similar state of things with regard to the
mention of Thorfinn Karlsevne; only in one passage in Hauk's Landnáma is
it mentioned that he found "Vin(d)land hit Góða"; but as this does not
occur in the Sturlubók, it may be an addition due to Hauk Erlendsson, who
regarded Thorfinn as his ancestor. The silence of the oldest authorities
on the voyages to Wineland becomes still more striking when we compare
with it the fact that the Landnámabók contains statements (with careful
citation of authorities, showing that they are derived from Are Frode
himself) about Are Mársson, his voyage to Hvítramanna-land, and his stay
there, which have generally been regarded as far less authentic than the
tales of the Wineland voyages. If Are Mársson's voyage is a myth, then one
would be still more inclined to regard the latter as such. The objection
that it would have been beside the plan of the brief and concise earlier
works (Íslendingabók and Landnámabók) to include these things, scarcely
holds good. If Are has room in the Íslendingabók for a comparatively
detailed account of the discovery, naming and natives of Greenland, and
further for a description of the introduction of Christianity into
Iceland; if the Landnámabók also gives details, derived, as we have said,
from him, of Are Mársson's voyage to Hvítramanna-land, then it is
difficult to understand why neither Are Frode nor the authors of the
Landnámabók, when mentioning Eric the Red and Leif, should have found room
for a line about Leif's having discovered Wineland and Christianised
Greenland--two not unimportant pieces of information--if they had known of
it. At any rate, the Christianising of Greenland must have been of
interest to the priest Are and to the priest-taught authors of
Landnámabók. This silence is therefore suspicious.
The personal names in the Saga of Eric the Red are also striking. With the
exception of Eric himself, his wife Tjodhild and his son Leif, and a few
other names in the first part, which is taken almost in its entirety from
the Landnámabók, almost all the names belonging to this saga are connected
with those of heathen gods, especially Thor. Eric has got a third son,
Thorvald, who is not mentioned in Landnáma, besides his daughter Freydis,
and his son-in-law Thorvard. The name Freydis is only known from this one
woman in the whole of Icelandic literature, and several names in Norse
literature compounded of Frey- seem, according to Lind,[311] to belong to
myths (e.g., Freygarðr, Freysteinn and Freybjǫrn). Other names connected
with the Wineland voyages in this saga are: Thor-björn Vivilsson (his
brother was named Thor-geir and his daughter's foster-father Orm
Thor-geirsson) came to Thor-kjell of Herjolfsnes, where the prophetess was
called Thor-björg. Leif's woman in the Hebrides was called Thor-gunna, and
their illegitimate son Thor-gils. Thor-stein Ericson had a property
together with another Thor-stein in Lysefjord.[312] We have further
Thor-finn Karlsevne (son of Thord and Thor-unn), Snorre Thor-brandsson,
Thor-hall Gamlason, Thor-hall Veidemand (who also had dealings with the
red-bearded Thor), and Thor-brand Snorrason who was killed. An exception,
besides Bjarne Grimolfsson (and the runners Haki and Hekja; see below), is
Thorfinn Karlsevne's wife Guðriðr,[313] daughter of Thorbjörn Vivilsson,
and mother of Snorre. But perhaps one can guess why she is given this name
if one reads through the description of the remarkable scene of
soothsaying--at Thorkjell's house on Herjolfsnes--between the fair Gudrid,
who sang with such a beautiful voice, and the heathen sorceress Thorbjörg,
where the former as a Christian woman refuses to sing the heathen charms
"Varðlokur," as the sorceress asks her to do. These numerous
Thor-names--with the two women's names, the powerful Freydis and the fair
Gudrid--which are attributed to a time when heathendom and Christianity
were struggling for the mastery (cf. the tale of Thorhall the Hunter and
the whale), have in themselves an air of myth and invention. To this must
be added mythical descriptions like those of the prophetess of
Herjolfsnes, the ghosts at Lysefjord the winter Thorstein Ericson died,
and others.
The Saga of Eric the Red tells of two voyages in search of Wineland, after
Leif's accidental discovery of the country. The first is Thorstein
Ericson's unfortunate expedition, when they did not find the favoured
Wineland, but were driven eastward into the ocean towards Iceland and
Ireland. In the Irish tale of Brandan ("Imram Brenaind," of the eleventh
century), Brandan first makes an unsuccessful voyage to find the promised
land, and arrives, it seems, most probably in the east of the ocean,
somewhere about Brittany (cf. Vita S. Brandani; and Machutus's voyage);
but he then makes a fresh voyage in which he finally reaches the land he
is in search of [cf. Zimmer, 1889, pp. 135 ff.]. This similarity with the
Irish legend is doubtless not very great, but perhaps it deserves to be
included with many others to be mentioned later.
[Illustration: The relative distances between the countries. The scale
gives "dœgr's" sailing (== 2 degrees of latitude), according to the
"Rymbegla." A white cross marks the valley of the St. John]
If we now pass to the tale itself of Karlsevne's voyage, we have already
seen (p. 321) that its beginning with the journey to the Western
Settlement is doubtful; next, the feature of his sailing to three
different countries in turn (Helluland, Markland and Furðustrandir), with
the same number of days' sail between each, must be taken directly from
the fairy tales.[314] Such a voyage is in itself improbable; in the saga
the countries are evidently imagined as islands or peninsulas, but nothing
corresponding to this is to be found on the coast of America. It is
inconceivable that a discoverer of Labrador and of the coast to the south
of it should have divided this into several countries; it was not till
long after the rediscovery of Newfoundland and Labrador that the sound
between them was found. If we suppose that Karlsevne was making southward
and came first to Labrador (== Helluland ?), with a coast extending
south-eastward, it is against common sense that he should voluntarily
have lost sight of this coast and put to sea again in an easterly
direction, and then sight fresh land to the south of him two days later;
on the other hand, this is the usual mode of presentment in fairy tales
and myth. But let us suppose now that he did nevertheless arrive in this
way at Newfoundland (== Markland ?), and then again put to sea instead of
following the coast, how could he know that this time instead of sailing
eastward he was to take a westward course? But this he must have done, for
otherwise he could not have reached Cape Breton or Nova Scotia; and he
must have got there, if we are to make anything out of the story. The
distances given, of two "dœgr's" sail to each of the countries, as
remarked on p. 322, are also foreign to reality.[315] This part of the
description has therefore an altogether artificial look. It reminds one
forcibly of many of the old Irish legendary tales of wonderful voyages; in
particular the commencement of one of the oldest and most important may be
mentioned: "Imram Maelduin" (the tale of Maelduin's voyage), which is
known in MSS. of the end of the eleventh century and later, but which was
probably to a great extent first written down in the seventh, or at the
latest in the eighth century [cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 289].
When Maelduin and his companions put to sea from Ireland in a coracle
with three hides (while Karlsevne has three ships), they came first to
two small islands (while Karlsevne came to Bjarneyjar). After this for
three days and three nights the Irishmen came upon no land; "on the
morning of the third day" they heard the waves breaking on a beach,
but when daylight came and they approached the land, swarms of ants,
as large as foals, came down to the beach and showed a desire to eat
them and the boat (these are the gold-digging ants of Indo-Greek
legend). This land is the parallel to Helluland, where there were a
number of arctic foxes (cf. the description of the arrival there, p.
323).--After having fled thence for three days and three nights, the
Irishmen heard "on the morning of the third day" the waves breaking on
a beach, and when daylight came they saw a great, lofty island with
terraces around it and rows of trees, on which there were many large
birds; they ate their fill of these and took some of them in the boat.
This island might correspond to the wooded Markland, with its many
animals, where Karlsevne and his people killed a bear.--After another
three days and three nights at sea, the Irish voyagers "on the morning
of the fourth day" saw a great sandy island; on approaching the shore
they saw there a fabulous beast like a horse with dog's paws and
claws. For fear of the beast they rowed away without landing. This
great sandy island may be compared with Furðustrandir, where there
were no harbours and it was difficult to land.--The Irishmen then
travelled "for a long time" before they came to a large, flat island,
where two men landed to examine the island, which they found to be
large and broad, and they saw marks of horses' hoofs as large as a
ship's sail, and nutshells as large as "cōedi" (a measure of capacity
?), and traces of many human beings. This bears a resemblance to
Karlsevne's having "a long way" to sail along Furðustrandir before he
came to a bay, where the two Scots went ashore to examine the country,
were absent three days, and found grapes and wheat.--After that the
Irishmen travelled for a week, in hunger and thirst, until they came
to a great, lofty island, with a great house on the beach, with two
doors, "one towards the plain on the island and one towards the sea";
and through the latter the waves of the sea threw salmon into the
middle of the house. They found decorated couches and crystal goblets
with good drink in the house, but no human being, and they took meat
and drink and thanked God. Karlsevne proceeded from the bay and came
to Straumsey, which was thick with birds and eggs, and to
Straumsfjord, where they established themselves (i.e., built houses).
And there were mountains and a fair prospect and high grass; and they
had catches from two sides, "hunting on the land, and eggs and fish
from the sea"; and where, to begin with, they did nothing but make
themselves acquainted with the land.--From the island with the house
Maelduin and his men travelled about "for a long time," hungry and
without food, until they found an island which was encompassed by a
great cliff ("alt mor impi"). There was a very thin and tall tree
there; Maelduin caught a branch of it in his hand as they passed by;
for three days and three nights the branch was in his hand, while the
boat was sailing past the cliff, and on the third day there were three
apples at the end of the branch (cf. Karlsevne's runners who returned
after three days with grapes and wheat in their hands), on which they
lived for forty days. Karlsevne and his men suffered great want during
the winter at Straumsfjord; and from that place, where they lived on
land in houses, they sailed "for a long time" before they came to the
country with the self-sown wheat and vines, where there were great
sandbanks off the mouth of the river, so that they had a difficulty in
landing.
It is striking that in the voyage of Maelduin, the distance is only given
as three days' and three nights' sail in the case of the three first
passages to the three successive islands, after the first two small
islands, while between the later islands we are told that they sailed "a
long way," "for a week," "for a long time," etc.; just as in the Saga of
Eric the Red, where, after Bjarneyjar, they sail for two "dœgr" to each of
the three lands in turn, and then they had "a long way" to sail along
Furðustrandir, to a bay, after which "they went on their way" to
Straumsfjord, and thence they went "for a long time" to Wineland, etc. I
do not venture to assert that there was a direct connection between the
two productions, for that there are perhaps too many dissimilarities; but
they seem in any case to have their roots in one and the same cycle of
ideas, and the original legend certainly reached Iceland in the shape of
oral narrative.
The number three plays an important part in Eric's Saga. Three voyages
are made to or in search of Wineland, Karlsevne has three ships, three
countries are visited in turn, three winters are spent away (as with
Eric the Red on his first voyage to Greenland, but there this was due
to his exile), they meet with the Skrælings three times, three men
fall (two in the fight with the Skrælings, and afterwards Thorvald
Ericson)--just as Maelduin (and also Brandan) loses three men--the
expedition finally resolves itself into three separate homeward
voyages, Thorhall the Hunter's, Karlsevne's and Bjarne Grimolfsson's,
etc. etc.[316] In the Irish legends and tales, e.g., those of Maelduin
or of the Ua Corra, the repetition of the number three is even more
conspicuous.
We may regard it as another feature of fairy tale that Eric the Red
has three sons who set out one after another, first Leif, then
Thorstein, and lastly Thorvald, who finds the land and takes part in
the attempt to settle it. But this feature is not conspicuous enough
to allow of our attaching much importance to it, especially as here it
is the first son who is the lucky one, while it is not so in fairy
tale.
[Sidenote: Sweet dew and manna]
In Leif's voyage in the "Grönlendinga-þáttr" (which voyage partly
corresponds to Karlsevne's), when they came to a country south-west of
Markland, they landed on an island, to the north of the country,
"looked around them in fair weather, and found that there was dew on
the grass, and it happened that they touched the grass with their
hands and put them in their mouths, and they thought they had never
tasted anything so sweet as it was."
This reminds one forcibly of Moses' manna in the wilderness, which
appeared like dew [Exodus xvi. 14]. In the Old Norwegian free rendering of
the Old Testament, called "Stjórn,"[317] of about 1300, therefore much
earlier than the "Grönlendinga-þáttr," the account of this says that dew
came from heaven round the whole camp, "it stuck like slime on the hands
as soon as they touched it" ... "they found that it was sweet as honey in
taste...." But here again we come in contact with Irish legendary ideas.
In the tale of the Navigation of the Sons of Ua Corra (of the twelfth
century) the voyagers come to an island with a beautiful and wonderful
plain covered with trees, full of honey, and a grass-green glade in the
middle with a glorious lake of agreeable taste. Later on they come to
another marvellous island, with splendid green grass, and honeydew lay on
the grass [cf. Zimmer, 1889, pp. 194, 195].
[Sidenote: Furðustrandir]
The name "Furðustrandir" (marvel-strands), as we shall see later (p. 357),
may come from the "Tírib Ingnad" (lands of marvel) and "Trág Mór" (great
strand) of Irish legend, far in the western ocean.
[Sidenote: Mythical figures: the Scottish runners]
When Karlsevne arrived off Furðustrandir he sent out his two Scottish
runners, the man "Haki" and the woman "Hekja," and told them to run
southwards and examine the condition of the country and come back in three
days. This is evidently another legendary trait; and equally so the
circumstance that King Olaf had given these runners to Leif and told him
"to make use of them if he had need of speed, for they were swifter than
deer." We know of many such features in fairy tale and myth. Then, after
the traditional three days, the man and woman come running from the
interior of the country, one with grapes, the other with self-sown wheat
in their hands. We are tempted to think of the spies Moses sent into
Canaan, with orders to spy out the land, whether it was fat or lean, and
who came back with a vine-branch and a cluster of grapes, which they had
cut in the vale of Eshcol (i.e., the vale of grapes).[318]
But there are other remarkable points about this legend. Professor Moltke
Moe has called my attention to a striking resemblance between it and the
legends of the two runners or spies who accompanied Sinclair's march
through Norway in 1612. They are called "wind-runners" or "bloodhounds,"
or again "weather-calves" or "wind-calves"; others called them "Wild
Turks."
"They were ugly folk enough. Sinklar used them to run before and
search out news; in the evening they came back with their reports.
They were swifter in running than the stag; it is said that the flesh
was cut out of their thighs and the thick of their calves. It is also
said that they could follow men's tracks."[319]
We are told elsewhere that "these 'Ver-Kalvann' ('wind-calves') were
more active than farm-dogs, swift as lightning, and did not look like
folk. The flesh was cut out of the thick of their calves, their thighs
and buttocks; their nostrils were also slit up. People thought this
was done to them to make them so much lighter to run around, and every
one was more frightened of them than of the Scots themselves. They
could get the scent of folk a long way off and could kill a man before
he could blow his nose: they dashed up the back and broke the necks of
folk."[320]
The trait that the wind-runners "did not look like folk" is expressed in
another form in H. P. S. Krag's notes; he thinks that they
"were nothing else but Sinclair's bloodhounds, which we may assume
both from the description and from its being related of the one that
was shot at Ödegaard that it ran about the field and barked."
Something similar also occurs about the runners in Wineland in a late form
of the legend of Karlsevne's voyage, where we read that
"he sailed from Greenland south-westward until the condition of the
country got better and better; he found and visited many places that
have never been found since; he found also some Skrælings; these
people are called in some books Lapps. In one place he got two
creatures ('skepnur') more like apes than men, whom he called Hake and
Hekja; they ran as fast as greyhounds and had few clothes." [MS. A.
M., old no. 77oc, new no. 1892, 3; cf. Rafn: "Antiquitates Americanæ,"
1837, p. 196.]
It may be mentioned in addition that in the Flateyjarbók's saga of the
Wineland voyages no runners appear, but on the other hand, in the tale of
Leif's voyage, which has features in common with Karlsevne's, there is a
"Southman" ("suðrmaðr," most frequently used of Germans)[321] of the name
of "Tyrker," who was the first to find the wild vine in the woods (like
Karlsevne's runners) and intoxicated himself by eating the grapes.[322] As
Moltke Moe observes, there is a remarkable resemblance between the rare
name Tyrker and the fact that Sinclair's runners were called Wild Turks.
Both in the legend of Karlsevne and in that of Sinclair the two runners
are connected with Scots or Scotland. One is therefore inclined to suppose
that some piece of Celtic folklore is the common source of both. Now there
is a Scottish mythical creature called a "water-calf"; and the
unintelligible Norwegian name "weather-calf" or "wind-calf" ("veirkalv")
may well be thought a corruption of this. It is true that this creature
inhabits lakes, but it also goes upon dry land, and has fabulous speed and
the power of scenting things far off. It can also transform itself into
different shapes, but always preserves something of its animal form.
That the runners in Eric's Saga have become a man and woman may be due to
a natural connection with Thor's swift-footed companions, Tjalve and
Röskva. But there seems here to be another possible connection, which
Moltke Moe has suggested to me. The strange garment they wore is called in
one MS. "kiafal" and in another "biafal." No word completely corresponding
to this is known in Celtic; but there is a modern Irish word "cabhail"
(pronounced "caval" == "a body of a shirt"), which shows so much
similarity both in meaning and sound that there seems undoubtedly to be a
connection here. That "caval," corrupted to "kiafal" (through the
influence of similar-sounding names ?), has been transformed into "biafal"
may be due to the influence of the Norse "bjalfi" or "bjalbi" (== a fur
garment without sleeves). As their costume plays such an important part in
the description of the runners, and special stress is laid upon the Celtic
word for it, it is probable that this word was originally used as a name
for the runners themselves--in legend and epic poetry there are many
examples of people being named from their dress. But gradually the Celtic
word used as a name has been replaced by the corresponding Old Norse
"hakull" (or "hokull" == sleeveless cloak open at the sides; cf.
"messe-hagel," chasuble) and its feminine derivative "hekla" (==
sleeveless cloak, with or without a hood). The use of these two words of
masculine and feminine gender may be due to conceptions of them as man and
woman, derived from Tjalve and Röskva. In course of time it was natural
that a personal name formed from the costume, like Hakull, should easily
be replaced by a real man's name of similar sound, like "Haki," specially
known in legend and epic poetry as a name of sea-kings, berserkers and
troll-children. Then "Hekja" was derived from "Haki," in the same way as
"Hekla" from "Hakull." Hekja as a name is not met with elsewhere.[323]
That the whole of this story of the runners in the Saga of Eric the Red
has been borrowed from elsewhere appears also from its being badly fitted
in; for the narrative of the saga continues without taking any notice of
the finding of the sure tokens of Wineland: the self-sown wheat and the
vine; and in the following spring there is even a dispute as to the
direction in which the country is to be sought. Furthermore, after the
discoveries of the runners Karlsevne continues to sail southward, at
first, the same autumn, to Straumsfjord, and then still farther south the
following summer, before he arrives at the country of the wheat and grapes
that the runners had reached in a day and a half in a roadless land.
[Sidenote: Mythical figures: Thorhall and Tyrker]
The description of the stay in Straumsfjord also contains purely mythical
features, such as Thorhall the Hunter's being absent for the stereotyped
three days ("dœgr"), and having, when they find him, practised magic arts
with the Red-Beard (Thor), as the result of which a whale is driven ashore
(see p. 325). There is further a striking resemblance between the
description of Thorhall's state when found and that of Tyrker after he had
eaten the grapes. When, in Eric's Saga, they sought and found Thorhall on
a steep mountain crag,
"he lay gazing up into the air with wide-open mouth and nostrils,
scratching and pinching himself and muttering something. They asked
why he lay there. He answered that that did not concern anybody, and
told them not to meddle with it; he had for the most part lived so,
said he, that they had no need to trouble about him. They asked him to
come home with them, and he did so."
In the Flateyjarbók's "Grönlendinga-þáttr" Tyrker was lost in the woods,
and when Leif and his men went in search and found him again, he too
behaved strangely.
"First he spoke for a long time in 'þýrsku,' and rolled his eyes many
ways and twisted his mouth; but they could not make out what he said.
After a while he said in Norse: I did not go much farther, and yet I
have a new discovery to tell of; I have found vines and grapes
('vínvið ok vínber')."
This shows how features taken from legends originally altogether different
are mingled together in these sagas, in order to fill out the description;
and it shows too how the same tale may take entirely different forms. Of
Tyrker we hear further that "he was 'brattleitr' (with a flat face and
abrupt forehead), had fugitive eyes, was freckled ('smáskitligr') in the
face, small of stature and puny, but skilful in all kinds of dexterity."
Thorhall, on the other hand, "was tall of stature, dark and troll-like,"
etc. (see p. 320), but he was also master of many crafts, was well
acquainted with the uninhabited regions, and altogether had qualities
different from most people. Both had long been with Eric the Red. There
can scarcely be a doubt that these two legendary figures, perhaps
originally derived from wholly different spheres, have been blended
together.
[Sidenote: The stranded whale]
The whale that is driven ashore and that they feed on resembles the great
fish that is cast ashore and that the Irish saint Brandan and his
companions live on in the tale of his wonderful voyage (see below). This
resemblance is confirmed by the statement in the Icelandic story that no
one knew what kind of whale it was, not even Karlsevne, who had great
experience of whales. There are, of course, no whales on the north-eastern
coast of America that are not also found on the coasts of Greenland and
Iceland; the incident therefore appears fictitious. The great whale in the
legend of Brandan, on the other hand, is a fabulous monster. There is this
distinction, it is true, that Karlsevne's people fall ill from eating the
whale,[324] while it saves the lives of the Irish voyagers; but in both
cases it is driven ashore after God, or a god, has been invoked in their
need, and disappears again immediately (in the tale of Brandan it is
devoured by wild beasts; in the saga it is thrown over the cliff). This
difference can easily be explained by the whale in the Norse story having
been sent by a heathen god, so that it was sacrilege to eat of it. In the
tale of Brandan the whale is perhaps derived from Oriental legends [cf. De
Goeje, 1891, p. 63]; it may, however, be a common northern feature.
[Sidenote: Eggs in the autumn and egg-gathering]
When it is stated of Straumsfjord that there were places where eggs could
be gathered, and of Straumsey that "there were so many birds that one
could scarcely put one's foot down between the eggs," this is evidently an
entirely northern feature, brought in to decorate the tale, and brought in
so infelicitously that they are made to find all this mass of eggs there
in the _autumn_ (!) when they arrive. If Straumsfjord was in Nova Scotia
there could not be eider-ducks nor gulls either[325] in sufficient number
to form breeding-grounds of importance, and among sea-birds one would be
more inclined to think of terns, as Professor R. Collett has suggested to
me. As the coast is not described as one with steep cliffs, and there is
mention of stepping between the eggs, auks, guillemots and similar
sea-birds are out of the question, even if they occurred so far south.
[Sidenote: Wineland the equivalent of Fortunate Isles]
But then comes the most important part of the saga, the description of the
country itself, where grew self-sown fields of wheat, and vines on the
hills, where no snow fell and the cattle were out the whole winter, where
the streams and the sea teemed with fish and the woods were full of deer.
Isidore says [in the "Etymologiarum," xiv. 6, 8] of the Fortunate Isles:
"The Insulæ Fortunatæ denote by their name that they produce all good
things, as though fortunate ('felices') and blessed with fertility of
vegetation. For of their own nature they are rich in valuable fruits
('poma,' literally tree-fruit or apples). The mountain-ridges are
clothed with self-grown ('fortuites') vines, and cornfields ('messis'
== that which is to be cut) and vegetables are common as grass [i.e.,
grow wild like grass, are self-sown]; thence comes the error of the
heathen, and that profane poetry regarded them as Paradise. They lie
in the ocean on the left side of Mauritania [Morocco] nearest to the
setting sun, and they are divided from one another by sea that lies
between." He also mentions the Gorgades, and the Hesperides.
These ideas of the Fortunate Isles were widely current in the Middle Ages.
In the English work, "Polychronicon," by Ranulph Higden, of the fourteenth
century, Isidore's description took the following form:
"A good climate have the Insulæ Fortunatæ that lie in the western
ocean, which were regarded by the heathen as Paradise by reason of the
fertility of the soil and of the temperate climate. For there the
mountain ridges are clothed with self-grown vines, and cornfields and
vegetables are common as grass [i.e., grow wild]. Consequently they
are called on account of the rich vegetation 'Fortunatæ,' that is to
say, 'felices' [happy, fertile], for there are trees that grow as high
as 140 feet...."
The resemblance between this description and that of Wineland is so close
that it cannot be explained away as fortuitous; the most prominent
features are common to both: the self-sown cornfields, the self-grown
vines on the hills, and the lofty trees (cf. Pliny, below, p. 348), which
are already present in the narrative of Leif's voyage (see above, p. 317).
If we go back to antiquity and examine the general ideas of the Fortunate
Land or the Fortunate Isles out in the ocean in the west, we find yet more
points of resemblance. Diodorus [v. 19, 20] describes a land opposite
Africa, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, as fertile and mountainous,
but also to a large extent flat. (Wineland also had hills and lowlands.)
It invites to amusements and delights.[326] The mountainous country has
thick forests and all kinds of fruitful trees, and many streams; there is
excellent hunting with game of all sorts, big and small, and the sea is
full of fish (precisely as Wineland). Moreover, the air is extremely mild
(as in Wineland), and there is plenty of fruit the whole year round, etc.
The land was not known in former times, but some Phœnicians on a voyage
along the African coast were overtaken by a storm, were driven about the
ocean for many days, until they came thither (like Leif).
It is said of Wineland, in the Saga of Eric the Red, that "no snow at all
fell there, and the cattle were out (in winter) and fed themselves," and
in the Flateyjarbók we read that "there was no frost in the winter, and
the grass withered little." These, we see, are pure impossibilities. As
early as the Odyssey [iv. 566] it is said of the Elysian Fields in the
west on the borders of the earth:
"There is never snow, never winter nor storm, nor streaming rain,
But Ocean ever sends forth the light breath of the west wind
To bring refreshment to men."
In the early civilisation of Babylon and Egypt this fortunate land seems
to have been imagined as lying in the direction of the rising sun; but the
ideas are always the same. An ancient Egyptian myth puts "Aalu" or "Hotep"
(== place of food, land of eating), which is the abode of bliss and
fortune, far in the east, where light conquers darkness.
"Both texts and pictures bear witness to the beauty which pervades
this abode of life; it was a Paradise as splendid as could be
imagined, 'the store-house of the great god'; where 'the corn grows
seven cubits high.' It was a land of eternal life; there, according to
the oldest Egyptian texts, the god of light, and with him the
departed, acquire strength to renew themselves and to arise from the
dead."[327]
In the same colours as these the Odyssey describes many fortunate lands
and islands, such as the nymph Calypso's beautiful island Ogygia, far in
the west of the ocean; and again "Scheria's delightful island" [vii. 79
ff.], where the Phæacians, "a people as happy as gods," dwell "far away
amid the splashing waves of the ocean," where the mild west wind, both
winter and summer, ever causes the fruit-trees and vines to blossom and
bear fruit, and where all kinds of herbs grow all the year round (remark
the similarity with Isidore's description). The fortunate isle of Syria,
far in the western ocean, is also mentioned [xv. 402],
"North of Ortygia, towards the region where the sun sets;
Rich in oxen and sheep, and clothed with vines and wheat,"
where the people live free from want and sickness. These are the same
ideas which were afterwards transferred to the legend of the Hyperboreans
(cf. pp. 15 ff.).[328] It is natural that among the Greeks wine and the
vine took a prominent place in these descriptions. In post-Homeric times
the "Isles of the Blest" (Μακαρων νησοι) are described by Hesiod (and
subsequently by Pindar) as lying in the western ocean--
"there they live free from care in the Isles of the Blest, by the
deep-flowing Ocean, the fortunate heroes to whom the earth gives
honey-sweet fruits three times a year."
It is these ideas--perhaps originally derived from the Orient--that have
developed into the Insulæ Fortunatæ.
These islands are described by many writers of later antiquity. Pliny says
[Nat. Hist., vi. 32 (37)] that according to some authors there lie to the
west of Africa
"the Fortunate Isles and many others, whose number and distance are
likewise given by Sebosus. According to him the distance of the island
of Junonia from Gades is 750,000 paces; it is an equal distance from
this island westward to Pluvialia and Capraria. In Pluvialia there is
said to be no water but that which the rain brings. 250,000 paces
south-west of it and over against the left side of Mauritania
[Morocco] lie the Fortunate Isles, of which one is called Invallis on
account of its elevated form, the other Planaria on account of its
flatness. Invallis has a circumference of 300,000 paces, and the trees
on it are said to attain a height of 140 feet."
But as usual Pliny uncritically confuses statements from various sources,
and he here adds information collected by the African king Juba about the
Fortunate Isles. According to this they were six in number: Ombrios, two
islands of Junonia, besides Capraria, Nivaria, and Canaria, so called from
the many large dogs there, of which two were brought to Juba. Solinus
mentions in one place [c. 23, 10] that there are three Fortunatæ Insulæ,
but in another place [c. 56] he gives Juba's statement from Pliny. That
these islands were located to the west of Africa is certainly due to the
Phœnicians' and Carthaginians' knowledge of the Canary Islands, and
Ptolemy also places them here (see above, p. 117). Strabo [i. 3] thinks
that the Isles of the Blest lay west of the extremity of Maurusia
(Morocco), in the region where the ends of Maurusia and Iberia meet. Their
name shows that they lie near to the holy region (i.e., the Elysian
Fields).
In his biography of the eminent Roman general Sertorius ("imperator" in
Spain for several years, died in 72 B.C.), Plutarch also mentions the
Isles of the Blest. He tells us that when Sertorius landed as an exile on
the south-west coast of Spain (Andalusia),
"he found there some sailors newly arrived from the Atlantic Isles.
These are two in number, separated only by a narrow strait, and they
are 10,000 stadia (1000 geographical miles) from the African coast.
They are called the 'Isles of the Blest.' Rain seldom falls there, and
when it does so, it is in moderation; but they usually have mild
winds, which spread such abundance of dew that the soil is not only
good for sowing and planting, but produces of itself the most
excellent fruit, and in such abundance that the inhabitants have
nothing else to do but to abandon themselves to the enjoyment of
repose. The air is always fresh and wholesome, through the favourable
temperature of the seasons and their imperceptible transition.... So
that it is generally assumed, even among the barbarians, that these
are the Elysian Fields and the habitations of the blest, which Homer
has described with all the magic of poetry. When Sertorius heard of
these marvels he had a strong desire to settle in these islands, where
he might live in perfect peace and far from the evils of tyranny and
war."
But this remarkable man soon had fresh warlike under-takings to think
about, so that he never went there. It appears too from the fragments that
have come down to us of Sallust's Histories[329] that Sertorius did not
visit these islands, but only wished to do so. In fragment 102 we read:
"It is related that he undertook a voyage far out into the ocean," and
Maurenbrecher adds that a scholium to Horace [Epod. 16, 42] says: "The
ocean wherein are the Insulæ Fortunatæ, to which Sallust in his
Histories says that Sertorius wished to retire when he had been
vanquished."
But in L. Annæus Florus, who lived under Hadrian (117-138 A.D.), we read
[iii. 22]:[330]
"An exile and a wanderer on account of his banishment, this man [i.e.,
Sertorius] of the greatest but most fatal qualities filled seas and
lands with his misfortunes: now in Africa, now in the Balearic Isles
he sought fortune, was sent out into the ocean and reached the
Fortunate Isles: finally he raised Spain to conflict."
It thus appears that by Florus's time the idea had shaped itself that
Sertorius really had sought and found these islands; which, besides, in
part at all events, were thought to be the same as those said to have been
already discovered by the Carthaginian Hanno on the west coast of Africa
about 500 B.C.
Of great interest is the description which Horace gives in his Epodes
[xvi. 39 ff.] of the Fortunate Isles in the ocean, though he does not
mention them by name. He exhorts the Romans, who were suffering from the
civil wars, to abandon the coast of Italy (the Etruscan coast) and sail
thither, away from all their miseries. Lord Lytton[331] gave the following
metrical translation of the poem:
Ye in whom manhood lives, cease woman wailings,
Wing the sail far beyond Etruscan shores.
Lo! where awaits an all-circumfluent ocean--
Fields, the Blest Fields we seek, the Golden Isles
Where teems a land that never knows the ploughshare--
Where, never needing pruner, laughs the vine--
Where the dusk fig adorns the stem it springs from,
And the glad olive ne'er its pledge belies--
There from the creviced ilex wells the honey;
There, down the hillside bounding light, the rills
Dance with free foot, whose fall is heard in music;
There, without call, the she-goat yields her milk,
And back to browse, with unexhausted udders,
Wanders the friendly flock; no hungry bear
Growls round the sheepfold in the starry gloaming,
Nor high with rippling vipers heaves the soil.
These, and yet more of marvel, shall we witness,
We, for felicity reserved; how ne'er
Dark Eurus sweeps the fields with flooding rain-storm,
Nor rich seeds parch within the sweltering glebe.
Either extreme the King of Heaven has tempered.
Thither ne'er rowed the oar of Argonaut,
The impure Colchian never there had footing.
There Sidon's trader brought no lust of gain;
No weary toil there anchored with Ulysses;
Sickness is known not; on the tender lamb
No ray falls baneful from one star in heaven.
When Jove's decree alloyed the golden age,
He kept these shores for one pure race secreted;
For all beside the golden age grew brass
Till the last centuries hardened to the iron,
Whence to the pure in heart a glad escape,
By favour of my prophet-strain is given.
Rendered into prose, Horace's poem will run somewhat as follows:
"Ye who have manliness, away with effeminate grief, and fly beyond the
Etruscan shore. There awaits us the all-circumfluent ocean: Let us
steer towards fields, happy fields and rich islands, _where the
untilled earth gives corn every year, and the vine uncut_ [i.e.,
unpruned, growing wild] _continually flourishes_, and the
never-failing branch of the olive-tree blossoms forth, and the fig
adorns its tree, honey flows from the hollow ilex, the light stream
bounds down from the high mountain on murmuring foot," etc.
We thus find here in Horace precisely the same ideas of the Elysian Fields
or the Fortunate Isles that occur later in Isidore and in the saga's
description of the fortunate Wineland; especially striking are the
expressions about the corn that each year grows wild (on the unploughed
earth) and the wild vine which continually yields fruit (blossoms,
"floret").
These myths of the Fortunate Isles--originally derived from
conceptions of the happy existence of the elect after death (in the
Elysian Fields), for which reason they were called by the Greeks the
Isles of the Blest--have also, of course, been blended with Indian
myths of "Uttara Kuru." Among the Greeks they were sometimes the
subject of humorous productions; several such of the fifth century
B.C. are preserved in Athenæus. Thus Teleclides says: "Mortals live
there peacefully and free from fear and sickness, and all that they
need offers itself spontaneously. The gutter flows with wine, wheat
and barley bread fight before the mouths of the people for the favour
of being swallowed, the fish come into the house, offer themselves and
serve themselves up, a stream of soup bears warm pieces of meat on its
waves," etc. Cf. also Lucian's description of the Isle of the Blest in
Vera Historia (second century A.D.): "The vines bear fruit twelve
times a year ... instead of wheat the ears put forth little loaves
like sponges," etc. [Wieland, 1789, iv. p. 196].
[Sidenote: Schlaraffenland and Fyldeholm]
In the Middle Ages the tale of the land of desire was widespread: in
Spain it took the name of "Tierra del Pipiripáo" or "Dorado" (the land
of gold), or again "La Isla de Jauja," said to have been discovered by
the ship of General Don Fernando. In it are costly foods, rich stuffs
and cloths in the fields and on the trees, lakes and rivers of Malmsey
and other wines, springs of brandy, pools of lemonade, a mountain of
cheese, another of snow, which cools one in summer and warms in
winter, etc. In the Germanic countries this took the form of the
legend of Schlaraffenland.[332] This mythical country has in Norway
become "Fyldeholmen" (i.e., the island of drinking),[333] which shows
that to the Norwegians of later days wine or spirits were the most
important feature in the description of the land of desire, as the
wine was to the ancient Norsemen in the conception of Wineland.
To sum up, it appears to me clear that the saga's description of Wineland
must in its essential features be derived from the myth of the Insulæ
Fortunatæ. The representations of it might be taken directly from Isidore,
who was much read in the Middle Ages, certainly in Iceland (where a
partial translation of his work was made) and in Norway (he is often
quoted in the "King's Mirror"), or orally from other old authorities, who
gave still more detailed descriptions of these islands. But the difficulty
is that the name of Wineland, connected with the ideas of the self-grown
vine and the unsown wheat, is already found in Adam of Bremen (circa 1070,
see above, pp. 195 ff.). We might therefore suppose that it was his
mention of the country which formed the basis of the Icelandic
representation of it, although his fourth book (the description of the
isles of the North) seems otherwise to have been little known in the North
at that time; but here again the difficulty presents itself that the later
description, that of the saga, is more developed and includes several
features which agree with the classical conceptions, but which are not yet
found in Adam of Bremen. I think therefore that the matter may stand thus,
that "Vínland hit Góða" was the Norsemen's name for "Insulæ Fortunatæ,"
and was in a way a translation thereof; and oral tales about the
country--based on Isidore and later on other sources as well--may have
formed the foundation of the statements both in Adam and in Icelandic
literature. In the latter, then, an ever-increasing number of features
from the classical conceptions have crystallised upon the nucleus, when
once it was formed, especially through the clerical, classically educated
saga-writers.
[Sidenote: Irish happy lands and Wineland]
As Norway, and still more Iceland (cf. pp. 167, 258), were closely
connected in ancient days with Ireland, and as Norse literature in many
ways shows traces of Irish influence, one is disposed to think that the
ideas of Wineland may first have reached Iceland from that quarter. This
exactly agrees with what was said at the beginning of this chapter, that
the statements (in the Landnámabók) from the oldest Icelandic source, Are
Frode, point directly to Ireland as the birthplace of the first reports of
Wineland. We read in the Landnámabók:
"Hvítramanna-land, which some call 'Irland hit Mikla' [Ireland the
Great], lies westward in the ocean near Wineland (Vindland) the Good.
It is reckoned six 'dœgr's' sail from Ireland."
Nothing more is said about Wineland.[334] As it is added that Are
Mársson's voyage to Hvítramanna-land
"was first related by Ravn 'Hlymreks-farer,' who had long been at
Limerick in Ireland,"
we see that Ravn, who was an Icelandic sailor of the beginning of the
eleventh century, must have heard of both Hvítramanna-land and Wineland in
Ireland, since otherwise he could not have known that one lay near the
other.[335] But as Hvítramanna-land or "Great Ireland" is an Irish
mythical country (see later), it becomes probable that Wineland the Good,
at any rate in this connection, was one likewise. The old Irish legends
mention many such fortunate islands in the western ocean, which have
similar names, and which to a large extent are derived from the classical
myths of the Elysian Fields and the Insulæ Fortunatæ. Voyages to them form
prominent features of most of the Irish tales and legends. In the heathen
tale of the Voyage of Bran ("Echtra Brain maic Febail," preserved in
fifteenth and fourteenth century copies of a work of the eleventh century,
but perhaps originally written down in the seventh century)[336] there are
descriptions of: "Emain" or "Tír na-m-Ban" (the land of women), with
thousands of amorous women and maidens, and "without care, without death,
without any sickness or infirmity" (where Bran and his men live
sumptuously each with his woman);[337] "Aircthech" (== the beautiful
land); "Ciuin" (== the mild land), with riches and treasures of all
colours, where one listens to lovely music, and drinks the most delicious
wine; "Mag Mon" (== the plain of sports); "Imchiuin" (== the very mild
land); "Mag Mell" (== the happy plain, the Elysium of the Irish), which
is described as lying beneath the sea, where without sin, without crime,
men and loving women sit under a bush at the finest sports, with the
noblest wine, where there is a splendid wood with flowers and fruits and
golden leaves, and the true scent of the vine; there is also "Inis Subai"
(the isle of gladness), where all the people do nothing but laugh.[338] It
is said in the same tale that "there are thrice fifty distant islands in
the ocean to the west of us, each of them twice or thrice as large as
Erin."
That western happy lands in the Irish legends (even in the Christian
"Imram Maelduin") should often be depicted as the Land of Women ("Tír
na-m-Ban") or Land of Virgins ("Tír na-n-Ingen"), with amorously longing
women, might be thought to have some connection with Mahomet's Paradise
and the Houris; but the erotically sensuous element is everywhere so
prominent in mediæval Irish literature that this feature may be a genuine
Irish one.[339] It must, by the way, be this "Tír na-n-Ingen" that we
meet with again in the Faroese lay "Gongu-Rólv's kvæði," where the giant
from Trollebotten carries Rolv to "Möyaland" (cf. Småmöyaland); there Rolv
slept three nights with the fair "Lindin mjá" (== the slender lime-tree,
i.e., maid), and on the third night she lost her virginity. But the other
maidens all want to see him, they all want to torment him, some want to
throw him into the sea,
"Summar vildu hann á gálgan föra Some would carry him to the gallows,
summar ríva hans hár, some would tear his hair,
uttan frúgvin Lindin mjá, except the damsel Lindin the slender,
hon fellir fyri hann tár." she shed tears for him.
She sends for the bird "Skúgv," which carries him on its back for seven
days and six nights across the sea to the highest mountain in Trondhjem.
[Cf. Hammershaimb, 1855, pp. 138 ff.]
[Illustration: From a MS. of the thirteenth century (Royal Library,
Copenhagen)]
The "Promised Land" ("Tír Tairngiri") with the "Happy Plain" ("Mag
Mell")[340] became in the Christian Irish legends the earthly Paradise,
"Terra Repromissionis Sanctorum" (the land of promise of the saints).
Other names for the happy land or happy isles in the west are: "Hy
Breasail" (== the fortunate isle), "Tír na-m-Beo" (== the land of the
living), "Tír na-n-Óg" (== the land of youth), "Tír na-m-Buadha" (== the
land of virtues), "Hy na-Beatha" (== the isle of life). The happy isle of
"Hy Breasail," which was thought to be inhabited by living people, was
also frequently called the "Great Land" (which when translated into Old
Norse might become "Víðland"); just as the "Land of the Living," where
there were only enticing women and maidens, and neither death nor sin nor
offence, was called the "Great Strand" ("Trág Mór").[341] There is also
mention of "Tír n-Ingnad" (land of marvels) and "Tírib Ingnad" (lands of
marvels). This Irish series of names and conceptions for the same
wonderful land (or strand) may well be thought to have been the origin of
the name "Furðustrandir."[342] The Irish often imagined their Promised
Land, with "Mag Mell" and also the land of women, as the sunken land
under the sea (cf. p. 355), and called it "Tír fo-Thuin" (== the land
under the wave).
[Sidenote: Brandan's Grape-Island]
It is not surprising that a name like "Vínland hit Góða" should have
developed from such a world of ideas as this. But Moltke Moe has drawn my
attention to yet another remarkable agreement, in the Grape-Island
("Insula Uvarum"), one of the fortunate isles visited by the Irish saint
Brandan. In the Latin "Navigatio Sancti Brandani"--a description of
Brandan's seven years' sea voyage in search of the "Promised Land"--it is
related that one day a mighty bird came flying to Brandan and the brethren
who were with him in the coracle; it had a branch in its beak with a bunch
of grapes of unexampled size and redness[343] [cf. Numbers xiii. 23],[344]
and it dropped the branch into the lap of the man of God. The grapes were
as large as apples, and they lived on them for twelve days.
"Three days afterwards they reached the island; it was covered with
the thickest forests of vines, which bore grapes with such incredible
fertility that all the trees were bent to the earth; all with the same
fruit and the same colour; not a tree was unfruitful, and there were
none found there of any other sort."
Then this man of God goes ashore and explores the island, while the
brethren wait in the boat (like Karlsevne and his men waiting for the
runners), until he comes back to them bringing samples of the fruits of
the island (as the runners brought with them samples of the products of
Wineland). He says: "Come ashore and set up the tent, and regale
yourselves with the excellent fruits of this land, which the Lord has
shown us." For forty days they lived well on the grapes, and when they
left they loaded the boat with as many of them as it would hold, exactly
like Leif in the "Grönlendinga-þáttr," who loaded the ship's boat with
grapes when they left Wineland; and like Thorvald at the same place, who
collected grapes and vines for a cargo [cf. "Grönl. hist. Mind.," i. pp.
222, 230].
[Sidenote: The river at Hóp and the Styx]
The fortunate island on which the monk Mernoc lived (at the beginning of
the "Navigatio") was called "Insula Deliciosa." The great river that
Brandan found in the Terra Repromissionis, and that ran through the middle
of the island, may be compared to the stream that Karlsevne found at Hóp
in Wineland, which fell into a lake and thence into the sea, and where
they entered the mouth of the river. But the river which divided the Terra
Repromissionis, and which Brandan could not cross, was evidently
originally the river of death, Styx or Acheron in Greek mythology
("Gjǫll" in Norse mythology). One might be tempted to suppose that, in
the same way as the whole description of Wineland has been dechristianised
from the Terra Repromissionis, the realistic, and therefore often
rationalising, Icelanders have transformed the river in the Promised Land,
the ancient river of death, into the stream at Hóp.
Other passages also of the descriptions of the Wineland voyages present
similarities with Brandan's voyage; and similar resemblances are found
with other Irish legends, so many, in fact, that they cannot be explained
as coincidences. The "Navigatio Sancti Brandani" was written in the
eleventh century, or in any case before 1100[345] (but parts of the legend
of Brandan may belong to the seventh and eighth centuries). The work was
widely diffused in Europe in the twelfth century, and was also well known
in Iceland; we still possess an Old Norse translation of parts of it in
the "Heilagra Manna sǫgur" [edited by Unger, Christiania, 1877, i.].
Through oral narratives the mythical features which are included in this
legend have evidently helped to form the tradition of the Wineland
voyages.
[Sidenote: Wine-fruit and wine in Irish legend]
In the tale of the voyage of Maelduin and his companions ("Imram
Maelduin," see above, p. 336),[346] it is related that they came to an
island where there were many trees, like willow or hazel, with wonderful
fruit like apples, or wine-fruit, with a thick, large shell; its juice had
so intoxicating an effect that Maelduin slept for a day and a night after
having drunk it; and when he awoke, he told his companions to collect as
much as they could of it, for the world had never produced anything so
lovely. They then filled all their vessels with the juice, which they
pressed out of the fruit, and left the island. They mixed the juice with
water to mitigate its intoxicating and soporific effect, as it was so
powerful.[347] This reminds us of Tyrker in the "Grönlendinga-þáttr," who
gets drunk from eating the grapes he found.[348]
Wine is, moreover, a prominent feature in many of the Irish legends of
sea-voyages. The voyagers often find intoxicating drinks, which make
them sleep for several days, and they are often tormented by burning
thirst and come to islands with springs that give a marvellously
quickening drink. In the tale of the voyage of the three sons of Ua
Corra (twelfth century ?) they arrive at an island where a stream of
wine flows through a forest of oaks, which glitters enticingly with
juicy fruits. They ate of the apples, drank a little of the stream of
wine, and were immediately satisfied and felt neither wounds nor
sickness any more. In the tale of Maelduin there is an island with
soil as white as a feather and with a spring which on Wednesdays and
Fridays gives whey or water, on Sundays and the days of martyrs good
milk, but on the days of the Apostles, of Mary and of John the
Baptist, and on the great festivals it gives ale and wine [cf. Zimmer,
1889, pp. 163, 189].
[Sidenote: Resemblances to Lucian]
Brandan's Grape-island, Maelduin who intoxicates himself by eating the
wine-fruit, and the stream of wine flowing through the oak forest, all
bear a remarkable resemblance to what the Greek sophist and satirist
Lucian (second century A.D.) relates in his fables in the "Vera
Historia" about the seafarers who came to a lofty wooded island. As
they wandered through the woods they came to a river, which instead of
water ran with wine, like Chios wine. In many places it was broad and
deep enough to be navigable, and it had its source in many great
vines, which hung full of grapes. In the river were fish of the colour
and taste of wine. They swallowed some so greedily that they became
thoroughly intoxicated. But afterwards they had the idea of mixing
these wine-fish with water-fish, whereby they lost the too-powerful
taste of wine and were a good dish. After wading through the river of
wine they came upon some remarkable vines, the upper part of which
were like well-developed women down to the belt. Their fingers ran out
into twigs full of grapes, their heads were covered with
vine-branches, leaves and grapes, instead of hair. "The ladies kissed
us on the mouth," says Lucian, "but those who were kissed became drunk
on the spot and reeled. Only their fruit they would not allow us to
take, and they cried out in pain if we plucked a grape or two off
them. On the other hand, some of them showed a desire to pair with us,
but two of my companions who complied with them had to pay dearly for
it; for ... they grew together with them in such a way that they
became one stem with common roots." After this strange experience the
voyagers filled their empty barrels partly with ordinary water, partly
with wine from the river, and on the following morning they left the
island. In the Isle of the Blest, at which they afterwards arrived,
there were, in addition to many rivers of water, of honey, of
sweet-scented essences and of oil, seven rivers of milk and eight of
wine. We even find a parallel in Lucian to Maelduin's white island
with the springs of milk and wine, as the travellers come to a sea of
milk, where there was a great island of cheese, covered with vines
full of grapes; but these yielded milk instead of wine [cf. Wieland,
1789, iv. pp. 150 ff., 188 f., 196]. A direct literary connection
between Lucian and the Irish myths can hardly be probable, as he is
not thought to have been known in Western Europe before the fourteenth
century; but he was much read in Eastern Europe, and oral tales
founded on his stories may have reached the Irish. The resemblances
are so pronounced and so numerous that it does not seem very probable
that they should be wholly accidental. Such an oral connection might,
for instance, have been brought about by the Scandinavians, who had
much intercourse with Miklagard (Byzantium), or by the Arabs, who in
fact preserved a great part of Greek literature, and who were in
constant communication both with Celts and with Scandinavians.
[Sidenote: Connection of the Brandan legend with northern waters]
That a mythical island like the Isle of Grapes--or perhaps others as well,
such as the "Insula Deliciosa"--might be the origin of the "Vinland hit
Góða" of the Icelanders, to which one sailed from Greenland (and of Adam
of Bremen's Winland), appears natural also from the fact that many of the
islands and tracts that are mentioned in the "Navigatio," and that for the
most part are also mentioned in the older tale of Maelduin, are
undoubtedly connected with northern and western waters. That this must be
so is easily understood when one considers the voyages of Irish monks to
the Faroes and Iceland. The Sheep Island, which was full of sheep, and
where Brandan obtained his paschal lamb, must be the Faroes, where the
sheep are mentioned even by Dicuil (see p. 163), just as the island with
the many birds also reminds us of Dicuil's account of these islands; the
island on the borders of Hell, whose steep cliffs were black as coal,
where one of Brandan's monks, when he set foot ashore, was instantly
seized and burnt by demons, and which at their departure they saw covered
with fire and flames, may have some connection with Iceland.[349] But it
also bears some resemblance to the Hell Island that Lucian's voyagers
come to, surrounded by steep cliffs, where there were stinking fumes of
asphalt, sulphur, pitch, and roasted human beings. When Brandan arrives at
the curdled sea ("mare quasi coagulatum"), and has to sail through
darkness before he comes to the Land of Happiness, or when we hear of a
thick fog like a wall about the kingdom of Manannan, we again think of the
northern regions where the Liver Sea lay, and where Adam of Bremen had his
dark or mist-filled sea.
[Sidenote: Classical roots of the Brandan legend]
While thus many features connect the legend of Brandan with northern
waters, it has, on the other hand--like many other Irish myths--its
roots far down in the mythical conceptions of the classics. Above all,
Brandan's Paradise or "Promised Land of the Saints," Terra
Repromissionis Sanctorum, is nothing but the Greeks' Isles of the
Blest, blended with ideas from the Bible. As shown by Zimmer [1889,
pp. 328 ff.], the Imram Maelduin (which to a large extent forms the
foundation of the Navigatio St. Brandani) and other Irish tales of
sea-voyages have great similarity to Virgil's Æneid, and are composed
on its model. We have already said that Brandan's Grape-island may
have some connection with Lucian. From him is possibly also derived
Brandan's great whale, "Iasconicus," on whose back they live and
celebrate Easter. But similar big fishes are known from old Indian
legends, from the legends about Alexander, etc. It may also be
mentioned that in the Breton legend corresponding to Brandan's, that
of St. Machutus (written down by Bili, deacon at Aleth, ninth
century), the latter and Brandan came to an island where they find the
dead giant "Mildu," whom Machutus awakens and baptizes and who, wading
through the sea, tries to draw their ship to the Paradise-island of
"Yma," which he says is surrounded by a wall of shining gold, like a
mirror, without any visible entrance. But a storm raises the sea and
bursts the cable by which he is towing them. Humboldt already saw in
this giant the god Cronos, who, according to Plutarch, lay sleeping on
an island in the Cronian Sea to the north-west of Ogygia, which lay
five days' voyage to the west of Britain (see above, p. 156). It is
probably the same giant who in the tale of Brandan written in Irish
("Imram Brenaind") has become a beautiful maiden, whiter than snow or
sea-spray; but a hundred feet high, nine feet across between the
breasts, and with a middle finger seven feet long. She is lying
lifeless, killed by a spear through the shoulder; but Brandan awakens
and baptizes her. She belongs to the sea-people, who are awaiting
redemption. As, in answer to Brandan's question, she prefers going
straight to heaven to living, she dies again immediately without a
sigh after taking the sacrament [cf. Schirmer, 1888, pp. 30, 72;
Zimmer, 1889, p. 136; De Goeje, 1891, p. 69]. This maiden is evidently
connected with the supernaturally beautiful, big, and white king's
daughter from the Land of Virgins ("Tír na-n-Ingen") who seeks the
protection of Finn MacCumaill, and who is also pierced by a spear [cf.
Zimmer, 1889, pp. 269, 325]. Thus do mythical beings transform
themselves till they become unrecognisable. The same woman is found
again in Iceland as late as the seventeenth century.[350]
[Sidenote: The Brandan legend and Norse literature]