The Norse Discoveries and Explorations in America [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520376496

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THE NORSE DISCOVERIES AND EXPLORATIONS IN AMERICA

sv

w

^V/

GREENLAND

The Norse ^Discoveries and Explorations in Hmerica

EDWARD REMAN

U N I V E R S I T Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley and Los Angeles

1949

U N I V E R S I T Y OF C A L I F O R N I A B E R K E L E Y AND LOS

PRESS

ANGELES

CALIFORNIA

O

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY

PRESS

LONDON,ENGLAND

COPYRIGHT, THE RECENTS

1949,

OF T H E U N I V E R S I T Y

BT OF

CALIFORNIA

PRINTED IN T H E U N I T E D STATES OF AMERICA BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

PRESS

EDITOR'S

PREFACE

NCE THE author of this book. is dead, I, his editor and friend, can say without embarrassing him how greatly I admired his magnificence of character, his largeness of mind and of soul. I knew him well, although I never saw him. For eight years we corresponded regularly and frequently: chiefly, of course, about the manuscript of this book; but increasingly, as we came to know each other's hearts, on more personal matters also. His long, plainspoken, incredibly vivid letters revealed with complete transparency the man who wrote them—a man simple of heart, of \een and powerful intelligence, modest and magnanimous. He was born in Alesund, on the west coast of Norway, in 1887; on August 4; 194$, he died suddenly in Los Angeles, of an unsuspected heart ailment. Only a few wee\s before his death he had placed in my hands his manuscript of the closing chapters of this wor\. Through the years in which we had worked upon it, he had made it abundantly clear that he had neither expectation nor desire of winningjrom it either money or reputation; he wanted nothing but the chance to make his case for what he believed to be historic truth. Many scholars, European and American, have written about the discovery of America by Leif~Eiri\sson,the voyage undertaken by Leif's brother Thorvald for the further exploration of the region which Leif had called Vinland, or Wineland, and the remarkable attempt made by Leif's Icelandic brother-in-law, Thorfinn Karlsefni, to found a colony on the American coast; but the many problems inCvii]

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Editor's Preface

volved have not been solved to the generd satisfaction of scholars. There is still no general agreement with respect to the identification of the regions visited by the Norse discoverers, nor even concerning the relative value of the tu/o chief literary documents in which the evidence of their deeds is preserved. These questions have been debated vigorously ever since the appearance of Gustav Storm's great wor\, Studier over Vinlandsreiserne, fifty years ago. Perhaps the greatest contribution since Storm was that made in 1914 by William Hovgaard, formerly Commander in the Royal Danish Navy and Professor of Naval Design and Construction in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Hovgaard's boo\, The Voyages of the Norsemen to America, published by the American-Scandinavian Foundation, brought to bear, for the first time, the special knowledge of a trained seaman and navigator on problems which obviously could not be decisively resolved without such technical expertness. The scrupulous scholarship and the judicial moderation which characterize this wor\ did not save it from the attacks of literary scholars both in Scandinavia and in the United States. Yet, although its author did not claim to have reached final solutions, he had made greater progress toward such solutions than any of his critics. In 1937 the Norwegian historian A. W. Brogger published his Vinlandsferdene, a study admirable in its learning, acuteness, and common sense. His contribution was many-sided, but perhaps most valuable in its discussion of the courses and distances sailed by the Norse explorers, and of the relations between Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. His boo\ was written late enough to ta\e advantage of

Editor's Preface

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Mjelde's study of the cyktarstaS problem, and of Norland's epoch-making archaeological researches in Greenland. Even yet, however, the major problems involved in the Vinland controversy remain unsettled. For the generality of educated laymen, the appearance, in 1942, of Professor Einar Haugen's delightful Voyages to Vinland was a major literary event. Professor Haugen, however, did not attempt to do more than "present in readable form the text of the sagas dealing with the Norse discoveries, and sift out from the enormous scholarship of the subject those facts that seem well-established and give them a proper setting." This he has accomplished with notable brilliance and charm; and the beautiful illustrations by Frederick. Trench Chapman are not less fascinating than Haugen's admirable style and penetrating discussion. But we still do not know with certainty whether Leif's great discovery was made by accident or as the result of careful and competent planning; whether the vivid account of his expedition and its fruits in the Greenland Saga can be accepted. The role of Leif's brother Thorvald in the exploration of the American coast is still debated. Not one of the landfalls of any of the voyagers has been identified with a degree of finality which compels general acceptance. These are the problems which Edward Reman has attacked in this boo\. It is my conviction that his keen intelligence, his seaman's training, and—above all—the closeness with which he has scrutinized the evidence make his work a very valuable contribution to the scholarship of an eternally vexed subject. It is Edward Reman's uniquely minute and painstaking examination of the original saga texts which constitutes the

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chief value of his wor\. Never before has their testimony been so searchingly studied; and this study has borne fruit in sharper, more critical interpretations, in the detection of long-cherished errors, and in conclusions many of which are completely, some startlingly, new. It is probable that certain of his conclusions will be rejected by men of learning and authority. In this connection I thin\ particularly of his identifications of Leifs Vinland and Karlsefni's Straumfjord and H6p. These will certainly be challenged by those who thin\ in terms of modern climatic conditions; but the author's results are founded upon the most recent and soundest climatologicd scholarship, as well as upon an analysis of Leifs course which deserves the most respectful consideration. On such matters he spea\s not only as a careful scholar, but also as an experienced seaman and navigator. I am proud to have been associated with this boo\. My tas\ has been, first, to criticize the author's views and arguments unsparingly; secondly, to scrutinize, over and over again, the successive drafts which he has written and rewritten under my criticism. It was not my function to change his mind on matters wherein we disagreed; but neither he nor I was willing to let a single sentence stand until it had become clear either that we did agree or that his view was as well supported as mine. Thereafter I revised his last draft systematically, for the most part rewriting entirely, in order to purge the text of those qualities of idiom and phrase which few men not born to English speech can sha\e o f f . Since the author's death I have once more recast the entire manuscript to ma\e sure that it has unity of style. In this process much has been

Editor's Preface

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lost: his style, tinged as it was with Norwegian idiom, had a tang and a force which I should have been glad to preserve. If the manner of the boo\ is mine, its matter, its content, are wholly Edward Remans. I have not presumed to alter any statement of opinion or belief since his death made consultation with him impossible. Both the discoveries and the theories here presented are his. He owes me nothing; I owe him an infinite debt, both for the intellectual adventure upon which he has led me and for my long and deeply rewarding acquaintance with him. Above all, I shall never forget the splendid gift of his friendship. *> -o- Attr), Thorvald was killed by a Skraeling (Indian) arrow when on a voyage of exploration undertaken in the course of his own cruise to Vinland. The whole saga of Thorvald, in the Greenland tradition, is so circumstantial and realistic that we cannot doubt its substantial truth. There is only one point at which it diverges from the real: the mysterious warning received by Thorvald and his crew in their sleep; and this feature does not affect the validity of the narrative. It is a common Norse superstition and could easily find its way into the soberest tradition. There is, then, no reason to doubt that the Greenland Version tells us the simple truth concerning Thorvald's death. Accordingly, since Thorvald had died when on his own explorations in Vinland—that is, before Thorfinn Karlsefni ever set out on his voyage to the New World—he could not have been in Karlsefni's company at all; and both the Icelandic account of his death, and the statement earlier in the Icelandic Version that he accompanied Karlsefni, are entirely fictitious. Greenland tradition naturally recalled with

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substantial accuracy the exploits and the fates of the leading family of Greenland; Iceland tradition, just as naturally, recalled with reasonable accuracy the deeds of Icelanders, and was far less careful to preserve with fidelity to truth details which concerned Greenland folk. I shall discuss, in a later chapter, the relation of the Uniped episode to its immediate context. The episode itself must have been present in the parent manuscript from which both A M 544 and A M 557 derive, since it is preserved in both manuscripts. But it is not the stuff of genuine oral tradition; it might most reasonably be regarded as an insertion into the parent manuscript by a learned man. This, however, is questionable, for the saga text contains a bit of verse which is unlikely to be the work of a clerk. When Karlsefni's men return from vain pursuit of the Uniped, one of them is said to have spoken these lines: The men drove—most true was that— A Uniped down to the strand; But the wondrous being into the water Headlong rushed; Hear thou, Karlsefni.

It is generally believed that these verses are very old; they do not appear to be the work of a bookman. If this is true, they are older than the parent manuscript. The evidence for such age is actually slight; but they have the "feel" of age. Belief in unipeds is very ancient: Pliny the Elder tells of men with one leg who hop about with incredible speed and whose single foot is so large that they can raise it above their heads to shelter their bodies from the burning sun of Ethiopia. Imagination peopled Asia and Africa with giants, pygmies, folk with one eye in the middle of the forehead, and "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders!'

Two Versions of the Vtnland Sagas

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From Pliny, from the fantastic legends of Alexander the Great, and from Oriental story such wonder tales reached medieval writers, and were embodied in such works as the Middle High German Herzog Ernst and the Travels of Maundeville. These absurd stories became popular in Iceland during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and have their counterparts in the so-called lygisogur ("lying sagas"). The role of the Uniped as Thorvald's slayer cannot have formed any part of the saga previous to the thirteenth century, when such foreign wonder tales became popular. Since it is at least as old as the parent manuscript, and may be older, it is safest to assume that it was interpolated into the oral saga not long before it was written down. One cannot, however, reject the possibility that the verses may have been the work of the clerk who first reduced the saga to writing. The tradition of Thorvald's death must have been very imperfectly remembered in Iceland. It was recalled only that he had been slain with an arrow in the New World; it was not remembered that he had died on his own voyage of discovery. Consequently some learned Icelander had only to substitute the Uniped for the Skraeling of history, and to attach Thorvald to Karlsefni's company. Just where does the interpolation begin P Can we simply exclude Thorvald and the Uniped, and accept the immediate setting—Karlsefni's search for Thorhall, the course he followed, the wilderness and the river, the return to Straumfjord ? We must reject the motive given for the return: fear to remain in Uniped Land. Is the search for Thorhall itself fictitious ?

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Much depends on whether Thorhall had actually parted company with Karlsefni in order to cruise north in search of Vinland, as the saga says, or whether he had left for home, as the verses assigned to him affirm. If the old man went to find Vinland, then Karlsefni may well have sailed in search of him; the real reason for returning from the river to Straumfjord may have been that no more time could safely be spent on such an enterprise. But if, as the verses assert, Thorhall had sailed for Greenland, there would have been no sense in attempting to find him a year afterward. In that case, the whole story of the search for Thorhall must be fictitious. This problem we shall consider again. The uniped tale contrasts revealingly with the clearly genuine story of Thorhall's shamanism. The latter is good native Norse belief: a pagan hunter would naturally make incantations to Thor for food, and would believe, when a whale was cast ashore, that this timely succor was the result of his hocus-pocus. But the uniped is of foreign origin, unknown in the North at the time of Karlsefni's voyage. The Skraeling boys also seem to be later invention. Their story contains details highly improbable: the yarn of white men living in the land opposite theirs; the patly alliterating names given their parents and their "kings'.' If such boys had been captured, taught the Norse tongue, baptized, and brought back to Iceland with Karlsefni, then the Greenland Version would have preserved some trace of the event, since Karlsefni spent the winter after his return to Greenland at BrattahliS. Moreover, if the tale were true, the appearance of Indian or Eskimo boys in Iceland would certainly have been commemorated in other sagas by the curious clerks of the island.

Two Versions of the Vtnland Sagas

43

There is also an element of the fantastic in the story of Bjarni Grimulfsson's death, which follows the account of Karlsefni's return to Greenland. It reads as follows: Bjarni and his crew were blown into the Irish Sea, where the waters were infested with sea maggots. These creatures riddled the ship, which began to sink. They had a small boat coated with seal blubber, which the worms could not penetrate. Bjarni said: "We will draw lots to see who goes in the small boat, for it will hold only half of us!' This was done, and Bjarni drew a place in the boat. A young Icelander who was to remain on the doomed ship asked Bjarni: "Are you going to leave me like this?" "So it seems" Bjarni replied. "That was not what you promised my father when we left Iceland," the young man said. "You said then we should both share the same fate!' "I see no better way" answered Bjarni. "Do you know any?" Then, after a moment, he said: "I will take your place on the ship, and you shall take mine here in the boat, since you are afraid to die" Bjarni and the Icelander changed places; those in the small boat continued their voyage, and landed at Dublin in Ireland, where they reported what had happened. Men think that Bjarni and all the others on the ship perished in the maggot sea.

Immediately after this, the story of Karlsefni is resumed: After spending the winter at BrattahliS, Karlsefni sailed to Iceland the following summer, and with him went Gudrid and the boy Snorri. They took in at Reyniness. But now Karlsefni's mother thought he had married beneath him; and for that reason Gudrid stayed away the first winter. But when the mother learned what a fine woman Gudrid was, the two were reconciled. The son of Snorri was named Thorgeir. He was father to Ingvild, mother of Bishop Brand Saemundarson. Snorri's daughter HallfriS married Runolf; their son was Thorlak,

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bishop in Skalholt. Karlsefni's son Thorbjörn was father of Thorunn, who was mother to Bishop Björn Gilsson. Many men of renown are descended from Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid. And thus the Saga ends. THORFINN KARLSEFNI'S SAGA Greenland Version

(Flateyarb6\—Groenlendinga

pdttr)

There was much discussion at BrattahliS concerning Vinland; and everyone, including Gudrid, urged Thorfinn Karlsefni to make a voyage to the land Leif had found. Thorfinn decided to sail, and assembled a company of sixty men and five women for the voyage; he entered into an agreement with them that all should share equally in the profits of the enterprise. They took along catde of all kinds, for it was their purpose to found a settlement in the land, if that were possible. Karlsefni asked Leif for his houses in Vinland; but Leif replied that he would lend the property, but not give it. They then sailed out to sea, and arrived safe and sound at Leif's Houses, and carried their goods ashore. They speedily secured plenty of good food; for a huge whale was driven ashore, and they secured it, flensed it, and cut it up. The catde were turned out upon the land; they had brought a bull along. Karlsefni ordered them to fell trees for a cargo for the ship, and they also gathered other products of the land—grapes, game, fish, and other things. One day in the next summer they saw a great horde of Skraelings coming out of the woods. The catde were close by, and the bull began to bellow and roar. This frightened the Skraelings, who ran away with their packs, in which were all kinds of skins and peltries. The Skraelings fled to Thorfinn's house and tried to get inside; but Thorfinn barred the doors against them. Neither party could understand the other's language. Then the Skraelings put down their packs, opened them, and offered skins and furs in exchange for weapons; but Karlsefni forbade his men to sell their weapons. He bade the women carry out milk to the Skraelings, who no sooner saw the milk than they wanted to buy it and nothing else. So the outcome of the trading was that the Skraelings carried their purchases away in their stomachs and

Two Versions of the Vmland Sagas

45

left their packs with skins and furs with Karlsefni and his men. And the Skradings went away. Karlsefni ordered a strong palisade of timbers erected around the houses. It was at that time that Gudrid, Karlsefni's wife, gave birth to a boy, who was named Snorri. At the beginning of the next winter the Skradings appeared again, this time in much greater numbers. They brought with them the same kind of wares as before. Then Karlsefni said to the women: "Carry out to them the same kind of food which was most profitable the other time, and nothing else!' When the Skradings saw the milk, they threw their packs in over the palisade. Gudrid, meantime, was sitting in the doorway beside the cradle of her child, Snorri, when a shadow fell inside the door. Then a woman in a black cloak entered; she was rather short, and had a band about her light-brown hair; she was pale, and so big-eyed that eyes so large were never seen in any human head. She came close to Gudrid and said: "What is your name?" "My name is Gudrid, but what is yours?" "My name is Gudrid" the woman said. Then Gudrid, Karlsefni's wife, motioned to the woman to sit beside her; but at that same moment she heard a great crash; and the strange woman disappeared. In that very instant one of the Skradings, who had tried to seize the Northmen's weapons, was killed by one of Thorfinn's men. The Skradings fled, leaving their clothes and goods behind; and not a soul, except Gudrid, had seen the strange woman. Then Karlsefni called the men to council, and said: "It is my belief that the Skradings will visit us a third time, and attack us with overwhelming strength. Let us adopt this plan: ten of you shall go out to yonder headland and show yourselves there; and the rest of you shall go into the woods and cut a clearing for our cattle when the Skradings come out of the forest. We shall take our bull along and let him go ahead of us!' The lie of the land was such that the expected meeting place had the lake on one side and the woods on the other. Karlsefni's advice was followed; and the Skradings made their appearance at the very place Karlsefni had picked for the battle. The fight began, and many of the Skradings were slain. One Skrading was big and strong, and Karlsefni thought he must be their chief. A Skrading picked

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up an ax, looked at it, then swung it at one of his companions, who fell dead on the instant. Then the big man took the ax, and after handling it a moment he threw it as far as he could into the lake. Then the Skrxlings fled into the forest; and so the fight came to an end. Karlsefni and his followers stayed there all that winter; but in the spring he decided that he did not wish to stay there any longer, but would return to Greenland. They then made ready for the voyage, and took with them a large quantity of grapes, vines, and peltries. They set out to sea, and came with their ship safely to Eiriksfjord, and stayed in Greenland over the winter. THE VOYAGE OF FREYDis, EIRIK'S DAUGHTER Greenland Version Now there was renewed talk in Greenland about voyaging to Vinland, as a source of profit as well as of reputation. The same summer that Thorfinn Karlsefni returned from Vinland, a ship came to Greenland from Norway. It was owned by two brothers, Helgi and Finnbogi; and they stayed that winter in Greenland. They were Icelanders, from AustfirSir. One day Freydis, Eirik's daughter, left her home at GarSar [in Greenland] and went to visit the two brothers. She suggested that they accompany her on a voyage to Vinland: they were to use their ship, and she her own; and they were to share equally in the profits of the venture. The brothers agreed. Freydis then went to see her brother Leif and asked him to give her the houses he had built in Vinland. But Leif answered her, as he had Karlsefni, that he would lend her the property, but would not give it to her. It was agreed that each ship should have a crew of thirty men, besides women; but Freydis violated the agreement by taking five extra men, and concealing them, so that the two brothers did not know of this until they reached Vinland. Then they set sail. They had also agreed to sail the whole distance in company, if that should be possible; but though the ships were not far apart, the brothers arrived in Vinland a litde before Freydis, unloaded their ship, and brought their belongings up to Leif's Houses. When Freydis landed and saw what they had done, she asked:

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47

"Why have you brought your stuff up here?" "Because" they answered, "we thought all promises made between us would be kept!' "Leif lent the houses to me, not to you" she retorted. "We can't match you in meanness" Helgi answered. Then the brothers removed their goods, and built a dwelling of their own farther from the sea on the edge of the lake, and lived there. Freydis now ordered her men to cut timber to load the ship. When winter set in, the brothers suggested that they play games to pass the time; and this they did for a while. Then dissension broke out, the games came to an end, and the visits between the houses stopped. Things remained in this state far into the winter. One morning early, Freydis got up from her bed and dressed, but did not put on socks or shoes. The grass was heavy with dew. She had wrapped her husband's cloak about her, and thus clad she walked over to the brothers' house. A man had gone outside a little while before and left the door half closed. She pushed it open and stood silendy in the doorway. Finnbogi, who was lying on the bed by the inner wall, was awake. "What is it you want, Freydis?" he said. "I wish you would come with me" said Freydis. "I want to talk to you." Finnbogi rose and followed her to a fallen tree close by the house, and they both sat down on it. "How do you like it here?" she asked. "I am well pleased with the country" Finnbogi answered, "but I don't like the ill feeling that has arisen between us, for I don't think there is any reason for it" "I think as you do" said Freydis. "But what I came to see you about is this: I want to trade ships with you. Yours is larger than mine, and I want to sail for home before long!' "I'll agree to the trade, since you wish it" said Finnbogi. Freydis then went home, and Finnbogi went back to bed. Freydis climbed into bed and wakened her husband, Thorvard, with her cold feet. He asked her why she was so cold and wet. She answered, with great vehemence: "I went over to the brothers' house to ask them to trade ships, since I want a bigger one than ours; but they got angry and struck me and mishandled me. And you, poltroon that you are, will avenge neither my shame nor your own. It's plain enough that I am not in Greenland. I'll divorce you unless you take revenge for this!'

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Unable to stand her taunts, Thorvard ordered his men to get up at once and take their weapons. They did so, and went straight to the brothers' house, caught its people asleep, bound them, and led them outside one at a time. Freydis ordered each one killed as he came out, till the two brothers and all their men were slain. But the women were left, and no one wanted to kill them. Then said Freydis, "Give me an ax!" They did; and she killed all five women. After this wicked deed Freydis and her people went back home, and she seemed well satisfied with her work. And she said to her companions: "When we get back to Greenland, if any of you breathes a word about this business, I'll be the death of him. Our story will be that we left Helgi and Finnbogi living here with their men!' Early in the spring they made the brothers' ship ready, loaded it with the produce of the land, and sailed. They had a good voyage, and reached Eiriksfjord early in the summer. Karlsefni had got there before them, and had his ship ready for sea and was only waiting a fair wind for Iceland. Men say that no ship ever left Greenland more richly laden than Thorfinn Karlsefni's.... Freydis now went to her home, which had suffered no damage in her absence. She paid heavy bribes to all who had been with her on her voyage, to keep her wicked deeds hidden. But not all of them were sufficiently close-mouthed. Her wickedness at last reached the ears of her brother Leif, who didn't like the story at all. He took three of her men and tortured them till they confessed; and they all told the same story. "I haven't the heart" said Leif, "to punish my sister Freydis as she deserves; but I foresee clearly that her offspring will prosper little!" And so it came to pass: from then on, no one thought anything but ill of Freydis's descendants. As for Thorfinn Karlsefni, he had a prosperous voyage, and landed safely in Norway, where he sold his cargo and stood in high favor. The next spring, when he was ready to sail for Iceland and lay waiting for a fair wind, a German came to him—a man from Bremen in Saxony, who wanted to buy his hiisasnotra (probably a finely carved ship's stem post or figurehead). "I have no wish to part with it" said Thorfinn. "I'll give you half a mark in gold," said the Saxon. Thorfinn thought this a good bargain, and so the Saxon went off with the h&sasnotra. Karlsefni did not know what kind of wood it was; but it was mbsurr wood [probably white birch] from Vinland.

Two Versions of the Vinland Sagas

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The discrepancies between the narratives of the Greenland and the Icelandic versions can be seen at a glance; and there has been much argument over the relative "genuineness" of the two versions. Few scholars have presented so cogent and closely argued a case as Professor William Hovgaard." It was he who first saw clearly that Karlsefni's expedition could neither have landed in Leif's Vinland nor reached any point so far south. He rightly recognized—as most investigators have done—the general superiority of the Icelandic Version for Karlsefni's voyage; and he alone appreciated the significance of its account of the course set at the beginning of that voyage. In Eiri\s Saga, in spite of the preliminary statement that Karlsefni and Snorri Thorbrandsson intended to sail for Vinland, it is soon made clear that they did nothing of the kind. Instead, they set out from Greenland at a point so far north that their course was certain not to take them anywhere near the region which Leif had named Vinland. From that point on, their landfalls and discoveries are reported in terms which make it clear that the lands they found were not the lands which had been found by Leif. Having established this vital point, Hovgaard identifies Leif's most southerly discovery with the coast of Massachusetts, and Karlsefni's most southerly landfall with Newfoundland.10 I shall propose, in a later chapter, identifications of the regions visited by Karlsefni which do not iagree with Hovgaard's; but I wish at this point to stress the high value of his demonstration of Karlsefni's northerly course. Most later writers have done him scant justice; some distin* The Voyages of the Norsemen to America, New York, Amcrican-Scandinavian Foundation, 1914, pp. 140 S., 236 ff. 10 Ibid., pp. 252-254, 228-229.

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guished scholars have ignored or brushed aside, with a casualness which does them scant credit, the evidence he has presented. Hovgaard also recognized that in certain particulars the Greenland Version, in spite of its generally less credible account of Karlsefni's expedition, preserves a more rational and probably more accurate tradition. He showed, for example, that the strategy employed by Karlsefni in his encounter with the Skraelings is much better motivated than the corresponding situation in Eiriks Saga. Against this, of course, there are other, equally plausible, details in the Icelandic Version which are missing from Groenlendinga: the peace signs and war signs made reciprocally by Skraelings and Norsemen; the preference shown by the natives for red cloth (much more plausible than their fondness for milk in the Greenland Version); and the realistic description of the natives. Moreover, Karlsefni's decision to abandon his project of settling in the New World is much more convincingly motivated in Eiri\s Saga. I shall show cause for partial agreement and partial disagreement with Hovgaard's judgment that "what is presented in the Saga of Eric the Red as one combined expedition is in reality a compound of two or more voyages. Probably a partial superposition of Leif's and Thorvald's voyages on that of Karlsefni has taken place in Efirik's Saga] i?[au3a], while, on the other hand, the voyages of Karlsefni and Freydis are wrongly separated in G[roenlendinga] Hattr]." 11 Undoubtedly there are, in the Icelandic version of Karlsefni's voyage, confused reminiscences of that of Thorvald; u

Ibid., p. 237.

Two Versions of the Vtnland Sagas

51

but they are scarcely numerous enough, or sufficiently rational, to justify the assertion that Eiriks Saga presents "a compound of two or more voyages!' Nor is there any real "superposition": there is surely an intrusion into the Eiriks Saga narrative of Karlsefni's expedition of a fantastic and spurious tale of Thorvald's death. The statement, early in the Icelandic Version, thatThorvald accompanied Karlsefni was probably inserted afterward, as a consequence and justification of this intrusive fable. There is, I think, little evidence, in the record of Karlsefni's voyage, of a "partial superposition" of Leif's voyage, except as the incident of the two Scotch thralls is a distorted imitation of the role played by Tyrker in the Greenland tradition of Leif's expedition. Nor can I agree that the voyages of Karlsefni and Freydis are "wrongly separated in Groenlendinga pattr." There is a strong antecedent probability that Greenland tradition would preserve a more accurate account of the activities of the great Greenland family of Eirik the Red than Icelandic tradition would be able to preserve or be interested in preserving. Moreover, the Icelandic account of Freydis's actions is utterly lacking in plausibility, while the Greenland Version is, in this particular, entirely reasonable. A useful if not infallible test is the manner in which the characters are dealt with in the two versions. Absolutely all that the Icelandic Version tells of Freydis is (1) that she and her husband Thorvard accompanied Karlsefni and (2) that Freydis routed the Skraelings by stroking her breasts with a sword. Similarly the Icelandic Version mentions Thorvald only at the outset, as accompanying Karlsefni, and in the entirely fictitious story of his death at the hands of the Uniped. The Greenland Version, much more

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reasonably, states that he died, in the course of his own explorations, from a Skrading arrow. Except for Freydis, Thorvard, and Thorvald, all the chief personages of Karlsefni's company are presented rationally in Birihj Saga; their actions are reported in some detail; and we receive a very real impression of their vigorous roles in the story. Thorvald, Thorvard, and Freydis, on the other hand, are mere shadows, each of whom is barely mentioned; nothing beyond their presence is reported of them, except the single incident assigned to each of the two children of Eirik. This single incident is in the one case improbable, in the other impossible. How different—how vivid, detailed, and well-motivated— are the actions of Freydis, Thorvard, and Thorvald in the Greenland Version I Thorvald makes his own voyage, finds Vinland by following the course imparted to him by Leif, and materially extends Leif's discoveries, only to die in an encounter with natives. Freydis and Thorvard make a joint expedition to Leif's Houses with the brothers Helgi and Finnbogi; at the instigation of his avaricious wife, the weak Thorvard murders the brothers and their men, and Freydis butchers the women. Whether or not accurate in detail, these accounts are so circumstantial, and the narrative so vivid, so true to life, that we must accept their general outline. We can only conclude that, so far as concerns the adventures of Thorvald and Freydis, the Greenland Version is substantially correct and the Icelandic Version preserves only a faded and corrupt account. With respect to the colonizing expedition of Karlsefni, however, the situation is reversed. We should, of course, expect the Icelandic Version to preserve most accurately

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the tradition of an important undertaking captained by Icelanders, men of rank and consequence in Iceland. And this is the case. Once we exclude, as due to interpolation or confusion, such grotesque elements as the tall tales about Freydis and Thorvald, the Scotch thralls, and the Skrseling boys, the Icelandic Version tells not only a more probable story than Groenlendinga, but an essentially different story. The chief difference, of course, lies in the setting of Karlsefni's settlements in the New World: according to Groenlendinga, Karlsefni sets out with the deliberate purpose of finding Leif's Vinland, makes a successful landing there, stays there two years, and then—although he had intended to make a permanent settlement—abandons his plan for no apparent reason. In~Eiri\sSaga, he visits quite different regions, stays in them for three years, has in one of them (Straumfjord) experiences most of which have no parallel in Groenlendinga, and abandons his project reluctantly, in the face of demonstrated necessity. These fundamental differences between the two versions in their treatment of Karlsefni's expedition are somewhat obscured by superficial though vivid similarities. Both have in common the incident of the whale washed ashore; both have the scenes of trade and battle with the Skraelings, the terror of the natives at the bellowing of the bull; the story of the Skradings and the ax. But these common features, however striking, are not fundamental: since both versions have them, we may admit that they are true; but their significance lies in the clarity with which they show how tradition clings to the picturesque and preserves it through centuries, even when it loses matter more essential but less glittering. These elements survive in both versions precisely

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because they are vivid, and so were easily remembered by all who took part in the expedition, and by all who heard and retold the story later. The differences between the two versions, with respect to Karlsefni's expedition as well as to the voyages of Leif, Thorvald, and Freydis, are much more basic and significant. Eirt\s Saga recognizes only two successful voyages, Leif's and Karlsefni's. It represents Leif s discoveries, however, as accidental, does not name the lands he sighted, or give any details concerning their locations. It attaches Thorvald and Freydis to Karlsefni's expedition. With respect to that last great voyage, the two versions differ on the size of Karlsefni's company and the number of ships, the course followed, the personnel, the regions discovered and explored, many of the adventures experienced, and the reason for the return to Greenland. In short, the two versions differ on everything of real importance and agree chiefly on nonessentials. Such basic lack of concord between the two versions cries aloud for explanation. The explanation which was offered by Storm, and which has been vigorously defended by Finnur Jonsson and Halld6r Hermannsson," is that Groenlendinga pâttr preserves a confused, distorted reminiscence of events much more accurately recorded in Eirikj Saga; that Eiriks Saga is in the main historically reliable, and that Groenlendinga is historically worthless. This view, as originally propounded by u Gustav Storm, "Studier over Vinlandsreiserne," Aarbfger for nordisk. Oldkyndighed og Historié, Copenhagen, 1887, translated under the tide, "Studies on the Vineland Voyages" (extract of Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord, Copenhagen, 1888); Finnur Jânsson, "Erik den Rôdes Saga og Vinland," Historisk, Tidss\rift (Kristiania), 1 9 1 1 , and "Opdagelsen af og Rejserne til Vinland," Aarbfiger for nordisk. Oldkyndighed, 1915, pp. 205-221; Halldâr Hermannsson, "The Problem of Wineland," Islandica, XXV, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1936.

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Storm, has been effectively refuted by Hovgaard, GathorneHardy, Brogger, and—more cautiously—by Haugen." The attacks on Groenlendinga by Jonsson and Hermannsson are, in the main, repetitions of those of Storm. Jonsson failed to see that Storm's most damaging charges against Groenlendinga arose from misunderstandings of its text; instead of recognizing Hovgaard's demonstration of their baselessness, he reiterated them. Hermannsson ignored both Hovgaard and Gathorne-Hardy, revived the twicedisproved arguments of Storm, and adds to Storm's textual errors others of his own. Instances of this hardy persistence in error will illustrate the general unsoundness of these assaults upon Groenlendinga pditr. Storm, Jonsson, and Hermannsson all assert that Groenlendinga represents Tyrker as becoming drunk by eating grapes, and Leif and his crew as gathering grapes in spring. Hovgaard pointed out that Groenlendinga makes no such statements. All three critics assert that Groenlendinga gives little or no information about Leif's, Thorvald's, or Freydis's course to Vinland—completely ignoring the fact that it gives full information for Bjarni's courses from his most southerly American landfall back to Greenland, and that Leif made his discoveries by reversing Bjarni's course from his most northerly landfall to Greenland and then coasting south. Hovgaard had pointed this out, but it appears that the school of Storm is impervious to evidence. Thorvald and Freydis, of course, needed only to learn Leif's course from him, and follow it. Jonsson makes the unpar" Hovgaard, op. cit.; G. M. Gathorne-Hardy, The Norse Discoverers of America, Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1921; A. W. Br0gger, Vinlandsferdene, Oslo, 1937; Einar Haugen, Voyages to Vinland, New York, 1942 (see esp. pp. 1 1 5 116).

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donable assertion that Tyrker is represented as discovering grapes in winter, although the text neither states nor implies anything of the sort. Storm and Jonsson reject both the voyage of Bjarni Herjulfsson and the Groenlendinga account of Leif's voyage, partly on the ground that the region sighted last by Bjarni, and called Helluland by Leif, is described as glaciated. These learned scholars assert that no region in North America south of Greenland has glaciers! This error has been pointed out by both Hovgaard and Brogger: from Resolution Island or from the adjacent coast of Baffin Island the Grinnell Glacier is in plain view! Storm, Jonsson, and Hermannsson all reject the Groenlendinga report of Thorvald's voyage; all three offer as evidence the reported discovery, by Thorvald's men, of a hornhjalm. This, they argue, implies that the Indians of that day were agriculturists. They apparently did not realize that many North American peoples, even those who cultivate no plants, gather and store wild grains. No explanation of the differences between the versions which assumes the worthlessness of either is tenable. If Groenlendinga were merely a corrupt and confused tradition of events correctly reported in Eiriks Saga, it could not present the clear, consistent, and comparatively detailed picture of the voyages of the children of Eirik which we find in it. Jonsson himself once observed that Icelanders are famous for their lack of imaginationand a most lively creative imagination would have been needed to expand the meager statement of Leif's discoveries in Eiri\s Saga into the full and circumstantial story in Groenlendinga, to develop the mere mention of Thorvald's attachment to Karl" Jonsson, Den oldnorskf

og oldislandskf

Litteraturs Historic, Vol. Ill, p. 80.

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sefni's expedition and his fantastic death into the relatively large, realistic, comprehensive story of his voyage in the Greenland Version, or to invent out of virtually whole cloth the sinister Greenland tale of Freydis. It is much more reasonable to believe that the narrative of these events in Groenlendinga is substantially true, as it is in all but a few details reasonable and consistent. Conversely, Eirif^s Saga, demonstrably superior in its account of Karlsefni's expedition, is entirely unreliable in what it has to say concerning the sons and daughter of Eirik. It is unreliable on their voyages precisely because it is, from beginning to end, Icelandic tradition; and Icelanders were more interested in Karlsefni than in the exploits of Greenlanders. Gathorne-Hardy has shown that Groenlendinga pdttr is no mere late Icelandic redaction of a confused Icelandic tradition, but is basically Greenland tradition.15 There is no way in which its accounts of the voyages could have been preserved unless they had rested ultimately upon the reports brought back to Greenland by the voyagers themselves: by Leif and his crew; by Thorvald's crew; by those men of Freydis's whom Leif tortured into confession. These reports, much talked of in Greenland, were told and retold, handed down through generations, and brought to Iceland. In Iceland they were first reduced to writing, but they still preserve a Greenlandic conformation. This conformation shows in the very theme of Groenlendinga, in the focus of its interest, as contrasted with that of Eiri\s Saga. Groenlendinga deals with all the westward voyages of which Greenlanders knew anything, including Karlsefni's, but it is primarily concerned with those of the children of Eirik, K

Op. cit., pp. 139-144.

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father of the Greenland colony. Eiri\s Saga focuses sharply on Karlsefni, his wife Gudrid, and their colonization expedition; it says little, and knows little, about Leif and Thorvald and Freydis, because its very theme is Karlsefni and his house. To those Icelanders who transmitted and preserved Eiriks Saga the voyages of these Greenlanders were important only so far as they supplied background for Karlsefni and Gudrid. When the Greenland tradition of the voyages of Bjarni Herjulfsson, Leif Eiriksson, Thorvald, and Freydis had assumed relatively stable form in Greenland—when it had become a "saga"—there must also have existed there an incomplete, distorted oral tradition of Karlsefni's voyage. At this same time there flourished, in Iceland, a very substantial and dependable oral tradition of Karlsefni's great voyage of colonization and settlement. Iceland preserved only a fragmentary and inaccurate tradition of the discovery of Vinland. If Icelanders had any knowledge of Bjarni's voyage, it was soon lost; their recollection of Leif's discoveries was so faded as to be worthless; their only memory of Thorvald's voyage was a confused reminiscence of his death by a native's arrow in the New World. Iceland knew little of Freydis: she was wrongly thought to have been with Karlsefni. Between the first writing down of these oral traditions and the compilation of the extant saga texts there could have been no real advance in knowledge concerning the Vinland voyages. There is some evidence, in both versions, of attempts to reconcile conflicting local traditions, and some fabulous material has come in; but the compilers accepted, as a rule uncritically, the now lost manuscripts which

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formed their immediate sources, and were unable to throw additional light on landfalls or topography. I contend that neither of the two versions is, generally, more accurate than the other; that the Greenland Version alone has substantial value for the voyages and discoveries of Leif, Thorvald, and Freydis; and that the Icelandic Version alone is authoritative for the expedition of Karlsefni, although—as Hovgaard surmised—Groenlendinga preserves a few details which throw light upon that expedition. The evidence for this position is clear: Groenlendinga alone affords any definite account of the courses, landfalls, explorations, and experiences in Vinland of the children of Eirik; Eirikj Saga alone gives a detailed, reasonable, and credible narrative of the courses, landfalls, and experiences of Karlsefni. The first of these statements should be obvious; the second becomes so as soon as we recognize that, in any deliberate attempt to found a permanent settlement, Karlsefni could not have set out for, or made use of, Leif's Vinland. Only in Eiriks Saga is there a just and clear correspondence between the purposes of Karlsefni's enterprise and the regions in which it is set. This correspondence is supported by the parallel correspondence, in Eiriks Saga, between the course laid by Karlsefni on leaving Eiriksfjord and the landfalls to which this course inevitably led him. Therefore I shall follow the Greenland Version in my analysis of the lands sighted and explored by Leif and Thorvald; and in my identifications of the regions discovered by Karlsefni I shall follow Eiriks Saga. This procedure, I believe, will result in solutions more logical and more in accord with the testimony of the texts than any which treats one version as "genuine" and the other as "corrupt!'

Chapter III LEIF EIRiKSSON'S

DISCOVERIES

involved in identifying the regions covered by Leif Eiriksson and the later Norse voyto the New World are amply illustrated by the sharp differences of opinion among those writers who have attacked the problem. These difficulties arise from ( i ) the traditional nature of the source material, which was preserved and transmitted orally for generations before it was written down, and which has therefore been subject to losses, to interpolation, or to confusion; (2) the dearth, in the extant texts, of precise data, particularly with respect to courses, times, and distances in any given voyage; and (3) misapprehension of certain terms used in the texts. In the Greenland Version of Leif's voyage we have to reckon with the possibility that his story has been influenced by traditions of other expeditions. For example, Flateyarb6\, reporting that Leif "found first the land that Bjarni had found last" states specifically that on the hinterland of this region there were glaciers. Now, as we shall see later on, there is every reason to believe that the climatic conditions then prevailing were much milder than those of the present time. Certainly, then, unless this land first found by Leif be identified with Baffin Island, it could hardly have been glaciated. Bjarni's last landfall is said to have been an island; and we are tempted to identify it with Resolution Island rather than with Baffin Land, the insular nature of which it would have been very difficult for Bjarni to ascertain. But Resolution Island cannot then have been glaciated. DIFFICULTIES

C6o]

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On Baffin Land itself Cumberland Peninsula boasts many glaciers; but Bjarni can hardly have sailed so far north, nor is it likely that Leif did. It seems most probable that Bjarni's island was Resolution, and that from there he sighted the vast spread of Grinnell Glacier, on the southernmost peninsula of Baffin Island. Leif may actually have made the same landfall, as Groenlendinga asserts. The chances are that he did, since the southern peninsula of Baffin Island is just such a land as the saga describes: barren, covered with bare rocks, and with the background of Grinnell Glacier. But we cannot wholly exclude the possibility that the saga's report may be colored by the tradition of Bjarni's last American landfall. At all events, the statement that Leif found first the land which Bjarni had seen last is true in essence: that is, Leif made his first landfall at about the same latitude as that of Bjarni's third. We may, therefore, identify Leif's Helluland with some part of the coast between Resolution Island and Hall Peninsula on Baffin Island. This is Brogger's conclusion; and it agrees substantially with Hovgaard's. The text contains no sailing directions whatever. When it expresses distance sailed at all, it does so in terms of elapsed time; often even this is not stated. Scholars who have assumed that sailing distances can be inferred with any closeness from elapsed time have often unconsciously interpreted such distances in terms of preconceived theory with respect to the lands discovered. Finally, it has proved all too tempting to make such inferences about distance as if the text fixed the elapsed time as from one precise point to another; and this is not true. Thus, the statement in Groenlendinga pdttr that, after leav-

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ing Markland, Leif and his men "were out two days before they saw land" has been interpreted by Hovgaard as indicating that Leif's Vinland was at or near Cape Cod. As we shall see later, there are serious grounds for questioning this view. Leif's point of departure is not given as a fixed spot, a specific locality, but as a general region. The nature of this error is illustrated by Hovgaard's words: "If Markland was at Cape Porcupine, we must seek Vinland... farther down the southeastern coast of Labrador . . . " ; "If Markland was at Cape Sable, Vinland would be on or near the Cape Cod Peninsula!'1 Now the meaning of the Old Norse land was "land" with the same varieties of meaning as in English. When the text states that Leif left YltWuland and found another land (Markland), or that, leaving Markland, he ultimately reached Vinland, the word land, both as a simplex and in place names, denotes a region within which the point of landfall lay; it does not denote the landfall itself. This distinction acquires great importance for Leif's course from Markland and the proper identification of Vinland, for Hovgaard's identification of Leif's settlement in Vinland (which, following the text, I shall hereafter call Leif's Houses) depends upon the identification of Markland with a specific locality—Cape Sable; whereas the description of Markland in the saga is that of an extensive coastal region. It was not from an identifiable spot in this region that Leif sailed; it is the whole area, not the unknown landfall, which is Markland. Helhiland, Markland, Vinland are all regions. "Leif's Houses" (Leifs biidir), on the other hand, denotes the site of Leif's camp in the region Vinland. 1

Voyages of the Norsemen, pp. 225-226.

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It is with respect to the relation between Leif s second and third landfalls and the first and second landfalls of Bjarni that Storm and his followers have made a fundamental error. They assume that the three lands alleged to have been sighted by Bjarni are the same as those explored by Leif, and that the narrative of Groenlendinga makes Bjarni the discoverer of Vinland. Since they reject the whole story of Bjarni's voyage as a distortion of the accidental discoveries attributed to Leif in Eirifys Saga, they are able to raise, against the genuineness of the Groenlendinga account, the objection that Bjarni, Leif, Thorvald, and Freydis cannot possibly have sighted, with fortunate and complete precision, the same lands. But Groenlendinga makes no such claim. It asserts that Thorvald and Freydis—who, of course, had the full benefit of Leif's observations and sailing directions—succeeded in finding Leif's Houses; but it nowhere affirms that the three lands found by Leif were the same three lands sighted by Bjarni. It states only that the first land reached by Leif was the last which Bjarni sighted. This land we have identified, as others have done, with southeastern Baffin Island. As Brogger has pointed out, both the time intervals given in the text between Bjarni's landfalls and the descriptions of them clearly indicate that the first and second lands sighted by Bjarni were on the coast of Labrador.2 Since Leif had talked with Bjarni, and bought his ship, it is certain that he had obtained full information of Bjarni's courses from his first American landfall to Greenland. But it is nowhere said that Leif intended to find the same lands which Bjarni had seen. The first leg of Leif's voyage natu1

Vinlandsferdene, pp. 52 ff., 71 ff.

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rally and necessarily reversed the last leg of Bjarni's, for there was no other way in which Leif could be sure of finding land at all. But having found that landfall, and knowing from Bjarni's story that there were other lands to the southward, Leif was not bound to look for Bjarni's particular landfalls; he could look for such lands as might best please him. The best evidence that he neither sought to find, nor found, the same three lands as Bjarni is the fact that he found Vinland, which Bjarni had not done. For the distance, measured in days' sailing, from Bjarni's first landfall to Greenland—nine days' sail—was all too short to permit Bjarni's southernmost land to be placed within the range in which grapes ripen. We can safely assume, then, that Leif, having found Bjarni's third land (Baffin Island), gave no thought to discovering Bjarni's second, but coasted southeastwardly along the present Labrador shore. This he no doubt regarded as a cruise along his "first" land. He had to follow this coast if he wished to find other, more clement lands. Any other course would have taken him into the wastes of ocean. We are told nothing of time, distance, or direction between the first land and the second—Markland. We must identify this second region by the description given of it in the text: it was level, covered with timber, not steep-to at the shore; and wherever they fared afoot, there were extensive stretches of white sand. These terms at once exclude from consideration all of Labrador, northern and eastern Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia. One might be tempted to consider Hovgaard's identification of Markland with Cape Sable Island, which is flat, wooded, and sandy, if it were not for the clear impli-

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cation of the words "white sands extensively wherever they fared" that Leif's Markland was a region of considerable size, not a small island. If Markland had been Cape Sable, it would not have been called a land at all, but an island (O.N. ey). Thus, by process of elimination, we must identify Leif's Markland with the west and southwest coast of Newfoundland. Its western shoreline, from the Strait of Belle Isle in the north to well past Cape Ray in the south, accords admirably with the words of our text. The coast generally, though not everywhere, is low-lying, timbered, and in many places sandy: indeed, white sand is found there in masses so vast (as at Robinson Head) as to be visible from the deck of a ship offshore. One other consideration urges the correctness of my identification of Leif's Markland with western Newfoundland: at the southeast corner of Labrador, Leif and his men must have observed almost at once that they had come to the termination of one land mass (Helluland) and discovered another (Markland). These two regions, sharply differing in topography, are separated by the Strait of Belle Isle, which here constitutes an inlet and oudet from the open seas so narrow that both land masses could have been observed at once. Moreover, whereas the coast of Helluland is an eastward-facing coast, this second coast faced westwardly. If these identifications are correct, Leif discovered both these two land masses and the Strait of Belle Isle as well. Leif's second land must be identified with a region which conforms not only to its description in the saga, but also tp the name he gave it—Maryland, "Forestland" This name,

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the description, and the implication that it was an extensive region all point clearly to the west and southwest coast of Newfoundland. That Leif reached it via the Strait of Belle Isle may be affirmed on this ground: if he had set out over the open sea from Labrador, passing the strait by, and had sighted a second land at or beyond Cape Bauld in northern Newfoundland, his and his men's report of this leg of their voyage would have been such as to give rise to a tradition different from that actually preserved. Instead of low, wooded shores and extensive tracts of white sand, they would have observed barren, rocky, steep-to sea frontages. And had this happened, the name Maryland would not have been applied to their second landfall, nor would the region have been described as low-lying and level. As the text explicitly states, Leif, in conformity with Norse practice, named this land for its characteristics. That passage in Groenlendinga which tells of Leif s departure from Markland has, I believe, been generally misinterpreted. The source of error lies in the high degree of compression of the narrative, which reads: F6ru sidan ofan aftr til skips semfljdtast.Nii sigla peir padan i haf landnyrdings veftr o^ voru uti 2 degr ddr peir sa land. Literally translated, this says: "Then they went back down to the ship as fast as possible. Now they sail thence [out] to sea in a northeast wind, and were out two days before they sighted land." But here a literal translation is misleading. It implies that Leif's company, boarding their ship at the point of their Markland landfall, sailed directly from that point out into the open sea and were out at sea two days. Had this been what they actually did, they would never have found any

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region which could be identified with Vinland. A course straight out to sea from western Newfoundland would have led across the Gulf of St. Lawrence to lands very different from Vinland as described in the saga; such a course from northern or eastern Newfoundland, or from Cape Sable, would have carried them out into the perils of the open Atlantic. It is the drastic condensation of the saga style which is misleading; the sentence in the saga must be taken as truth, but it is not the whole truth. The saga text is not a record of Leif's own report of his voyage; its information came originally from him and his crew, and it passed through generations of oral transmission before being written down. We cannot suppose that Leif's men, on their return to Greenland, gave out detailed information of their course, or that anything more than a meager general description of Markland and the coastal waters became public knowledge. As the tradition aged, many details which may have been reported at the end of the voyage were undoubtedly forgotten. Accordingly, when, in the thirteenth century, the tradition was written down, it preserved only what little was remembered regarding Markland and about Leif's departure from the landfall and the region. Significant detail has been lost, and any attempt to follow Leif's course without allowing for such loss must lead to false conclusions. One such loss is fairly evident. Leif and his men, having sighted the coast of western Newfoundland at a place where there was abundance of white sand, sailed in in fair weather and anchored, and spent some time exploring the l a n d clearly with a view to finding out its worth. Suddenly they hurried back to the ship and set sail. Why this haste? The

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explanation is hidden in the terse sentence, "They sail to sea in a northeast wind!' Plainly, while still exploring, they noticed that a northeast wind had set in. Since the wind came off the land, it endangered the ship at its moorings, perhaps threatening to blow it out to sea and leave them marooned. Hence their hasty departure. Whither ? Straight out to sea ? The text seems to bear this meaning: Nu sigla peir padan t haf. But the inference is unnecessary; and we have seen that they could not have reached Vinland thus. The phrase sigla i haf, as used of an overseas voyage in saga prose, refers not necessarily to an immediate course straight out to sea from a given point, but to a general course from the land mass—a course which might first involve much coastwise sailing. This will become clear from two passages in Laxdala Saga. Referring to Hoskuld Dala-Kollsson's departure from inner Breidafjord in Iceland for Norway, the saga says simply: Nii lata peir i haf ("Now they put out to sea"). And of his sailing from Oslo it says: Sidan stigr Hoskiddr d skip sit o\ siglir t haf ("Then he goes aboard ship and sails into the sea"). But in neither case did Hoskuld sail directly out into the open sea from his point of departure. In the first, although he was actually in the ocean all the way from Snsefellsness to southern Iceland, he did not leave the land behind until he reached Iceland's southernmost headland. In the second, he had to sail out through Oslo Fjord, then along the land as far north as the headland Stat, north of present Bergen, before he actually struck out into the open ocean and sailed due west. This took a long time at best; and if he had struck unfavorable weather, whether calm or storm, this sail along the coastline might have taken weeks.

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Now, since Leif and his crew could not have found any land identifiable with Vinland by sailing directly out to sea from their landfall in any conceivable Markland, and since the term sigla i haf is often used to describe a voyage the emergence of which on the open sea is preceded by necessary coastal sailing, we may safely take the saga account of Leif's cruise from Markland to Vinland as implying a sail, perhaps of a week or more, along the coast before Leif actually left land behind for a two-day sail across open water. This interpretation takes no liberties with the text; it merely recognizes the highly condensed phraseology of the text—so condensed that the whole departure from Markland, the voyage, and the third landfall are all stated in seventeen words! The argument is this: Departing from their Markland anchorage, Leif and his crew coasted western Newfoundland to its southernmost end; then, somewhere past Cape Ray, they set out into the "open sea"— Cabot Strait. Most writers—even Brogger—have taken the text too literally, understanding it to mean (1) that Markland was not a region, but a wooded, sandy locality—the landfall; (2) that from this landfall Leif departed straight out into the open ocean; and (3) that after only two days at sea, with a northeast wind, he sighted Vinland. The calamitous results of this procedure have afflicted scholarship for many years. It has led investigators to shuffle possible Marklands all about the Atlantic map in order tofinda site compatible with the description of the saga and within two days' sail of Vinland. It has led Hovgaard, one of the most careful of scholars, to identify Markland as Cape Sable and Vinland

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as Cape Cod, although a two-day sail from Cape Sable to Cape Cod in such a ship as Leif had would have been a minor miracle. Our problem concerns more than a single voyage; we have to consider four successful voyages: Leif's from Greenland to Vinland, and his return from Vinland to Greenland; Thorvald's voyage to Vinland, and his crew's return to Greenland;—even if we ignore the voyage of Freydis. Leif's Vinland was a small area. Thorvald's voyage out must have been a precise duplicate of Leif's; otherwise, with the slightest deviation, he could never have found Leif's Houses in Vinland. The two voyages back from Vinland to Greenland were identical. Leif s course, out and back, must have been such that, by following Leif's directions, Thorvald could duplicate it exactly. A glance at the map will show that, if Leif's Markland landfall had faced the open ocean, Thorvald could hardly have identified it; for eleventh-century voyagers, with their limited knowledge of navigation, could not easily find a particular landfall after any considerable voyage over open ocean, with the impossibility of calculating drift, and the hazard of shifting winds. Yet Thorvald's discovery of Leif's Markland landfall had to be positive and exact; otherwise he would have found different lands, or gone hopelessly astray. The text makes it plain that neither Leif nor Thorvald went astray: Leif made the return voyage safely, and neither Thorvald nor his crew missed their course. Therefore the Markland landfall must have so lain that it could be rediscovered by following Leif's directions. Directions which could have been followed by Thorvald with sufficient precision to insure success, landmarks which could be rec-

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ognized without error, would have been possible only if Leif's Markland lay on the western coast of Newfoundland. For then, leaving the Labrador coast behind, Thorvald must inevitably have recognized and passed through the Strait of Belle Isle—an unmistakable "landmark"—and coasted down western Newfoundland to a region of low shores, forest, and extensive sandy beaches, till he reached the next landmark described by Leif, in terms which no oral tradition could have preserved with the fullness and accuracy of Leif's instructions to his brother. At no point could Thorvald have gone astray. On the broken eastern (Adantic) shore of Newfoundland there were no such guideposts as the Strait of Belle Isle, or extensive sands, or far-lying low shores. Hovgaard, identifying Leif's point of departure from Markland with Cape Sable, and Vinland with the vicinity of Cape Cod, is forced to take the two days' sail over the open sea in a northeast wind as measuring the whole distance from Markland to Vinland. This involves the perilous assumption that Leif's ship sailed more than three hundred miles in forty-eight hours. The swift viking warships were indeed capable of such feats; but it is probable that the heavier trading ships, such as the Vinland voyagers used, could maintain only an average speed of five to- six and a quarter knots an hour, as Hovgaard'reckons. But such ships could not have made three hundred miles in forty-eight hours unless they were sailed at full speed, under the most favorable weather conditions, without pause or slowdown, for the whole period. No capable Norse skipper would have dreamed of such ' Voyages oj the Norsemen, pp. 62 if.

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rash procedure. Most Norse navigation was coastal, usually with known landmarks. When the course lay over \nown open sea, it could be maintained without excessive precautions. But Leif s course, if it had lain between Cape Sable and Cape Cod, would have been over totally unknown open sea, in which any prudent captain of the time would have been unlikely to crowd his ship to utmost speed. Indeed, Leif would have been almost certain to show prudence in navigating any unknown open sea. Night sailing was beset by a thousand dangers from rock and reef and shoal, and there were no beacons in the New World to warn of sudden peril. Leif was a skilled and experienced captain and would not have ignored such perils. It is absurd to suppose that he would have pressed on, night and day, across unknown seas at maximum speed. In all probability he conducted himself, all the way from Greenland to Vinland, with all the caution that became a careful skipper in strange waters, especially in the hours of darkness. He and his men were in no great haste: they had set out to find and explore lands reported by Bjarni, and they did not know what lay before them. No El Dorado lured them on; they did not know that Vinland lay ahead. When they began the crossing of Cabot Strait they had no idea of its width. For any long voyage across open ocean, with unknown shores, they were ill prepared: presumably, having fixed in mind their point of departure in Markland so that they could pick it up on their return, they set out southwardly with a view to sailing for a certain length of time. If, within that time, they found land, they would explore it; if not, they would return to Markland, and so home. The purpose of their voyage was exploration,

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not wealth. Therefore we must assume that, in crossing this open sea, they proceeded with reasonable circumspection; and this means that they could not have maintained anything like maximum speed day and night for forty-eight hours. All we know is that they were tvd dcegr (forty-eight hours) in crossing this body of water; since we do not know the force of the wind, nor whether it blew continuously, we are not justified in imagining that in that time they covered the maximum distance of which Norse ships were capable under the most favorable conditions. Indeed, the probability is that they sailed at most not more than a hundred and fifty miles in those two days. It should be borne in mind that the greater the distance assigned to this sail, the harder it would have been for Thorvald to follow, without deviation, the course set by Leif. The very fact that Thorvald retraced Leif's course exactly and found Leif's Houses in Vinland, argues for a shorter distance across this open sea than most scholars will admit. It will be observed that, in attempting to determine Leif's course and the location of his landfalls, I have been insisting on two principles: ( 1 ) identification of both courses and landfalls must correspond as closely as possible with the data given in the saga; (2) since Leif's brother and sister, each in turn, refound with precision his landfalls and, ultimately, his houses in Vinland, Leif's own courses, landfalls, and sailing distances must have been such as Thorvald and Freydis could duplicate without difficulty or error. The first of these principles has been adopted by most writers; the second, equally vital, seems to have been generally ignored. In conformity with these principles, and assuming that Leif's sail of forty-eight hours over open sea was no longer

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in distance than a captain of Leif's ability would venture against the odds of peril in unknown waters, we come to this conclusion: the body of water separating the land mass of Markland from that of Vinland must have been comparatively narrow. I identify this body of open sea as Cabot Strait, which lies on the route between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Its width accords perfectly with a reasonable interpretation of the text. Moreover, Leif could hardly have sighted Cape North on Nova Scotia, and so have sailed across the strait at its narrowest point, since the text does not mention the sighting of such a headland. In my view, Cabot Strait is the only "open sea" which accords with the data of the text. Moreover, whether they came and went by the outside (Newfoundland) or the inside passage, Leif and, in his turn, Thorvald had to cross, recross, and cross again this body of open water on the voyage to and from New England. A t the western entrance this strait is fifty-five miles wide; immediately to the eastward of Cape North on Nova Scotia it widens considerably, and farther eastward it becomes still wider. Advancing step by step—as the voyagers did,—we have come to northern Nova Scotia. Thus far we have followed Leif, giving only incidental attention to the other voyages. It is best, therefore, to present a brief review, to lighten the difficulties which lie ahead. On his voyage out to the New World, Leif necessarily took all precautions requisite to find his way back as he had come. On his return voyage he must refind Markland in order to refind Helluland, and thus to find his way safely back to Greenland. It was similarly necessary for Thorvald, when he had come as far as Helluland, to identify Mark-

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land from the data given him by Leif. Thus it was essential that Thorvald should also identify with accuracy the narrow body of open water which Leif crossed from Markland. Leif s first land, Helluland, was not a point, but a region; he had to sail along its coastline to be sure that it was a land mass. Thorvald did the same thing. Markland, the second land, was likewise an extensive region. If Thorvald had not managed to find it, he would either have found quite different lands from those of Leif or have become lost on the ocean as his brother Thorstein did. We realize, then, that Leif, when he set out from his Markland landfall and embarkation point, coasted southwardly with the contour of the shoreline to the land's end. Obviously he did not set out on a southwestwardly course into the Gulf of St. Lawrence; if he had, the saga's description of his voyage and discoveries would have been very different. Clearly, then, when he arrived at the end of land, and saw that open sea fronted it, he set out into this sea. Being out in it two days, he discovered it was a narrow sea; and he then sighted the third land mass—northern Nova Scotia. Thorvald, when he arrived in these waters, followed the same course. It must be remembered that when Leif and his men left Greenland they knew that lands such as they sought existed. Leif's aim was not to prove their existence, but to determine whether such lands as Bjarni reported were useful to Greenlanders. Bjarni had been severely criticized for his failure to investigate the regions he had seen—that is, to learn whether or not they were productive, and whether they had good harbors. Accordingly, the first thing Leif and his men did on reaching Helluland was to investigate its

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possibilities, not only at the landfall, but during their southward sail along the Labrador coast. When they discovered Markland, they followed the same procedure: they not only investigated the coasdand at the landfall; they also scrutinized the coastal regions during their sail southwardly along the shore of western Newfoundland as far as the land reached in that direction. The voyagers' account of these shorelines was a true account; and it was unfavorable, presumably because they found no real harbors, no fjords, no luxuriant grasslandsfactors that were absolute requisites for settlement and use by Northmen. It was not until they made land in New England that they found a locality which met the requirements demanded. A glance at the charts for Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia, and a study of the history of their colonization, will confirm these observations. The Vlateyarb6\ text reports in highly condensed terms the entire voyage from Markland to Vinland: "Now they sail thence into the sea in a northeast wind and were out two days before they saw land, and sailed toward the land, and came to an island that lay north of the land, and went up on it, and looked about in good weather.. Where shall we look for this island ? The description of Vinland in the text makes it clear that the island was not a part of northern Nova Scotia: all the details given conflict with such a location. The text appears to mean, and has been generally understood to mean, that the island where they went ashore lay north of this third land which Leif sighted at the end of his two-day sail, at the point where the land was sighted. But the very order of the statements in the text contradicts such

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an assumption: it tells us that Leif and his men (1) sighted land, (2) held in toward the land; and then came to an island which lay north of the land. Following the course which they then were following, the voyagers could hardly have sighted and held in toward the land before sighting an island which lay north of it. This apparent discrepancy can be solved only on the assumption that, in our highly condensed text, significant detail is omitted—as we have seen such detail omitted before. I believe—and I shall exhibit evidence—that the actual course of events was this: at the end of their two-day sail across open sea (Cabot Strait), the voyagers sighted northern Nova Scotia; they sailed toward this land, but did not anchor or go ashore (the text plainly states that they did not anchor anywhere until they reached the island); instead, they followed the Nova Scotia coast to its southern tip, turned and coasted along its southern shore, and then, across the entrance to the Bay of Fundy, sighted an island—Grand Manan—which lay north of the land mass of southwest Nova Scotia. This view involves no departure from the text; it assumes only that full details of Leif's course are not preserved by tradition or recorded in the Greenland version—and this we know to be true. Only the single element of the sail along the Nova Scotia coast, however, needs to be supplied; and it is in no sense incompatible with the text. For the text does not assert that the island lay north of Leif's landfall on this third land (indeed, as I have shown, it could not have, since it was sighted after the third land was seen); it states that the island lay north of the land (i.e., the land mass) at the point where the island itself was sighted.

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If the view here set forth is correct, Leif's Vinland lay across the strait from Grand Manan Island, since, after exploring this island, he and his men "went to their ship and sailed into the sound (strait) that lay between the island and that headland which extended north from the land!' There is such a sound between Grand Manan and the Maine coast, as the text indicates there should be; and directly beyond the north end of the island there is a cape—which I identify, tentatively, as West Quoddy Head, westward from which runs open water, as the text states there was at the entrance to the site of Leif s Houses in Vinland. Furthermore, in its report of Thorvald's explorations from Leif's Houses in Vinland, Groenlendinga pattr describes Thorvald's discovery of a multitude of islands lying westward of Leif's settlement, and of fjords to the eastward and northward. And precisely such a multitude of islands does lie to the westward of Grand Manan; and to the east and north, along the Nova Scotia coast, there are such fjords as those visited by Thorvald. Hovgaard admits4 that these discoveries of Thorvald's, made on an expedition from Leif's Houses, can be accounted for only "with slight modifications in the text" if we accept his identification of Vinland with the Cape Cod region. But our view requires no modification of the text whatever: both the textual account of Leif's discoveries and its report of Thorvald's agree perfectly with our location of the island and of Leif's Houses in Vinland. The direction of the sound is not given in the text. In Leif's Saga, where alone it is mentioned, we are merely told that, after going ashore on the island and returning aboard

* Ibid., p. 226.

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ship, "they sailed into the sound which lay between the island and that cape which extended north from the land!' Grand Manan Channel, therefore, corresponds admirably with the terms of the text. Grand Manan Island is not very large: it is about five miles wide and thirteen miles long, and runs in a northsouth direction. Lying at the very entrance to Passamaquoddy Bay, the island is somewhat lofty; the heights along the western shore reach upward, in places, as much as four hundred feet. In the eleventh century the island probably had much the same appearance as now: its heights were about the same, and both grass and timber undoubtedly grew upon it. From how far out at sea these heights may have been visible in the clear weather that Leif enjoyed is problematical; however, it is certain that the island could have been sighted from a position at sea off Yarmouth. Yarmouth lies about longitude 66° 10'; Grand Manan, about 66° 40'—a half degree to the westward. The difference in latitude is about one whole degree. It is possible that the channel, Quoddy Roads, which lies between the cape and Campobello Island, may not have existed in Leif's time; it is both shallow and narrow now, and requires constant dredging. Therefore our identification of the cape past which Leif sailed as West Quoddy Head is not positive: it might have been East Quoddy Head. The spot where Leif and his men wintered I believe to have been the southern side of Passamaquoddy Bay, which is the easternmost part of the State of Maine, and which came to be known to the Norsemen as Leif's Houses in Vinland. I have chosen this site because it seems logical that Leif would have held in to the shore on which the cape was

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situated, rather than to the opposite side; also because Groenlendinga pdttr does not record that either Leif or Thorvald crossed the waters lying north of the cape— although its account of Thorvald states clearly that there was at least one fjord lying north of Leif's Btidir. Thus far our identification of Vinland, and of Leif's Houses in Vinland, has been based upon the saga's description of Leif's landfalls, courses, and apparent procedure from the moment of his departure from Markland, and has been fortified by comparison of the Vinland area itself (including the island), as described in the text, with that of the Passamaquoddy Bay region and Grand Manan. We may search the map of North America from Cape Chidley in Labrador to Cape Charles in Virginia, and we shall find no other territory than the Bay of Fundy region which agrees so well, in each detail, with the data of the text. The only particular with respect to which actual conditions prevailing in this area fail to harmonize with those portrayed in the saga is climate; and here, as will presently be shown, the disharmony is apparent rather than real. There remain a few specific bits of evidence to be considered: they are not conclusive, either singly or in combination; but they do help to establish a general area within the range of which Leif's Vinland lay. In greater or less degree they have been used by other writers to support their theories; I do not insist that they provide strong support for my own, but I do ask for open-minded evaluation of them. First, there is a striking little incident which occurred when Leif and his men, having left the island, "sailed into the sound between the island and the cape'.' As they headed westward of the headland, "there was great shallowness of

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water at low tide (at fjoru stevar), and their ship struck, and then it was a long way to look from the ship to the sea!' This may be taken in one of two ways. The passage may imply that, at the time, the voyagers were in waters shallow at best, and that the ebb tide, running swiftly, caused them to ground on tide flats. Such an event could occur in any body of tidal water where uncharted shallows lie. On the other hand, the lines may imply that a great tide fall caused thc^n to ground at a point where, at high tide, there was fairly deep water. This is Brogger's interpretation." If it is correct, then the passage affords support for our view of the location of Leif's Vinland; for within a comparatively short distance from the entrance to the Bay of Fundy the tide fall is as much as twenty feet and the tidal currents in the main passage attain at times a rate of nearly five knots. Naturally enough, under these conditions, Leif's ship might stand high and dry before he and his men recognized what had occurred. At this time of ebb, moreover, it would indeed be "a long way to look from the ship to the sea"—that is, it would be far from where the ship stood grounded to the sea line which had withdrawn with the outgoing tide. This, on the whole, seems the more reasonable interpretation. The next sentence in the text speaks of the crew's great haste to get to land—a haste best explained by the astonishment and dismay induced in them by a tide fall such as they had never seen or heard of before. The alternative explanation, that they merely grounded in very shallow water during a relatively small tide fall, affords no evidence to assist identification of the locale, and leaves the crew's excitement unaccounted for. 5

Vinlandsferdenc, p. H I .

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Very sensibly, Leif and his men later moved the ship to a far safer anchorage: "When the water rose under their ship, they took the boat and rowed to the ship and brought it up into the river and then into the lake (/ vattnit) and anchored there!' This river and "lake" can hardly be identified, or assist in the identification of Leif's encampment. Indeed, the very term "lake" must not be taken too literally. The word vatn means really only "water": it can be applied to a lake, a pond, a puddle, a bay, or a raindrop. The wording of the text suggests that this particular vatn was very close to the shore and that the "river" connecting it with the sea was quite short. This "lake" might, then, very well have been a lagoon, fed both by fresh water and by the backing up of the floodwaters. In the course of the nine centuries which have elapsed since Leif anchored in it, it may well have ceased to exist. Erosion and other natural causes have, of course, made changes in the Passamaquoddy Bay area as well as in other parts of New England, but no major geological change has taken place since the eleventh century. In Leif's time, as now, the bay was a haven, and well suited to the Northmen's needs; the hinterland, sufficiently large for many claims, could support settlement, for its productivity surpassed that of any land Leif had seen. Timber, grass, and fruits grew on the land, game could be had for the taking, and the waters abounded in fish. To this band of Northmen, it must have seemed a Paradise. There were, apparently, no hostile natives (i.e., no Indians) to worry them.' • Of course it cannot be positively asserted that the Passamaquoddy Bay area was not occupied by Indians in the eleventh century; but the saga text consistently

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The saga contains one statement of the utmost importance for a correct identification of the site of Leif's Vinland. Unfortunately, its precise meaning has not been determined. It reads: "There was greater evenness in length between day and night there [i.e., in Vinland] than in Greenland or Iceland; the sun there had eytyarstad and

dagmcdastad on the shortest day of the year!' Clearly, this statement implies that Vinland lay in a more southerly latitude than Greenland or Iceland, since day and night, on December 21, were more nearly equal in length there. But the terms

dagmalastad and ey\tarstad, to which

we might hope to look for a more accurate localization, remain a mystery. The excellent discussion of their meaning by Hovgaard* concludes that this crucial sentence places L e i f s Houses in Vinland between 40 and 50 degrees of latitude, "comprising the coasts from Sandy Hook to Halifax!' Hovgaard's own inference, that "Vinland was in the southern part of the region determined by the observation" is only wishful thinking: Passamaquoddy Bay, itself at 45 0 , represents the region as free from them. Neither Leif, Thorvald, nor Freydis found any natives anywhere near Leif's Houses; but Thorvald first found their traces, and was later killed by them, on an exploring expedition at some distance from Leif's quarters in Vinland.—Dr. Frank G. Speck says (Penobscot Man, Philadelphia, 1940, p. 1 7 ) : "The Penobscot and the Passamaquoddy [tribes] have always maintained a close relationship, and frequent intermarriages have taken place. The Penobscot are correctly aware of the dialectic similarity between Malecite and Passamaquoddy, attributing it to the fact that the latter are an offshoot from the former, their separation dating back several hundred years to a division of the Malecite at a breaking up of their main village E'kpohak near Spring Hill on the St. John River." This suggests strongly that the presence of Indians in historic times in the Passamaquoddy Bay area was due to a migration later than the eleventh century, and that prior to that time this region was very thinly inhabited or entirely unpeopled: otherwise this tribe which migrated thither would have met severe opposition. This seems not to have occurred. It appears, however, that in the eleventh century Indian tribes did live in western Nova Scotia and along the New England coastland southwardly from the Penobscot River. 7

Voyages of the Norsemen, pp. 226-228.

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is surely different enough in latitude from Greenland to have called for special comment from the voyagers. It seems most probable that the terms eyktarstad and dagmdlastad denoted the sun's position at certain points of the compass. I suggest the following as a possible explanation: dagmdlastad may have referred to the sun's position directly in the southeast, in the forenoon; eyktarstad may have been applied to the sun's position directly in the southwest, in the afternoon. If so, the disputed sentence in the saga applies with singular accuracy to the Passamaquoddy Bay area. For there—at Eastport, Maine, for instance—on December 21 the sun rises at 7:36 A.M., the compass bearing 330 south of east, and it sets at 4:22 P.M., the compass bearing 330 south of west.8 In other words, the sun rises 12 de8 Calculations by courtesy of the U. S. Naval Observatory, Washington, D.C. The eyktarstad problem has been ably worked out, but on somewhat different bases and with different results, by H. Geelmuyden (see Arktv for nordis\ Filologi, Vol. Ill, and "De gamle Kalendere," Naturen, VII, 1883) and by M. M. Mjelde (see esp. his posthumous paper edited by T . Berntsen and A. Nsess, Eyktarstadproblemet og Vinlands-reisene (Historis\ Tidssknft, 1927). Geelmuyden reached the conclusion that the terms eykfarstaSr and dagmalastaSr indicate an azimuth at sunset and at sunrise, respectively; and he found the latitude corresponding to these azimuths on the shortest day of the year in the early eleventh century to be 49 degrees 55 minutes. Storm, accepting Geelmuyden's calculations, and taking this latitude as the northern extreme within which Leif s Vinland lay, identified the site of Leif s Houses with some point in Nova Scotia. Mjelde concluded that Leif's Vinland could not have lain north of latitude 37 0 , that is, the Virginia coast. A. W. Brogger (Vinlandsferdene, pp. 96 if.) has discussed these divergent views, and points out quite properly that Leif s observations, on which the statement in Groenlendinga must have been ultimately based, were made without modern instruments and could not be expected to coincide with those of a scientist of our times. Haugen (Voyages to Vinland, pp. 141-142) observes that a passage in Snorri's Edda "brings out the real bearing of the passage and the only meaning that makes sense from mariners without sextant or compass. They were simply trying to express how much longer the day was in this region than at home, for—j«st imagine I—here the sun was as high in the dead of winter as in Iceland at the beginning of winter."

It is, of course, inconceivable that Leif should have sailed so far south as Virginia. He was not provisioned for so long a voyage; nor could he have sailed so far from any conceivable Markland as to have reached latitude 37°. Even a Cape

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grees prior to its reaching the point, southeast, and it sets 12 degrees after passing the point, southwest. In any case, no argument can be based on the assumption that these disputed terms have any meaning in terms of clock time. In Leif's day clocks were unknown and Christian concepts of time were not yet established. In the opening years of the eleventh century such terms must have denoted either larger divisions of the day's time or—much more probably—specific positions of the sun. They belong, not to the Christian, but to the pagan era. In Vinland, we are told, Leif and his men found timber, abundant grass, vinber and vinvid; and in the waters there were very large salmon. The literal translation of vinvid and vinber is "wine wood" and "wine berries"; the ingenious attempt of Professor Fernald to explain these as referring to some other berry and vine than the true grape has been met conclusively by Hovgaard." We may be certain that the vines and berries found by Leif s men were grapes. The most Convincing proof of it is supplied by the dialogue between Leif and Tyrker, the actual discoverer of the grapes. When Tyrker, in great excitement, reported his find, Leif asked him: "Can this be true, foster father?" And Tyrker replied, with the perfect assurance of a German, who knew well what grapes and wine were: "Of course it is true; for I was born where there was no lack of grapes and vines!" Cod Vinland is highly improbable: Leif would scarcely have ventured so long a passage across open ocean as from Nova Scotia to Cape Cod. He would certainly have coasted from his Nova Scotia landfall; and since he was not looking for a region with frostless winters, and could not have conceived of such a climate until he had experienced it, he would naturally have made his settlement at the first region which possessed resources and qualities attractive to a Northman. This itself would have precluded a voyage as far south as Cape Cod. • Voyages of the Norsemen, pp. 152-159.

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A Greenlander might have confused grapes with cranberries or currants, but not a German! Could Leif and his men have found grapes growing in the region of Passamaquoddy Bay? They could indeed. As Hovgaard points out, "Wild grapes occur all along the Atlantic coast of America as far north as the southern part of New Brunswick!'10 The discovery of grapes, then, proves only that Leif's Vinland lay south of New Brunswick. There have been those who have doubted that Leif could have brought home a cargo of grape "wood" on the ground that it could have had no real value to Northmen. Actually, however, grapevine was a much sought-after commodity: it was excellent material for withies. It was natural rope. The importance of this material to eleventh-century Greenlanders was much greater than we can easily comprehend. Bast and linen were used for ropes by the Scandinavians of the Continent; but in Greenland men had no access to these materials except as they might be brought in by trading ships. Withies therefore must have been most useful to them for a variety of purposes—for oar grommets, for example. Hovgaard has shown that wild grapevines make excellent binding material when kept moist—better, for many uses, than hide." Among the Northmen, whose Ibid., p. 152. Hovgaard (Voyages of the Norsemen, p. 159) was the first to point this out: "The Norsemen used largely ropes and cords of hide, but this material is not well suited when it is exposed to wetness. Thus, for tying the bottom planks of the ships to the frames, we know that roots or withies were used, as in the Gokstad ship. The author has tested wild grapevines. As long as they are fresh, they are exceedingly strong and flexible. Vines, even of from one-quarter to three-eighths of an inch in diameter, will stand bending to an arc of a radius equal to the diameter without breaking. If the vines are kept moist, they will preserve their strength and flexibility.... Whether vinviS were true grape-vines or other vines, it seems possible, therefore, that the Norsemen may have used them as binding material for certain purposes." 10

11

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whole way of life was largely dependent on the sea, and who were splendid shipbuilders, boats were owned by every household and were essential to it. In those days, oar ports were unknown: on all boats, of whatever size, the oars'were sent outboard from the topmost ship plank, or gunwale, and maneuvered from a single tholepin equipped with a grommet. This tholepin, carved out of the gunwale plank itself, stood up much like the thumb on a hand. Slightly forward in the base of the pin was a hole, through which the grommet ran to form a loop over the tholepin, thus taking the back thrust of the oar—which also was inside the loop. The grip exerted on the oar by the grommet reduced to a minimum the chance of losing the oar while rowing; thus the whole bank of oars, when occasion required, could be left trailing outboard in perfect safety. This arrangement, in its simplicity and utility, was far more efficient than our modern double tholepins or oarlocks. It has actually been in use on the northwest coast of Norway until quite recently In the Middle Ages, grommets were often withies. Bast, hide, and linen were not nearly so well suited to this purpose. In view of the Greenlanders' dependence on boats and small ships, the value of a cargo of grapevines, for this purpose alone, can hardly be overestimated; and there were of course numberless other uses for withies as bindings, hand grips on containers, etc. Vinvid, therefore, in such quantity as Leif brought home from Vinland, would alone have sufficed to bring him substantial prosperity—just as the owner of a cargo of hemp can become prosperous today. Since hemp, Manila rope, silk, or cotton cordage were un12 T h e author can personally attest to this, having in his youth rowed boats with these old-fashioned single tholepins with withy grommets.

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known to the Northmen of that time, they knew no other material that could compete, for short lengths, with a good withy, especially when the rope length, as in grommets, was subject to constant wetting. It has been generally supposed that Leif found some sort of self-sown grain (hveiti-akrar sjalfsánir) in Vinland; but this is highly improbable. The earliest mention of self-sown grain, and of Vinland, is contained in the Historia Ecclesiae Hammaburgensis (completed about 1075) of Adam of Bremen, who says: "He [the King of Denmark] said there was an island in that ocean discovered by many, which has been called Vinland, because there vines grow wild, and produce excellent wine. Moreover, self-sown grain grows there abundantly, as we know, not from fabulous report, but from the dependable reports of the Danes!' This is clearly a reminiscence of the tradition of voyages in the western world by Northmen; but it is a tradition which belongs to the voyage of Thorfinn Karlsefni, not to those of Leif and Thorvald. The Greenland Version never mentions self-sown grain; it is associated with Leif only in the Icelandic Version (Eiriks Saga); and, as we have seen, the Icelandic Version is of no value at all in connection with the voyages of Leif and Thorvald. We must, therefore, associate this grain with Karlsefni's expedition and assume that neither Leif nor Thorvald found anything of the sort. The season of the year in which Leif arrived in Vinland bears a significant relation to Tyrker's discovery of grapes. Groenlendinga gives the following clear, consecutive account: After landing in Vinland, Leif and his men built cabins (búdir). Then, deciding to winter there, they built

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large houses (hiis mikil). Then, when they had finished building the houses, they set out to explore the land; and it was at least several days after the beginning of this exploration that Tyrker found grapes. This narrative establishes the fact that grapes were not found for some time after the Northmen landed in Vinland. The building of cabins and large houses must have consumed at least two months—probably not longer, since thirty-five active Norsemen could hardly require more than two months to house themselves for the winter. If Leif had arrived about the date (October 9) chosen by modern Northmen as Leif Eiriksson Day, the finding of grapes could not have occurred until December. This is impossible: the text implies that the grapes were found in edible condition, since Leif set his men to gathering them the very day after Tyrker reported his discovery. Since wild grapes deteriorate rapidly after ripening, Tyrker could not have found edible grapes hanging on the vines as late as December. It is therefore only reasonable to suppose that the grapes were found at the time of natural ripening, that is, the end of September or early October. This conclusion is supported by a simple calculation in terms of sailing data. If we accept the traditional and baseless date, October 9, as the time of Leif's landing in New England, and allow thirty days as the period required for his voyage, his approximate sailing date from Greenland would have been September 9. Now it is utterly inconceivable that he departed from Greenland so late in the year. Since time out of mind, it has been the custom among the Scandinavians to ship out on long voyages in the early spring. It is not probable that Leif would have delayed

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sailing until after mid-June; this is actually a relatively late season for so long a voyage. But if he sailed in early June, he could easily have reached Vinland by mid-July. Allowing two full months or a little more for the erection of cabins and houses, this would bring the discovery of grapes to late September—exactly the proper time of year. This demonstrates how utterly wrong-headed are those attacks upon the reliability of Groenlendinga pdttr which assert, as proof of its fantastic character, that it fixes the season in which Tyrker found grapes as winter or spring. The statement is as completely without foundation as the charge made by Storm and his school that Groenlendinga represents Leif's men as gathering grapes for cargo in spring. The fact is that the time given in the saga for Leif's command to gather grapes is the day after Tyrker's discovery. The name which Leif gave this fair land in which he built his litde settlement is striking: "Leif gave the land a name from its resources, and called it Vinland" Now the resources of this region were many and excellent: we learn from the text that it had sheltered harborage, a mild climate, large salmon, fine grazing, forests, and—grapes. All these natural products and advantages of the land are comprehended under the term landkpstr, which I have translated as "resources!' It must also have been full of game, since meat-eating Northmen would otherwise have missed flesh food. Out of all these resources the one which so impressed Leif that he named the land from it was grapes. These provided food, drink, and material for withies. Yet the other qualities of the land were of vast potential importance. The text stresses the grazing: "It seemed to them that cattle would not lack fodder through the winters.

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No frost came in winter and the grass there withered little" For Northmen this was a valuable asset. The Greenlanders were cattle raisers and dairymen, and they found the pasturage in Vinland much more abundant, and abundant throughout the year, than in Iceland or Greenland. The excellent winter climate in Vinland made it possible for Northmen to raise cattle and dairy products much more economically than at home. It is no wonder, then, that Leif persistently refused, throughout his life, to sell or otherwise dispose of his property in Vinland. Moreover, abundance of timber there provided facilities for housing infinitely superior to those in Greenland or in Iceland. This brings us to a vital issue not yet discussed. Those who argue that Leif's Vinland was in the Cape Cod region have done so on the assumption that the statements in the saga concerning the frostless winter at Leif's Houses is incompatible with any more northerly location. But this is not necessarily true. We now know that the climate in Greenland underwent a sharp deterioration in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—so sharp that that center of Norse colonization, which had enjoyed a climate favorable to European settlement, became progressively incapable of sustaining civilized life. This deterioration resulted in the gradual degeneration of the Norse stock there, until cold and malnutrition brought about its total disappearance. Is it possible that this catastrophic climatic change, so devastating in Greenland, did not also affect temperatures on the coast of Maine ? Is it not almost certain that, since the climate in Greenland, in the eleventh century, was much milder than it is now, the winter temperature on the coast of Maine was also much milder then?

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During the more than two hundred years of study of these sagas, scholars have found the statements concerning the temperature at Leif's quarters a source of endless difficulty. Even those who, like Hovgaard and Gray, have been convinced that Vinland must be sought as far south as the Cape Cod region to account for the frostless winter, run foul of the obdurate fact that even there—even as far south as Virginia—frostless winters have seldom been known. And Hovgaard, with complete candor, admits that his location of Vinland requires some modification of the text. Actually, acting on the assumption that no climatic change has occurred since the eleventh century, scholars have been forced by the climatic evidence of the saga to place Vinland and Leif's Houses where, on the topographic evidence, they cannot have been. Others have identified Leif's Vinland with still more southerly regions, comforting themselves that the climatic evidence would then take care of itself. But it is not so simple as that. We must consider the winter temperature as it may have been on the coast of Maine in Leif's day, so long as this particular area, and only this area on the Atlantic seaboard, agrees with the statements of the text with respect to all the other features which determine the position of Leif's Houses. The factors which govern temperature are the sun, the wind, the moisture, the land, and the sea. When the wind comes from off a sun-heated plain, it carries warmth; hence the temperature rises on the land or sea area over which the wind travels. Usually the effect is on a graduated scale: the temperature gradually lowers, the farther the wind travels from the source of warmth. Correspondingly, if the wind comes from off a frozen plain, it carries frost; and

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the farther this wind gets from the source of cold, the less frost it carries. We do not know whether the prevailing winds in the eleventh century were the same as now. But we do know that the lands affecting this discussion lie today in the same position as then; and we know that the frost source for all these lands lies today, as in the eleventh century, in the Arctic. We also know, from the contemporary accounts in the sagas of the prosperity then prevailing in Greenland, from the King's Mirror, from the report of Ivar Bardsson, and from archaeological research in Greenland, that the climate in western Greenland was much milder in the eleventh ccntury than it is today. Why? There can be but one answer: there cannot have been, at that time, as much ice and snow in the North Canadian barrens and the Arctic as there now are. That, in turn, apparently means that the frost source in these northern regions must have been much smaller. The winters in western Greenland, in the eleventh century, were accordingly of shorter duration than in our day, and the period from snow cessation to first snowfall was longer. Weather and climatic conditions, therefore, in western Greenland may have been at that time somewhat similar to those prevailing now on the northwestern coast of Norway, though perhaps somewhat more severe. The city of Alesund lies in the same latitude as Frobisher Bay, in Baffin Island, where perpetual ice and snow cover the hinterland. At Alesund the prevailing winds in winter come from off the North Atlantic (Norwegian Sea), with the result that very little snow falls. (In the winter of 1911-12 the snowfall for the entire winter was less than one inch; at no time

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did the little snow which fell remain more than a few days.) The wind, coming off the sea, is accompanied by rain, even though the wind source may have been on the Greenland glaciers or the polar icefields in the Arctic. Apparently, the wind, from the moment it left the frost source and began to travel over the Norwegian Sea, began to shed its frost content, and simultaneously began to absorb warmth, since the sea, constantly agitated and fed by the warm flow streaming northeastward from the tropics, is much warmer than the place of frost source. Thus, when the wind reaches Alesund it carries, not snow, but rain: the weather there is raw, cold, but not freezing; it is wet and windy throughout the year. Now when this same wind, after passing Alesund, begins its travel eastwardly over the land, a reverse change occurs. The land, being solid and stationary and without a tropical heat flow, apparently acts as a frost agent which causes the wind to shed its injected warmth and to absorb frost anew. Consequently, while at Alesund the wind carried rain, it now carries snow over the inland region. Today, the prevailing winter winds on the Atlantic seaboard are from inland, not from the sea." This condition may not have existed in the eleventh century, when the Arctic frost area was smaller. There may have been more southeasterly wind on the Atlantic coast at that time than there is now; and this would give the area frostless winters. Even if the prevailing winds were then precisely as they are now, from inland, they may well have carried rain to the Atlantic coast instead of snow, because of the much greater distance from the then smaller area of frost source. And in any case, the Atlantic frost source must have been much " See the Atlantic Coast Pilot, p. 306.

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less extensive than it is now, in the light of the milder climate then prevailing in Greenland, which permitted its people to live in prosperity as farmers. Of course, no absolute statement can be made concerning the temperatures on the Maine coast in Leif's day; but presumably the summers were about as they are now, and the winters much milder. The rainfall may well have been greater then, and the duration of spring and fall longer— as in Greenland then, and as in northwest Norway today. It is quite likely that, in that era, little if any snow fell on the Maine shoreline, since the winter winds carried rain instead of snow. The region about Passamaquoddy Bay (Leif's Houses) may have had raw, wet, and cold winters, but without actual frost." It has been suggested that Leif and his men might have encountered one of those rare, exceedingly mild winters that occasionally favor New England. This is possible, but unlikely. We have to deal, not with one such winter, but with a cycle: unless Thorvald had found the winters at Leif's Houses as frostless as Leif found them, the saga would certainly have recorded any marked climatic divergence. Furthermore, the Greenland Version tells us that Leif's u Director Charles F. Brooks, of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, has given me the following information: "In briefest form, the following may have been true: Whereas there was apparently much less ice in the Arctic in the eleventh century than now, therefore the supply of polar air must have been much less than at present. Consequently, storm tracks must have been farther north, with the result that snowstorms were less frequent over N e w England and southerly and marine winds more frequent. T h e resulting higher temperature both from less snow on the ground and from the mildness of southerly and marine winds might well have kept temperatures in Passamaquoddy Bay mostly above the freezing point all winter. There is one other point: the insolation received at the latitude of N e w England would maintain a higher temperature than now prevails here if ( i ) there were less of a flow of polar air over this region and (2) there were less snow to reflect it."

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sister Freydis, wintering in Vinland, went out early one winter morning and walked barefoot—not through snow, but through dew! Freydis and Thorvald alike must have found the winters at Leif's Houses as mild as Leif found them; and this stubborn fact requires the assumption of a climatic deterioration since their time. Before leaving the general question of the location of Leif's Vinland, it may be well to establish one significant point. It has been generally overlooked that—as we have seen—the traditional account of Leif's voyage omits what to us seem significant details; that the sagas contain no sailing directions, but only summaries of voyages. A t one point these omissions involved a seeming factual discrepancy; and it is an argument in favor of our theory of the locale of Leif's Vinland that it clears up this discrepancy, whereas other theories ignore it. Briefly retracing Leif's course, we easily recognize Leif's first and second landfalls as Helluland and Markland, respectively. His third landfall was, obviously, the land he sighted at the end of his two-day crossing of the open water below the Markland coast. It has been commonly assumed that this land was Vinland. In Leif's eyes, it could not have been. For, as we have seen, at the end of that two-day sail Leif sighted his third land; then, holding in toward that land, he discovered and explored an island that lay north of that land; then, sailing into the sound between the island and a cape which extended north of the land, his ship grounded in the sound and the venturers went ashore. Thus the land on which they went ashore must have seemed to Leif to be the fourth land which he had sighted, not the third.

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In terms of modern geography, the third land which Leif sighted was Nova Scotia; holding in toward it, and coasting it, he came to the island (Grand Manan) which lay north of the land (north of southwestern Nova Scotia); then he held in past the headland to the shore of Passamaquoddy Bay. Here, in the Passamaquoddy Bay area, lay his Vinland—the fourth land, to his eyes, as Nova Scotia was the third. Accordingly, when Leif later gave his brother Thorvald directions for reaching Vinland, he must have informed Thorvald that, after leaving Markland behind, the land mass next in view would be the third land (northern Nova Scotia), and that Vinland, in which his own houses stood, lay in a fourth land—which Thorvald would reach by coasting eastern Nova Scotia until Leif's island was raised. Thorvald would come in view of the island and the fourth land, Vinland, when off the southwest tip of Nova Scotia. Now Leif did not know that the waters lying between the third land—which he sighted after his two days at sea— and the land in which he built his houses (i.e., the waters between Nova Scotia and Maine) came to a common close in the upper Bay of Fundy. He did not know that Nova Scotia was landfast with New Brunswick and Maine. Therefore he regarded what we call Nova Scotia and his Vinland as different land masses—as, respectively, his third and fourth lands. It was Thorvald who first discovered, in the course of his explorations made after reaching Leif's Houses, that Nova Scotia was landfast with the American continent, and that, in consequence, Leif's Houses lay in the same "land" (land mass) as Nova Scotia. And since the tradition,

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as embodied in the saga, seems to imply that Vinland was the third land sighted by Leif, we may infer that Leif's sailing directions to Thorvald must have been corrected by Thorvald's men after their return to Greenland. It is well to bear in mind that Thorvald's story serves as a useful tool in interpreting Leif s ; and we must use it accordingly. After the return of Thorvald's crew, it became understood in Greenland that Vinland was in reality the third land, not the fourth, and that Leif's Houses lay in that third land. This naturally led to an extension of the name Vinland from what had seemed to Leif his "fourth" land to the entire region lying between Leif's Houses in the south to within a short sail from Markland. Moreover, in the tradition the geographical position of Leif's island was left as "north of the [third] land" even though all who had voyaged to Leif s Houses were aware that it might more exactly be described as "east of Leif's Houses!' This was due to practical considerations. When Thorvald set out from Greenland to find the locality where Leif and his men had built their houses, Thorvald's main task was to relocate Leif's island. It was his landmark for Vinland; if he had failed to find the right island, he could not have found the site of Leif's Houses. He did find the right island ; he identified it with comparative ease, precisely because it had been described to him as "north of the land"; and so the tradition remembered it. Unless this particular description of it had been preserved, and followed, it would have been impossible for anyone who might have wished, in the succeeding generations, to find his way to Leif's Vinland. And it is only through this direction that we are able to identify the site of Leif's Houses today!

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On the other hand, the correction which established Vinland as the third rather than the fourth land was inevitably accepted by everyone, and found its way into the saga text. This was a natural consequence of Thorvald's explorations. On his voyage to the eastward and northward from Leif's Houses he and his men not only discovered fjords ; they also established that the land about Leif s Houses (New England) was landfast with this fjordland of western Nova Scotia. This was a discovery of great magnitude: through it, Vinland as the name for a region came to be extended from the immediate area about Leif's Houses, over the islands discovered by Thorvald's men, to within a short sail from Markland; and the islands discovered by Thorvald's men belonged to Vinland as well. It was these men of Thorvald, who had made this discovery, who reported it in Greenland. From the moment of their return, therefore—indeed, even before they sailed home,—the extent of Vinland, and the fact that it was the third land sighted by Leif, were bound to be incorporated into the tradition, and for substantial reasons. From the very first, of course, the name Vinland was applied by Leif not merely to the immediate site where he wintered. Thè very word land, in such a name, is applicable only to a wider region, not to a small locality. Leif used it, then, to designate the whole area surrounding his Houses—the whole land mass which he had discovered. Vinland, his by right of discovery, was for him a potential source of great wealth; and it is for this reason that he refused to abate one jot of his claim to it in later days, even though he never returned to Vinland. Generous in consenting to let others use his Houses, he always refused to sell.

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Yet it was not the houses, as such, which were of value to him; it was their site, and the whole Vinland area also. At that time he owned no other property: until his father Eirik should die, he would not fall heir to BrattahliS in Greenland. In these lands to which he had established claim by right of discovery Leif held a precious possession. Climate, forests, fisheries, grapevines, and the excellent site at Leif's Houses, with its sheltered haven—all these constituted great riches in Northern eyes. Moreover, on his return to Greenland he rescued a ship's crew from a reef, and obtained valuable salvage. Thereafter, we are told, he was called Leif hinn heppni. This title is usually translated—incorrectly, I think—as "the Lucky'.' Actually the word heppni (from heppinn) is related to the noun happ, which signifies anything that brings a man fortune or honor. Hinn heppni, then, may mean "the Lucky" or "the Fortunate"; but it may also mean "the Successful" "the Prosperous!' In all likelihood it is the superficial appeal of alliteration which has caused the discoverer of America to be known in English as Leif the Lucky; but such a translation ignores the facts of Leif's career and the saga context as well. For in what proper sense can Leif be regarded as "lucky" ? His great discovery was the fruit, not of chance or of fortune—except on the dubious authority of the Icelandic Version,—but of skill, wisdom, and courage—high courage in daring an unknown sea over unknown distances. The traits for which he had become famous were just these. Even before his great voyage, he had enjoyed the highest esteem at King Olaf s court.

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The reason why he was called hinn heppni, and the fact which reveals the true meaning of the term as applied to Leif, is clearly stated in the very sentence which follows in the saga: Lei fi varò nò badi gótt til fjàr o\ mannviròingar ("Now all went well with Leif both in wealth and in honor in men's eyes"). In short, after Leif's return from Vinland, and as the pure consequence of his own courage and skill, he had abundance of property and honor; and for this reason he was called Leif the Prosperous. His prosperity was actually, for a Greenlander, abundant; and his honor was great indeed. He had brought back a rich cargo: vines for withies, timber, and either grapes sun-dried in Vinland or wine made there by the experienced Tyrker. He had won more by salvage; he had found a new world, and held rich possessions there. He had well earned the name men gave him, a name unique in Greenland, as the manly qualities by which he won it were unique, even among a manly and enterprising people.

Chapter IV

THORVALD EIRIKSSON'S VOYAGE of Leif's brother Thorvald in the New World have a significance all their own; and from the vivid yet realistic account of his attitudes and actions the character of Thorvald, in the Greenland Version, derives a vitality of its own. He is a personage in his own right, from the moment when he first emerges on the scene: "There was a great deal of talk about Leif's Vinland voyage, and it seemed to his brother Thorvald that the land had been insufficiently explored!' Thorvald Eiriksson was the first man in whom the report of Leif's discoveries struck fire. It was he alone, among the Greenlanders, who possessed enough imagination to share Leifs sense of the importance of the new lands; he alone who perceived that more was yet to do than Leif had done; he alone who had the enterprise to do it. Leif had confidence in his brother's ability to carry out his purpose, and lent him his own ship. Courage, imagination, and resourcefulness reveal themselves in every act and thought of Thorvald's. He gready extended the discoveries of Leif, and in so doing he extended the area which the Northmen knew as Vinland; he was first to apprehend the possibilities of Vinland for colonization, first to encounter, and to think of measures to avert, its dangers; and out of the love he conceived for the fair new realm he had found, he made his men bury him in its soil. [IOI] HE EXPLORATIONS

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The story of his voyage really begins with his safe arrival at Leif's Houses in Vinland. The saga says nothing of the course he laid to reach that goal: it merely states briefly, . . there is no report of their journey until they came to Vinland to Leif s Houses..." This is all that is necessary, for Groenlendinga pdttr has already reported all that was remembered of the course in its account of Leif's voyage of discovery. Thorvald simply followed Leif's directions, sighting each of the lands in turn which Leif had sighted, and observing his landmarks. It must have been fall when he came ashore at Leif's Houses; for Thorvald did not at once set about his exploration, but set his men to laying up fish and game for the coming winter months. In this procedure we see a wisdom which was to be wholly lacking in the early French and English expeditions to the New World. Evidently Thorvald had carefully planned, before leaving Greenland, his course of action in Vinland. His plans were naturally based upon Leif's experience; and they came to grief in the end because of circumstances of which Leif had not known and could not have informed him. In the spring, Thorvald sent out a party in the ship's after boat to explore the coast lying westward of Leif's Houses— an area which Leif had not investigated. This party found the country fair and forested, with the woods coming down close to the beach; there were many islands, white sands, and shallow water. Precise identification of the range of this westward exploration is impossible: it may have reached as far as Mt. Desert Island—perhaps even beyond, since the men were gone the entire summer. But we have no means of determining the speed of the after boat, or the distances

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traversed. For that matter, they themselves were not concerned with distance, but only with the possible value to Northmen of the regions they examined. On their return to Leif's Houses they reported one observation which must have startled Thorvald and influenced his future course of action: on one of the islands to the west they had found a wooden \ornh)&lm— a container for storing grain, perhaps, and a definite indication that the land was already occupied by men other than themselves, who might resent their presence. Leif had found no trace of a native population; and the thought of such a thing could hardly have occurred to Thorvald until this ominous discovery. Had he dreamed there were natives, he would not have risked dividing his company for a whole summer. The party had found no other signs of human life; but this, like the footprint on Crusoe's island, was enough. It was probably this evidence of lurking peril which dissuaded Thorvald from further exploration of the land west of Leif's Houses. It may well have seemed possible to him that, by going far enough in the opposite direction, he might find uninhabited regions. At all events, the next summer Thorvald and his men sailed their ship along the coast eastward from Leif's Houses, and thereafter northwardly, only 1 The word kpmhjalmr seems to mean a receptacle for the storage of grain. Since hjdlmr is used in Norse of both large and small containers (as for grain or hay), we cannot guess at the relative size or nature of the receptacle found by Thorvald's men, except that it seemed to them designed to contain grain (cultivated grain is of course out of the question). Indians of later times, after cultivation of maize had become known, followed a similar practice: "When thoroughly dry it [corn] was usually stored in caches, although it was sometimes placed in wooden receptacles about three feet high, made by cutting hollow logs into sections."—C. C. Willoughby, "New England Homes and Gardens," American Anthropologist, n.s., Vol. VIII, p. 131. This reference was supplied to the author by the kindness of Dr. H. W. Dorsey, of the Bureau of Ethnology, The Smithsonian Institute.

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to run into a heavy squall, which left them stranded on a point of land, with a broken keel. In tracing his course to this point we must recall our identification of the site of Leif's Houses, for it was from his mooring there that Thorvald sailed. In order to find Leif's Houses on his outward voyage, Thorvald had first to recognize Leif's island landmark—Grand Manan. This island lay north of the third land sighted by Leif; westward of the island lay a sound, and beyond it the mainland. Leif's Houses lay just west of a northwardly-bearing cape on this mainland: this cape we have identified as Quoddy Head. Now, to what shore could Thorvald possibly have sailed his ship by holding a course eastward from Leif's Houses ? Obviously, he must have crossed the Bay of Fundy to the western shores of Nova Scotia. This is borne out by what follows in the saga narrative. After a long stay at the headland to replace their broken keel, the crew sailed on and eastward along the coast, and into the fjord gaps that lay close by. The coastal areas comprised in this voyage of exploration thus lay eastward and northward from Leif's Houses and were marked by fjords. It seems apparent, therefore, that the fjord regions in question were those of Minas Basin and Chignecto Bay. This fjordland evoked from Thorvald a comment which singularly illumines his nature. Going ashore, he exclaimed: "It is pleasant here, and here I should like to build my home!" This was no mere romantic appreciation of a beautiful scene; it is the comment of a clear-sighted pioneer. Thorvald perceived that he had found a site which fulfilled every requisite for the founding, and the maintenance, of a Northman's colony.

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So far as we know, he was a young man, and unmarried. It appears that he had it in mind to sail back to Greenland, find a wife and as numerous a following as possible—married men, with families, thralls, cattle, and equipment,— return to this fair fjordland, and establish a permanent settlement. If the thing could have been done, Thorvald could have done it. He saw the possibilities; his prudent procedure at Leif's Houses during the first fall shows that he knew how to make all secure for a colony during the first—and the following—winters. Leif, too, evidently had dreamed of colonizing Vinland, since he would never sell his houses there; but Leif, as Eirik's heir at BrattahliS, was never able to return to his western land. Thorvald was free to settle where he would; and he was resolved to do so. But he could not set up his home at Leif s Houses, since this whole area belonged to his brother by right of discovery. Now he had found a region for himself, fair in all those things which a Northman held fair. And what were these ? They were those things which the Norsemen summed up in the term landXpstr—those qualities of a land which made it able to support Northmen in safety and comfort. To this end a land must have—and Thorvald's chosen homesite had them—a fjord giving safe anchorage for his ships, a fjordland on which he could build his dwellings and on which his cattle could graze; an ample supply of fish and game; timber for building and for fires. A fjord meant protection for craft; it was the first requisite. A fjordless, unindented coast was worthless as a first foothold on a new land; lacking shelter, it lacked the very foundation on which pioneers could build.

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Only when this is realized can we fully understand why Leif had not tried to winter in Labrador or western Newfoundland, and why he did not take the trouble to go ashore in eastern Nova Scotia. On this whole stretch of shoreline there did not exist a single region possessing the first requisite for a colony of Northmen. Had Leif or Thorvald found a fjord in Markland, that fjord would have received due consideration from them; but there were no fjords in Markland, none in eastern Nova Scotia. Not until the voyagers reached Passamaquoddy Bay did they find a region which, in reasonable measure, satisfied their primary demands as the possible site of a colony of Northmen in the West. I say "in reasonable measure"; it is apparent from the language of the text that the waters running westward from the cape toward Leif's Houses did not afford safe anchorage: Leif was obliged to tow his ship up the river into the "water" Leif's Houses, therefore, did not constitute a wholly satisfactory site for permanent settlement, lacking both sheltered harbors and protection against the dangerous tide fall. The island area westward from his homesite was characterized by shallow waters; and Thorvald's exploring party had found there signs of native occupation. But across the open waters eastward from Leif's Houses, in this new region explored by Thorvald, conditions for the founding of a settlement were perfect. There were at least two fjords. On either side of these was pastureland for cattle. In both the fjords and the waters outside there were fish in great numbers. On the land grew abundance of timber, and there was plenty of game. Thus all the requirements for successful colonization were fulfilled: there was shelter for ships and men; there was feed for cattle, and copious and varied

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food for the settlers themselves—everything that pioneers could wish for, in a land where the winters were milder and shorter than in Greenland or Iceland. It is no wonder that Thorvald wished to make a home there, and considered the establishment of a colony. Neither Labrador nor Newfoundland, even in the presumably milder climate prevailing at that time, could have satisfied the Northmen's requirements. Their coastlines, as seen from the ships of the voyagers, were fjordless, and relatively bleak and inhospitable. Their richness in fish, and the probably adequate grazing which they afforded, did not adequately outweigh the lack of safe havens for ships and the greater risk of fishing in unprotected offshore waters. Even the north and east coasts of Nova Scotia were not too attractive; but on its western shore was such shelter and plenty as Northmen could desire. But they were soon to learn that this fair region possessed dangers equal to its charms. Returning to their ship, Thorvald and his men saw three mounds on the sands inside the heads. These turned out to be hide boats, each with three Indians sleeping under it. Thorvald's careful provisions for the capture and killing of all nine natives demonstrate that he recognized the peril of letting any escape to bring down the main force of the aborigines upon him. But one did escape; and not long afterward, while the Northmen slept, a large flotilla of Indian boats bore down upon them. Here was practical proof that setdement in this western paradise was difficult and dangerous: the men who already possessed the land would meet any intrusion with stubborn resistance. In this first encounter between American Indians and Europeans, Thorvald perished. His last words to his men

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were a warning to leave this perilous region as soon as they might and a command that they bury him on the headland which he had chosen as his prospective home. His conduct of the expedition, with one fatal exception, had been characterized by forethought, imagination, and wisdom. He made only one mistake: after he had failed to prevent the escape of one of the nine natives first seen, he permitted himself and his men to sleep in this dangerous vicinity. His dying words are those of a prudent leader, anxious for the safety of his men; but they also throw an interesting light on his personal nature. Like Mercutio, he died with a jest on his lips: "Evidendy I spoke truly when I said I would stay here for a while!' There are two considerations which, superficially viewed, appear to argue against our identifications of the regions visited by Thorvald; and, since Thorvald's explorations were based on his headquarters at Leif's Houses in Vinland, our identification of Leif's Vinland is in question as well. It is necessary, therefore, to dispose of these matters at once. Hovgaard, who h^d weighed the evidence most carefully, comes to the conclusion that the natives encountered by Thorvald were Indians, and this is also my view. But, as he observes, the statement in the saga that these natives used hide boats might be taken as an indication that they were Eskimos: "While the Eskimos, with the exception of the inland Eskimos of Alaska, always use skin-boats, there are very few reports of Indians having used anything but boats of bark or wood!'2 Now, whether Hovgaard's identification of the scene of Thorvald's death with a point on the Massachusetts coast north of Cape Cod, or my determina' Voyages of the Norsemen, p. 188.

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tion of it as a point near Minas Basin in western Nova Scotia, be accepted, Eskimos as natives of either region are entirely out of the question. Hovgaard therefore solves the problem by a procedure which seems unnecessarily drastic: "It seems more probable that the statement about skin-boats crept into the sagas much later, when the saga-writers knew that the Skraelings in Greenland used boats of this material. The saga-writers may then have taken for granted that all Skraelings used skin-boats, also those in Vinland, and may have inserted comments to that effect in the sagas, in order to make them more remarkable and interesting!" In actuality, the entire narrative of the Greenland version, in all that concerns the voyages of the sons of Eirik the Red, is strikingly devoid of attempts at effect. It is consistently sober and realistic. It contains only one departure from the probable and plausible, namely, the tale of the strange "heaviness" which fell on Thorvald's men, causing them to sink into slumber, and of the mysterious voice which roused them from their sleep. Moreover, the very fact that the saga uses the term "hide boat" (hud\eipr) consistently of these native craft may quite as well be evidence of close observation and accurate reporting. In fact, this term has very special value in this particular context. For boats of moosehide were actually made and used by the ancient Indians of northern and central Maine and Nova Scotia, however rare their use may have been among the American Indians elsewhere. Mr. Frank G. Speck describes their manufacture as follows: "Two or three skins were sewed together head to tail, and the seams "/¿»¿.—There is no better discussion of the question whether the Skraelings encountered by TTiorvald and Karlsefni were Indians or Eskimos than Hovgaard's ninth chapter.

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were covered with moose tallow boiled with pitch. About a dozen ribs, the keel, thwarts, and gunwales, over which the skin covering was stretched, completed the framework!' Speck observes of a similar craft as made today, and of the fashioning of which he was a witness: "With a pole, two paddles, a dish of pitch for repairing, it was considered a good, practical, temporary canoe by all the Indians who saw it, though hardly a thing of beauty!"4 Thus the use of the term "hide boats" in the saga may not only be fully justified; but it also strongly suggests that the natives encountered by Thorvald were of a stock, or a culture group, actually characteristic of the approximate area with which we have identified the scene of his fatal encounter with them. The second point which calls for special consideration is the coincidence of name between the headland on which Thorvald replaced the keel of his ship and the cape which Karlsefni examined on the long strand which he called Furdustrandir. For a very obvious reason Thorvald named his headland "Keel Cape" (Kjcdarness): he and his men had labored long there, laying a log slip from the water's edge upward for some distance, removing the storm-shattered keel, felling the timber necessary for their impromptu shipyard and for the new keel, and shaping the keel tree with axes. All this toil, together with that required to unload ship, build temporary quarters, and supply food during the time required for the repairs, impressed the location on their minds and inevitably determined the name they chose for the place. Thorfinn Karlsefni is said to have given the name Kjalarness to the cape on FurSustrandir because 4

Penobscot Man, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1940, p. 66.

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he found there the keel of a ship. It is natural to suppose that this keel found on a headland by Karlsefni was the broken keel left by Thorvald on the headland where he repaired his ship. If this be so, then one would have to identify the two headlands and square the geography of Thorvald's expedition with that of Karlsefni's. But such an identification is impossible. Hovgaard, recognizing clearly the great distances which lay between the regions explored by Thorvald and those seen by Karlsefni, places Thorvald's Kjalarness on Cape Cod and Karlsefni's at Cape Bauld in Labrador.5 The sagaman does not even speak of the keel found by Karlsefni as if he thought it the broken keel discarded by Thorvald—as he surely would have done if he had thought them identical. According to the view presented here, Thorvald's Kjalarness was a thickly wooded headland near Minas Basin in western Nova Scotia; Karlsefni's Kjalarness, a cape in circumpolar waters. The identifications here made of the regions explored by Thorvald rest upon the unshakable premise that, since both the westward voyage of the men in his after boat and the eastward exploration conducted by Thorvald himself began from Leif's Houses as a base, the problem of identifying the scenes of his activities and that of identifying the regions found by Leif are inseparable, interdependent. No matter how the scenes visited by one brother, as reported in the saga, may seem to accord with specific sites on regions on a modern map, no identification of them is possible unless it accords with the most reasonable identifications of the scenes visited by the other brother. We have to regard the areas visited by both as a single land-and-water mass, every B

Voyages of the Norsemen, pp. 226, 248; 241, 247.

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spot in which mentioned in the Greenland Version finds its proper place, like pieces in one large picture puzzle. In fitting this puzzle together, two processes must be successfully completed: all the various pieces must match perfectly, and each single piece must simultaneously accord with some known region within the scope of the whole picture. I think I have accomplished this: that my theory of the identities of Leif's landfalls, of his Vinland and his houses there, and of the regions explored by Thorvald, is both reasonable in itself and harmonious at every point. I know of no other land-and-water mass in which all the regions and places concerned are so satisfactorily accounted for without taking liberties with the text. One point will illustrate: The saga calls the bodies of water visited by Thorvald after the replacement of his keel fjords. This is a Norse word; it is not applied to any casual inlet, bay, or cove: it means, very specifically, a long arm of the sea, of sufficient size and depth for safe navigation. Not only does my identification of Leif's Houses satisfactorily meet the requirements of the saga text; it also accords with that text's account of Thorvald's fjords. T o find these fjords, we must search for them in a region where fjords, in the Norse sense, actually exist, and in a region which can be reached by following precisely the course which the saga tells us Thorvald followed from Leif's Houses. T h e only fjord system which meets these conditions is that of western Nova Scotia. Not only does this fjord system—Minas Basin and Chignecto Bay—lie on a westerly-facing coast; it also lies across open water and easterly from Passamaquoddy Bay and the site I have identified with Leif's Houses. Thorvald's intended homesite, where his men buried him

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and raised a cross over his grave, was named Cross Cape (Krossaness) at his request. We cannot identify it with precision; we know only that it lay easterly from Kjalarness and near the mouth of one of the fjords. His exploration resulted in one important discovery: that what we know as Nova Scotia was landfast with what is now the United States; or, in terms he would have understood, the region eastward from Leif's Houses was landfast in the north with that of Leif's Vinland. This implies that Vinland, in its original sense, was not the fourth land sighted by Leif, as Leif himself must have thought, but the third, since it was one with his actual third landfall. And it is the effect of this discovery by Thorvald and his men that, in the Greenland Version, Vinland is presented as the third land. Moreover, this discovery that Leif's Vinland and Thorvald's newly discovered region were all one land mass inevitably entailed the result that, after Thorvald's leaderless crew returned home and reported their adventures, the name Vinland had a wider application, embracing all the territory from somewhere south and west of Leif's Houses to some point within a relatively short distance from the region which Leif had named Markland. The account of Thorvald's expedition closes with the words: "In the next spring they [Thorvald's men] prepared to sail for Greenland, and came in their ship to Eiriksfjord; and now they were able to tell Leif great tidings!' What were these tidings ? Certainly they bore the unhappy tidings of his brother's death; but the words of the text—o\ \unnu Leifi at segja mtbjl tiSindi—seem to imply not personal news that they had to tell Leif, but news of more general

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significance which, through increased knowledge, they were able to tell him. And such news they had, and certainly reported to Leif, namely: (1) the report of their explorations, especially those to the east and northeast of Leif's Houses under Thorvald's direct leadership; and (2) the portentous tidings that the lands they had explored were inhabited by a warlike race which would resist encroachment savagely. To Leif, their account of the fine fjordland where Thorvald lay buried was assurance that the last land discovered by him (Vinland) was much more extensive, and much richer in resources, than he had supposed; that its finest portion lay, not where he had wintered (on the farthest eastern coast of Maine), but across the water (the Bay of Fundy) on the western shore of that land mass (Nova Scotia) whose eastern and southern shores he had coasted to reach his original Vinland. And their account of the native "Skraelings" and their hostility warned him that exploitation of these lands would require larger forces than the crew of a single Norse ship. Leif's Vinland—that narrow area within which he had built his houses—was as yet free from Indians, so far as the Northmen knew. Those nomadic tribes might yet visit it; but, in their ignorance of Indian ways, the Northmen of Greenland might well suppose that the natives were permanendy established on the coasts west and east of there, and that the vicinity of Leif's Houses was safe from them. This, at least, seems to have been the conclusion reached by Leif's brother Thorstein. The saga reports that his motive for sailing for Vinland was the wish to recover his brother Thorvald's body; but this seems improbable. Thorvald's

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men had surely reported their leader's dying wish to lie in the land he had chosen for his own. Moreover, after the lapse of a year's time the body would have been in no condition for removal to Greenland. Thorstein must have meant to see the newly discovered lands for himself; perhaps he was anxious to emulate the achievements of his brothers. In any event, he sailed, in Leif's ship, with a crew of twenty-five men; but he was driven from his course, and after drifting about all summer he at length made land somewhere north of, or in, the Western Settlement in Greenland. In all probability his goal had been Leif's Vinland, and he may have taken so small a force because there was no reason to apprehend danger at Leif's Houses. Although, in general, the Icelandic Version is not good authority for the voyages of the Greenlanders, it preserves an account of Thorstein's expedition which agrees with the view here presented. "There was much talk," it tells us, "of seeking the land which Leif had found. The leader was Thorstein Eiriksson, a good man and wise and well liked!' Characteristically, however, the Icelandic Version confuses the story of Thorstein's departure with that of Leif, and associates with it the same tale of Eirik's accident which the Greenland Version tells, with far greater probability, of Leif's voyage. The fact that Thorstein failed, although he bore the reputation of a good and prudent man, is sufficient to warn us against ascribing to the Norse voyagers any great knowledge of navigation, or more than human foresight. Leif and Thorvald were successful: Leif because he carefully used such information as Bjarni had given him, because he had reasonably good weather, and because he sailed with

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care and prudence; Thorvald, because he followed Leif's directions, found Leif's landmarks, and exercised equal prudence. And both seem to have had better weather than Thorstein. Thorvald Eiriksson has been too much overshadowed by his brother Leif. One willingly accords to Leif the glory of the first exploration, and the actual discovery, of American soil, and recognizes both the courage and the wisdom with which his expedition was conducted. But to Thorvald must go the credit of wider exploration, expanding and rendering more valuable the regions found by Leif. His exploration of the fjordlands of western Nova Scotia established the fact that New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were connected by a land bridge, and consequently that "Vinland" must properly include all the great region from Maine to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And it was Thorvald who discovered the one area within that region best suited to colonization by Norsemen. It seems probable that Leif's exploits alone would not have been enough to stimulate the remarkable enterprise of Thorfinn Karlsefni which was soon to follow. By his discoveries and his death Thorvald paved the way for the first deliberate, well-organized attempt at actual colonization of the New World.

Chapter V

T H O R F I N N KARLSEFNI'S COLONIZATION EXPEDITION investigator to perceive clearly that the regions explored by Thorfinn Karlsefni were far distant from those discovered by Leif and Thorvald, and to analyze with rigorous logic the values of our two saga versions as evidence for the several voyages of the Norsemen to America, was Professor Hovgaard. He effectively overthrew the arguments of Fridtjof Nansen that the records of the Vinland voyages were for the most part unhistoric, and convincingly met the charges brought by Gustav Storm against the historic value of the Greenland Version preserved in Tlateyarb6\. It is Hovgaard's view, as it is mine, that "both accounts, in spite of their obvious shortcomings, may probably be considered as essentially historic and of equal value!'1 However I may disagree with Hovgaard in specific identifications of the regions visited by the Norse discoverers, I do so with a respect richly deserved by his penetrating and scholarly work. The fundamental issue between Hovgaard's view and mine, with respect to the relations between the two versions, resides in our respective attitudes toward those particular parts of each version that are to be preferred in interpreting the voyages of Leif and Freydis on the one hand and of Karlsefni on the other. Hovgaard accepts the statement of Eiri^s Saga that Leif s discovery of Vinland was accidental, HE FIRST

1

Voyages of the Norsemen, Introd., p. xix. iuSl

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the result of loss of his course on his way from Norway to Greenland; but he believes that Leif afterward made a deliberate voyage of exploration to Vinland, as reported in Groenlendinga. He believes that Freydis did not make an independent voyage to Leif's Houses in Vinland, as Groenlendinga pattr relates, but that she and her husband accompanied Karlsefni, as the Icelandic Version affirms. He relies upon the Icelandic Version in all that concerns the general course followed and the regions visited by Karlsefni, but he believes that Groenlendinga gives a more convincing account of Karlsefni's conflict with the natives. In sum, he finds in each of the two versions evidence of substantial value for all the voyages of the Norsemen to America, and refuses to discard either version entirely." I propose, on the other hand, to follow the Icelandic Version exclusively in my analysis of the expedition of Karlsefni, believing that—however incredible are a few of its episodes—it alone possesses authority for that great enterprise; just as I followed the Greenland Version exclusively for the voyages of Leif, Thorvald, and Freydis. In my second chapter I have advanced what seem to me valid arguments in support of this position. I propose now to sift the testimony of the Icelandic Version concerning Karlsefni's voyage, account for certain irreconcilable differences between the two sagas, and attempt to establish the probable course of events. I shall agree with Hovgaard that Karlsefni visited, not the regions explored by Leif, but others in a more northerly latitude; but my identifications of these will be somewhat different from his. The Icelandic Version reports that two ships from Iceland ' Ibid., chaps, vii, xi, xii.

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put into Eiriksfjord in the same autumn: one was owned by Thorfinn Karlsefni, who had with him Snorri Thorbrandsson; the other belonged to Bjarni Grimulfsson andThorhall Gamlason, both of whom later sailed for the New World with Karlsefni and Snorri. It informs us that they were received most hospitably by Eirik the Red, who invited both ships' companies to stay the winter at BrattahliS; it details Eirik's embarrassment at his inability to provide a suitable Yule feast for so many, and Karlsefni's offer to supply all the foodstuffs necessary for their entertainment. This and, later on, Karlsefni's conversation with Eirik about his suit for Gudrid's hand are reported in direct discourse. The Greenland Version represents Karlsefni, not as Eirik's guest, but as Leif's; according to its circumstantial record, Eirik had died before Karlsefni first saw BrattahliS. It does not mention any Icelandic ship except Karlsefni's, or name any other Icelander as in his company. Whereas A M 544 and A M 557 describe the expedition which sailed for the New World under Karlsefni as comprising three ships and one hundred sixty men, the Greenland Version asserts that he sailed for Vinland with one ship—his own—and sixty men and five women. Here, at the outset, is an irreconcilable conflict of testimony on every point except Karlsefni's marriage to Gudrid at BrattahliS. All the points of difference are logically linked together; their resolution can be discovered by working back from the last one cited above: the Greenland Version's statement that Karlsefni sailed for Vinland with one ship. We know that he could not have sailed for Vinland at all—at least, not for what was originally named Vinland, the region around Leif's Houses. Groenlendinga itself tells

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us that Karlsefni and his men intended to found a permanent setdement in the New World; and this they could not have done in Leif's Vinland, which was Leif's personal property by right of discovery. That Leif so regarded it, and did not mean to part with it, is specifically stated in Leif s words to Karlsefni: he would lend his houses, but not give them. Moreover, Karlsefni could not have undertaken to colonize without more men—and women—than one ship could carry, or without cattle. He knew of Thorvald's tragic encounter with the Skraclings; and no man of his race would have attempted to found a settlement without a fair supply of dairy catde and brood stock. In fact, both versions report that he took cattle with him. Therefore we must reject the Greenland Version's statements that he sailed for and found Vinland, and that he had but one ship. The Icelandic Version tells us definitely that Karlsefni and his men did not follow Leifs and Thorvald's course to the New World, but deliberately chose a course that would inevitably take them to more northerly latitudes. This confirms the testimony of Groenlendinga that they intended to establish a colony, on land which they could legitimately claim as their own. Its report of the size of their expedition is an inevitable consequence of its false assumption that Karlsefni sought and reached Leif's Houses. This is a fine illustration of the tendency of oral tradition to follow a pattern. Leif and Thorvald had each sailed for the West in one ship, and had found Vinland. Therefore, in Greenland, where Karlsefni's voyage was naturally regarded as a kind of pendant to the expeditions of the sons of Eirik, tradition made his procedure follow the pattern of the expeditions of Leif and Thorvald.

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The Icelandic Version is undoubtedly correct in its assertion that Karlsefni sailed with two Icelandic ships: that of which he shared ownership with Snorri Thorbrandsson, and the ship of Bjarni Grimulfsson and Thorhall Gamlason. Snorri's participation in the enterprise is confirmed by the evidence of Eyrbyggja Saga (chap. 48): "Snorri went to Vinland the Good with Karlsefni; and when they fought with the Skraelings there in Vinland, Snorri's son Thorbrand fell there!' This agrees perfectly with the Icelandic Version's account of Thorbrand's end, except that Eiriks Saga places the action at Hop, not in Vinland. The name Vinland, however, had soon come to be extended to substantially all that great region from Leif's Houses almost to Markland. And it is only natural that the Greenland tradition ignores all Icelanders except Karlsefni: he was not only chief of the expedition, but was also particularly interesting to Greenlanders as the husband of Gudrid, Thorstein's widow. It is very doubtful, however, that Karlsefni's fleet comprised three ships. According to both MSS of Eiriks Saga, the third ship in his company seems to have been a Greenland craft, originally owned by Gudrid's father. The chief persons aboard her are reported to have been Thorvald Eiriksson, Eirik's illegitimate daughter Freydis, and her husband Thorvard. On the same ship was that strange figure, Thorhall the Hunter. Now, as we have seen, Thorvald could not have sailed with Karlsefni: he already lay dead at Krossaness. He had, indeed, died before Thorstein's voyage; and Gudrid, Karlsefni's wife, was Thorstein's widow. Therefore we are justified in regarding with some suspicion the entire context in

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which he is mentioned as accompanying Karlsefni. His presence is asserted in the same sentence which mentions that of Thorvard and Freydis. As has been said, Freydis is mentioned only once after this in Eiriks Saga, in the remarkable episode of her encounter with the Skrselings. Since this one context in which she appears is highly suspicious, and her behavior and its effects are quite unconvincing, she really has no role in Karlsefni's expedition at all. Her husband Thorvard is never mentioned again in the narrative. On the other hand, Groenlendingas account of the voyage to Vinland of Freydis and Thorvard, and of her actions there, is circumstantial and convincing, and accords perfectly with her character as there stated: "She was a good deal of a virago, and much addicted to covetousness!' Since, then, there is good reason to doubt the presence in Karlsefni's company of any of the house of Eirik, it is probably safe to question the existence of the third ship and its Greenland crew. I believe, therefore, that Karlsefni sailed with two ships, both owned, and for the most part manned, by Icelanders. Thorhall the Hunter could easily have been on Karlsefni's ship. This conclusion derives some support from negative evidence: although the Icelandic Version, in its later chapters, mentions both Icelandic ships and several Icelanders (Snorri, his son Thorbrand, Bjarni), the third, or Greenland, ship is never mentioned after the departure from Eiriksfjord; and, except for the probably apocryphal story of Freydis and the Skraelings, and the certainly absurd tale of Thorvald and the uniped, the only Greenlanders to be mentioned at all, after the beginning of the voyage, are Gudrid, Karlsefni's wife, and Thorhall the Hunter. The episode of Eirik's hospitality and the contribution

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made to the Yule feast by Karlsefni and his fellow Icelanders lends some slight support to the Icelandic Version. It is unlikely that a man in Eirik's position could have been embarrassed by the need of entertaining a single ship's company, but he might well have found it difficult to feed two crews. I see no reason to disbelieve this episode; but I cannot believe that the host thus embarrassed was Eirik. The plain and repeated assertion in Groenlendinga that Eirik had died before this time must be believed. It is probable that it was Leif who entertained Karlsefni and his fellows. Leif's prudent nature would have been much more receptive to an offer of help from his guests than the proud, unbending character of Eirik. This last matter, although it has little bearing on the major problems of Karlsefni's expedition, throws some light on the nature of the problems which arise in the study of traditional material. Nothing, in the whole course of the Icelandic narrative, is more realistic than its account of the dealings between Eirik and Karlsefni. If we did not have the unassailable evidence of Groenlendinga that Eirik was not then alive, we should accept this story without question. Yet we must reject it. One would expect the Icelandic Version to preserve a clear and accurate recollection of the identity of Karlsefni's host. Yet on this very point it is plainly confused. Apparently the estate at BrattahliS, and the headship of the Greenland colony, were so closely associated, in the minds of Icelanders, with the name of Eirik that after a few generations the fact of his death before Karlsefni's visit was forgotten. Eirik's name was great in the annals of Iceland: while he lived there, he had made his presence felt; and it was he who had led the great migra-

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tion from Iceland to Greenland. Leif, on the other hand, had begun his active career after Eirik's removal from Iceland; he would have been remembered there only as the son of Eirik, and as the man who found Vinland and christianized Greenland. At the outset of the Icelandic narrative we are confronted with a problem which can be solved in only one way. The saga asserts in unmistakable terms that it was the purpose of Snorri and Karlsefni to seek Vinland; yet the course which they deliberately followed was one which, they must have known, could not have taken them to the region named Vinland by Leif. It was bound to bring them into more northerly regions; and, as Hovgaard has so convincingly demonstrated, it did. Now we must assume that Karlsefni laid out his course with intelligence and purpose. He had spent the winter with Leif, and had undoubtedly heard all Leif could tell him about the sea road to Vinland, and about the territories which Leif and Thorvald had explored. Karlsefni and his companions meant to found a settlement; therefore he and his fellows had certainly discussed, before setting sail from Eiriksfjord, what equipment they would need and what region would be best for their colony. Obviously they excluded Leif's lands from consideration: the country around Leif's Houses was not open to colonization by Icelanders. The course they took on leaving Eiriksfjord was, then, obviously selected because they expected it to take them to a region north of that which Leif had named Vinland. The problem vanishes if—and only if—we assume that the Vinland which Karlsefni sought was the much larger land mass to which the name Vinland had come to be ex-

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tended in consequence of Thorvald's explorations: the great region which lay from southward of Leif's Houses to within a short distance of Leif's Markland. Evidently, Karlsefni meant to seek the more northerly portion of this area; for this reason he laid a course to the north of that followed by Leif and Thorvald. He and his fellows knew that Vinland, in this larger sense, was vast, fruitful, ample in extent and resources for all the needs of a colony. They had learned from Thorvald's fate that it was inhabited by a fierce and hostile people; but they must have concluded that, with sufficient force in men and weapons, the Skraelings might be resisted, or that homesites might be found which, like Leif s Houses, were devoid of natives. With these considerations in mind, they set out to colonize some region in the western lands in a manner similar to that in which Greenland itself had been colonized. Except that they had no political or religious motive, their expedition was like those which, centuries later, were to cross the Atlantic from France and England. First of all, they sailed for the Western Settlement of Greenland—perhaps, as Hovgaard suggests, to visit Gudrid's farm in Lysufjord.' Thus their point of departure for what they knew as "Vinland" was about three hundred miles northward of Eiriksfjord. Thence they went to "Bear Islands"; and here we face another problem. It is generally supposed that these islands—which have not been identified—lay off the western coast of Greenland; but there is no conceivable reason why Karlsefni should have lingered off the Greenland shore. A possible clue " Voyages of the Norsemen, pp. 228-229.

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may be found in what the saga tells us about Thorhall the Hunter: "He was in the ship with them because he had an extensive knowledge of the unsettled regions (6bygdum)V What unsettled regions ? Surely Thorhall was not chosen to accompany the pioneers because he knew the wastes of northern Greenland; the expedition had not thought of seeking tillable lands there. Hovgaard is undoubtedly right in his conjecture that Thorhall was familiar with the unsettled regions in Helluland,4 and it is quite possible that he had either been on Leif's voyage or sailed to the eastern shore of Baffin Island in a boat of his own—perhaps out of curiosity, after Leif's return, or possibly by a chance like that which drove Bjarni from his course. If so, Thorhall must have discovered that Davis Strait is narrower in the north than further south; and he would have been of value to the expedition as a pilot. The course to "Bear Isles" may have been set by him; and the isles may well have lain off the coast of Baffin Land. If "Bear Isles" did lie off western Greenland, then Karlsefni's course from them seems incomprehensible: "They sailed from Bear Isles in a north wind. They were out two days!' This would mean that their heavily laden ships set out in a very unfavorable wind—a "by-the-wind!' This is so improbable that we dare assert it did not happen. From islands off the coast of Baffin Land, however, a north wind would have been favorable. Accordingly, I take their two-day sail as from some unidentifiable islets off Baffin Land southward to a landfall which we can identify with the land they named Helluland—perhaps this leg of their voyage was from a point 4 Ibid., p. 68.

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near Cumberland Peninsula to the region of Frobisher Bay. Karlsefni's Helluland, therefore, was north of the land so named by Leif—and this is consistent with their more northerly course. The Frobisher area has the chief characteristic of Karlsefni's Helluland: it abounds in large flat rocks. From this landfall they sailed due south for two days (or, according to AM 544, first south for two days and then southeast), and sighted another land, wooded and abounding in beasts. This land they called Markland; on an island southeast of it they found bear. At this point begins my major disagreement with Hovgaard's identifications of Karlsefni's discoveries. I have identified Karlsefni's Helluland with southern Baffin Land; he believes it to be "most probably the northern part of Labrador, or, possibly, the southern part of Baffin Land"; and he identifies Leif's Helluland with Baffin Land." Now Leif's Helluland must have lain south of Karlsefni's, not north of it; for Karlsefni—as Hovgaard was first to demonstrate—took a much more northerly course from Greenland than Leif did. Then, more definitely identifying Karlsefni's Helluland with northern Labrador, Hovgaard could, without violating the possibilities, localize Karlsefni's Markland "somewhere in the middle of the Labrador coast, as at Nain,... or perhaps somewhat farther south. It could not be much farther north, since Markland means Woodland, and since the limit of trees is in lat. 580!" Now, as I have shown (in chap, iii), the climate of these regions in the early eleventh century was undoubtedly much warmer than it is now, and the limit of timber was consequently some distance farther north. Since Karlsefni's ° I i i d . , pp. 2 2 3 , 2 3 0 .

' I b i d . , pp. 2 3 2 - 2 3 3 .

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Helluland was north of Leif's, it must be identified with Baffin Land. Therefore, if Karlsefni's sail from Helluland was in accord with the data of the text ( A M 557: south for two days; A M 544: south two days and then southeast), he could not possibly have made his Markland landfall off the Labrador coast; for a two-day sail due south from southern Baffin Land would bring him, not off the Atlantic coast of Labrador, but into Ungava Bay, and a shift of course to southeast would still fetch him in sight of the shores of that bay between Cape Chidley and the mouth of the George River. It is therefore in this region that I place Karlsefni's Markland—most probably between the George and Koksoak rivers. Here, only two days' sail from Helluland, they found a thickly forested shore. The Forest Classification Map of Canada, issued by the Canadian Government (Department of Mines and Resources), shows boreal forest extending, at the present time, to the southern end of Ungava Bay, more thickly than at Nain; and Ungava Bay does lie an approximate two days' sail from southern Baffin Land. In the milder climate of the eleventh century the timber growth must have been much thicker and larger than it is now; there was certainly a forest belt at least from the George" River on the east shore of the bay to the Leaf River on the west. If we accept the times and directions given in the saga (and we have no alternative), we must select this stretch of the southern coast of Ungava Bay as Karlsefni's Markland. It is therefore evident that the regions which he found later, and which he named, in order, Kjalarness, FurSustrandir, Straumfjord, and Hop, cannot have lain on the

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Atlantic coast; nor are their characteristics, so far as the saga reports them, typical of that coast The names which Karlsefni and his men gave to the two lands first sighted do not warrant the identification of these with Leif's Helluland and Markland. As the text asserts, the Iceland voyagers named each land from its salient feature, just as Leif had done. Their Helluland was somewhat north of his, but it had similar traits. Their Markland was different from his in situation, not in appearance. In view of the course he followed, Karlsefni must have been aware that his Markland and Leif's were different regions, having in common only abundance of timber. Thus far it has been possible to trace Karlsefni's course with confidence. From Markland on, the text bears witness to a somewhat confused tradition. As Hovgaard observes: "When we now try to reconcile the geographical account of Karlsefni's voyage with the conditions actually existing in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, we soon meet several obvious discrepancies in point of topography and navigation. In fact, it seems impossible to find any solution which tallies completely with the saga'.'7 Discrepancies appear, no matter where we seek Karlsefni's landings from Markland on: when the text gives directions and sailing distances at all, landfalls which match its descriptions simply do not lie in those directions or at those approximate distances. What is worse, the text all too frequently lacks direction or distance, or both; and we are forced to base identifications of the regions visited on the accounts given in the saga of their physical characteristics and natural resources. Hovgaard has effectively overthrown the theories of T Ibid.,

p. 236.

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earlier writers concerning the areas visited by Karlsefni's expedition.' His demonstration that the lands explored by Karlsefni were more northerly than those investigated by Leif and Thorvald was of the utmost significance, and requires historians to adopt a more realistic attitude toward the sagas of discovery. Recognition of the magnitude of his contribution does not, however, necessarily involve acceptance of his identifications of Karlsefni's landfalls. Since successful identification of Kjalarness, FurSustrandir, Straumfjord, and Hop depends upon an accurate identification of Markland, the point of departure from which Karlsefni made the cruise in the course of which these later landfalls were sighted, my rejection of Hovgaard's localization of Markland on the Labrador coast involves rejection of his views concerning the later stages of the voyage. I have tried to show that Markland cannot have lain on the Adantic coast; and I shall, in consequence, look for Kjalarness, FurSustrandir, Straumfjord, and Hop on other than Atlantic shores. This will require careful evaluation both of the saga and of Hovgaard's identifications. For the first stage of Karlsefni's voyage beyond Markland, our problem is complicated by variations in the readings of the manuscripts. According to A M 557, "When two days [after leaving Markland behind] had passed, they saw land, and they sailed close in to the land. There was a headland which they came to. They sheered in along the shore, with the land on their starboard!' A M 544 reads: "Thence [from Markland] they sailed south along the land for a long time, and came to a headland. The land lay to starboard!' 8

Ibid., pp. 228-229, 242-243.

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Both versions continue: "It was shelterless there, and there were long and sandy shores. They rowed to land and found there on the headland the keel of a ship; and they called the place Kjalarness ["Keel Cape"]; they also named the shores Furdustrandir ["Remarkable Strands"] because they were so long to sail by!' One manuscript is precise about the time required—two days—to sail from Markland to that mainland from which Kjalarness jutted out; the other is precise about the direction followed: south. Neither is clear on the relative position of Kjalarness and FurSustrandir. A M 557 seems to imply that they sighted the headland first, and the long, shelterless, sandy shore afterward. A M 544 may imply that FurSustrandir, that shelterless, sandy coast, which was so "long to sail by" was that coastline along which they sailed "south for a long time" before reaching the headland. Both manuscripts mention coasting for some time before reaching the headland; both mention land to starboard after the headland was sighted. It appears—though it is not certain—that Kjalarness and FurSustrandir were not far apart. Later on, both manuscripts, reporting Thorhall's attempt to retrace their course from Straumfjord, twice use the phrase: "sail(ed) north past FurSustrandir and Kjalarness" which suggests that, sailing from Straumfjord back to Markland, the headland was sighted after the long, sandy shores. T h e point is not decisive for identification of any of the places concerned, but it illustrates the difficulties. Hovgaard identifies Kjalarness with Cape Bauld, at the northern tip of Newfoundland, south of the entrance to Belle Isle Strait; FurSustrandir, he believes, is "the long stretch of uniform, barren coast" between Sandwich Bay

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and Belle Isle Strait; Straumfjord is Sandwich Bay, just south of Cape Porcupine and Hamilton Inlet in southeastern Labrador.' Now we must remember that, according to the saga, the sequence of Karlsefni's voyaging was: from Markland (which Hovgaard places halfway down the Atlantic coast of Labrador) past Kjalarness and FurSustrandir, and s o after a further sail the duration of which is not given and the direction of which is stated only indirectly—to Straumfjord. If we accept Hovgaard's view, we must believe that Karlsefni sailed from a point near Nain on Labrador eastsoutheast to Cape Bauld on Newfoundland, then retraced his course, going west-northwest to the Labrador coast south of Sandwich Bay, and then further northwest to Sandwich Bay itself. Or, if he sighted FurSustrandir before Kjalarness, he must have sailed from near Nain to the Labrador coast southeast of Sandwich Bay, then farther south, passing the entrance to Belle Isle Strait, to Cape Bauld on Newfoundland, then west-northwest again all the way to Sandwich Bay. Neither proceeding is justified by the saga, and neither is credible. There would have been no point in coasting half the Labrador shore to Newfoundland, then returning to southern Labrador again; nor does the saga suggest that Karlsefni passed FurSustrandir twice, as he must have done if these identifications are correct. Moreover, if Karlsefni had once reached the Strait of Belle Isle, he would certainly have entered it, and would have found his way to the attractive shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He would surely have preferred those shores as a site for his colony to the coasts of Sandwich Bay. " Ibid., pp. 239-241.

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As has been mentioned above, the saga twice describes the route back from Straumfjord to Markland as leading "north past FurSustrandir and Kjalarness!' But the route from Sandwich Bay to Nain (Hovgaard's Straumfjord and Markland, respectively) does not lead north past the regions which he identifies with FurSustrandir and Kjalarness. They both lie south by a little east of Sandwich Bay—so that acceptance of Hovgaard's identifications compels us to assume that Karlsefni sailed south to go north! But we have no right to criticize Hovgaard on the ground that his directions do not agree with those of the text; the directions of the text lead only to chaos. They imply that Karlsefni's course from Helluland past Markland to Straumfjord was almost consistently south; and such a course would inevitably have brought him into regions utterly different from the Straumfjord and Hop of the saga. If we concede Hovgaard's identification of Markland, then further progress southward for a length of time that can possibly be inferred from the text would have taken the voyagers to a climate and a terrain approximately like those of Thorvald's Vinland—north of Leif's Houses by some distance, but still within a clement zone. And if there is anything clear in our text, it is that Karlsefni's Straumfjord—even his later and more prosperous Hop—were, in comparison with the lands discovered by Thorvald, bleak and subarctic. It is a much more serious flaw in Hovgaard's theory that the descriptions, in the saga, of the lands visited by Karlsefni do not agree with actual conditions at those points with which Hovgaard identifies them. For example, the saga describes the long stretch of FurSustrandir as shelter-

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less (dreeft)', the Norse word suggests, as Hovgaard rightly says, "a barren iron-bound coast"10 a coast without haven or safe anchorage. We have confirmation of this in the fact that Karlsefni's crews anchored, not at any point along FurSustrandir, but in a bay at some distance beyond: "Then [i.e., after FurSustrandir was passed] the land became indented with bays; and they steered the ship into the bay!' This overthrows Hovgaard's identification of FurSustrandir with the long stretch from Sandwich Bay to Belle Isle Strait; for it is of this very stretch that Hovgaard elsewhere observes: "There are so many harbors that it is not necessary to spend a single night at sea the whole way from the Strait of Belle Isle to Cape Chidley!'11 Obviously, this cannot be the long shelterless coast named FurSustrandir. The one thing that Icelandic tradition remembered of Kjalarness was that the voyagers found there the keel from a ship. If this headland had been Cape Bauld, the tradition would surely have remembered, and the saga have preserved, its character as "a steep, rocky, barren point, around which the tidal currents are strong, variable, and eddying!'" It is not Kjalarness, but Straumfjord, which tradition recalled as beset by strong currents. Karlsefni would hardly have held in to Kjalarness if it had confronted him with the perils which confront mariners at Cape Bauld. Karlsefni's Kjalarness could hardly have been that headland to which Thorvald had given a similar name. The keel which the Icelanders found on the cape cannot be assumed to be that which Thorvald had removed from his stormIbid., p. 232. Ibid., p. 198. 13 See Staling Directions for Newfoundland, U. S. Navy Department, Hydrographic Office, H.O. No. 73, U. S. Government Printing Office, 1931, p. 151. M 11

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damaged ship, since Karlsefni's route was at all points much more northerly than Thorvald's. If Karlsefni's men—who knew of Thorvald's mishap—had thought it to be his, Eiriks Saga would have affirmed the identity of the two keels. It must be remembered that the Icelandic Version of Karlsefni's voyage is full of confused reminiscences of Thorvald's expedition. The keel of any Norse ship wrecked off the Greenland coast could easily have drifted to North American waters by the West Greenland Current. This current is formed by the juncture of the cold, southward-setting East Greenland Current off Cape Farewell with the warm, northwardsetting Irminger Current. The West Greenland Current then runs northward along western Greenland until, at Davis Strait Ridge, it branches, one stream setting westward to Baffin Island and there shifting southward as it joins the Labrador Current. It is possible that the story of the keel found on the headland is only another confused borrowing from the Greenland tradition of Thorvald's voyage. Icelanders who sailed with Karlsefni, or others who passed on the tradition of their adventures, recalling that Thorvald had replaced his keel on a headland, might have invented Karlsefni's discovery of such a keel. Hovgaard has demonstrated that the Iceland account of Karlsefni's voyage has borrowed features from the voyages of Leif and Thorvald; and he may be right in suggesting that this was done, at least in part, deliberately, "because the explorers were anxious to make people believe that they had reached Vinland!'1" Nevertheless, since there is no evidence that Karlsefni's 18

Voyages of the Norsemen, pp. 140 ff., 237.

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men regarded the keel they found as Thorvald's, and since the Icelandic Version persistently mentions Kjalarness as a fixed stage on the way between Markland and Straumf jord, it is probably safest to assume that the voyagers did find, on such a headland, a keel which had been carried ashore after a long drift from Greenland waters, just as the floats of Japanese nets often come ashore on the northern coast of California. It is unfortunate that the data of the saga are too meager and vague to permit any positive identification of the cape or the long, harborless coast which are the only landfalls mentioned between Markland and Straumfjord. Kjalarness and FurSustrandir are reported as north of Straumf jord; this is all we know. W e cannot even be sure that this direction is correct: there are some indications that it is not. N o clue to direction can be gleaned—as some have thought possible—from the episode inserted into the saga immediately after the landing made at the bay beyond FurSustrandir. W e are told that Leif and Eirik had lent Karlsefni a male and a female Scot, who were swifter of foot than deer. When the ships put into the bay, Karlsefni put the Scots ashore and ordered them to run south and investigate the resources of the country. At the end of three days they came back, one bearing grapes, the other selfsown wheat. The Northmen then sailed on till they reached a fjord, which they named Straumfjord. The length of this cruise is not stated; that it was southwardly can be inferred only from the fact that the Scots are said to have explored in that direction. As Hovgaard points out, "the tale of the two Scotch runners . . . is inconsistent with the following part of the

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account'.'" It is undoubtedly a confused echo of the story of Tyrker, Leif's attendant, in Groenlendinga pdttr. The very manner of its telling betrays its fanciful character. It is full of irrelevant detail about the names and clothing of the Scots; and in true folk-tale fashion the pair fetch back one the wheat, one the grapes. Their miraculous fleetness is a familiar attribute of the supernatural "helpers" who attend the heroes of folk tales. If this anecdote were true, then Karlsefni's course to Straumfjord would certainly have been southward, since it was in that direction that the Scots are said to have explored; and the finding of grapes and wild wheat would have drawn the explorers southward irresistibly. Actually, the Northmen found neither grapes nor self-sown grain at Straumfjord—nothing but game, fish, birds, and eggs. The grapes and wild wheat are another echo from Leif's Vinland, deriving from that earlier passage in the Icelandic Version which affirms that Leif found wheat and grapes in Vinland. Karlsefni's experience in Straumfjord was utterly unlike Leif's: the sufferings of his men from hunger during the winter bear witness to a cold and relatively barren region. In rejecting the story of the Scots we must also reject its uncorroborated indication of direction. It is only from Karlsefni's supposed order to the Scots to run southward that we infer a specific direction for such a course; the text merely states that "they proceeded until they reached a fjord!' Later, it is true, we are told that the course back from Straumfjord to Markland was northerly: "They had a 11

Ibid., p. 140.

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southerly wind and reached Markland!' But this has no value whatever, since the descriptions given in the saga plainly indicate that the climate of Straumfjord was much more polar than that of Markland. The voyagers named Markland from its heavy forestation; everything reported of Straumfjord suggests that it was exposed and treeless. It is, then, impossible to identify Kjalarness or FurSustrandir, or to accept the only directional data contained in the saga for the course to them or past them to Straumfjord. The ship's keel found at Kjalarness is no longer there to help us, and between one undescribed headland and another there is little to choose. The only evidence for the location of the long, shelterless reach of FurSustrandir is the description itself. No locations based upon the assumption of a comparatively steady southern cruise will yield an identification of Straumfjord consonant in any particular with the qualities attributed to that region in the saga. One thing only is clear: Karlsefni and his crews found nothing to attract them until they came to Straumfjord. To a modern this seems strange. Markland possessed timber in abundance, and much game. It apparently lacked, however, at least two things of high importance to colonists from Iceland: good harbors, and adequate grazing. Karlsefni had cattle with him, and pasturage was essential to the welfare of the colony. Presumably Kjalarness and "shelterless" FurSustrandir were unsatisfactory in both respects. But when Straumfjord was reached, the Norsemen at once put into the fjord, went ashore, and prepared to settle. The fjord itself must have attracted them first: it promised safe shelter for their ships. But they must also have expected to find there everything they might need for a successful

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colony. They were, of course, unprepared for the disappearance of the food supply in winter; but when they landed they found abundance for all their wants. There were currents about the mouth of the fjord, but within the fjord itself there was quiet anchorage. The island in the mouth of the fjord was inhabited by a multitude of birds, their eggs were so thick that one could scarcely set foot between them. The hunting and fishing were good, and there was abundance of grass for the cattle. But when winter came, "it was a hard winter; they had not laid up a stock of food; hunting and fishing failed, and they were hard put to it for provender!' They went out to the island, hoping for a little fish or jetsam, but found nothing; their cattle, however, did well enough. Thorhall the Hunter disappeared; though they hunted diligently, they did not find him until the fourth day. The obdurate old heathen had been making incantations to Thor for help; when a whale was cast ashore he boasted that the redbeard god had sent him aid, though Christ had failed his comrades. But the meat of the whale made them sick. They prayed again to God, and the fishing improved. When spring came they returned to the fjordland, and found great plenty of game, fish, and eggs. These—in the absence of directional data on which we can rely—are the facts in terms of which we must identify Straumfjord: the character of the region, its topography, flora, and fauna, as they were observed by Icelanders seeking to found homes. MS A M 544 names the birds on the island cedr: i.e., eider. This is important: it argues strongly for a location much farther north than anyone has hitherto proposed for Straumfjord. Today the southern limit of the

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eider's range is the coast of Newfoundland; in the warmer climate of the eleventh century these birds would hardly have been found so far south as in our time. The abundance of game animals in summer and spring, and their complete disappearance in winter, testifies to a seasonal game migration. There had been plenty of game; the colonists neglected to store food for the winter; but in spring the game returned. The animals thus referred to were evidendy caribou, the periodic migrations of which are well known; and this also compels us to look for Straumfjord in the Arctic zone. The abundance of grass at Straumfjord suggests that there was little or no forest. It is significant that, of all the regions visited and named by Karlsefni, only Markland and Hop are said to have been in any degree forested. This indicates quite clearly that Karlsefni's route from Markland on took him, not directly and continuously south, but first north and west, from a Hudsonian into an Arctic life zone, then south into the Hudsonian zone at Hop. The severity of the winter at Straumfjord, which is specifically mentioned, and the migration of the game, confirm our view that Straumfjord lay in the Arctic life zone; and the dense eider population points in the same direction. In-short, the evidence of the text is clear, circumstantial, consistent, and convincing with respect to climate, flora, and fauna; it is vague, conflicting, and worthless in all that is said about sailing directions from Markland to Straumfjord. Any identification of Karlsefni's Markland with any point on the Atlantic coast is inconsistent with the description of Straumfjord, for no region possessing the characteristics which the saga ascribes to Straumfjord can be reached by

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sailing south or southeast from an Atlantic Markland. The physical traits of Straumfjord are to be found only in the continental Arctic zone. This requires us both to look for Karlsefni's Markland within the entrance to Hudson Strait, and to disregard the misleading direction given for the position of Straumfjord in relation to Markland. But the direction given in the saga for the cruise from Helluland to Markland is surely right. No explorer, once he had sighted Helluland, would have dreamed of laying a course in any other direction than south, or south and then east, if he wished—as Karlsefni did wish—to find a practicable site for a colony. And such a direction would inevitably bring him to the southern shore of Ungava Bay, assuming that the saga correcdy reports the course laid from Greenland. From Ungava Bay Karlsefni could not have reached any point on the Atlantic coast without sailing first nearly all the way back to Helluland and then far to the southeast; and no such course is indicated in the saga. So far as our evidence goes, he did not retrace any part of his course until after his sojourn at Hop. Therefore his voyage into Ungava Bay must have led him through Hudson Strait into Hudson Bay; and Straumfjord must be sought on the shores of that bay. He must have made a continuous sailsave for a brief stop at Kjalarness—to Straumfjord; his direction was apparently west by a little north, for it led him to a landing in a region of cold winters, of eider and caribou, without trees to shelter game in winter. Moreover, Straumfjord was a real fjord, and the land about it a grassy fjordland. The saga stresses the currents about the island (i.e., Straumey) in the mouth of the fjord; and it states explicitly

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that the settlement was made within the fjord—obviously to avoid the currents. Karlsefni's men knew, and the compiler of the saga knew, the nature of a fjord. No mere bay can be identified with Straumfjord. We must therefore look for a genuine fjord in an area possessing those characteristics of the Arctic life zone which are ascribed to Straumfjord in the saga. The closest approximation to these conditions is to be found at Chesterfield Inlet, on the northwestern shore of Hudson Bay. It is a true fjord, which with its continuation, Baker Lake, offers deep, sheltered waters running far into the land. The tidal currents at its mouth are very strong, especially with the outgoing tide. There are islands in its mouth, the largest of which may well have been Karlsefni's Straumey. The fjordland is bare of timber: it lies north of the present timberline, and even in the climate of the eleventh century it cannot have had much tree growth. It is rich in grass; it is within the summer range of the caribou, which migrate from it in the fall. "As is rather well known the barren ground caribou migrate in a general southerly direction in the fall and a northerly direction in the spring the summer range of the large caribou herds on the mainland includes the whole of Keewatin District In the fall they commence their southward journey by October 15 the animals have reached the northern limit of the wooded country."15 The Keewatin District includes Chesterfield Inlet. It may be objected that the evidence for lack of timber at Straumfjord is purely negative: the saga mentions none. It 1 1 W . C. Bethune, Canada's Western Northland, Department of Mines and Resources, Ottawa, 1937, pp. 83 ff.

144 The Norse Discoveries in America has, however, been pointed out that the saga does specifically mention timber wherever forest can be supposed to have existed. Moreover, had there been forest at Straumfjord, the game would not have migrated in winter, nor would the colonists have needed to seek shelter and food on the island. There is only one particular in which the saga's description of Straumfjord fails to agree convincingly with the character of the Chesterfield Inlet country: at Straumfjord there were fjoll. Fjòll means "mountains" ; and there are no mountains in the Keewatin District. This, however, is not so serious a discrepancy as first appears. Such a term as "mountain" is relative: it is applied equally to the Himalayas and to hills of two or three hundred feet elevation in the lower-lying areas of the United States. There is actually no other word than fjoll which a medieval Icelander could have used to describe the bare, upthrusting rock strata along the riverbanks in the Chesterfield country. The Department of Mines and Resources at Ottawa informs me that the country around the inlet is low, with low, rounded hills of granite and gneiss; but that the terrain, generally rising gently, becomes more abrupt along the banks of the rivers between the Post and Baker Lake. No elevation rises much above two hundred and fifty feet. The rocks are gray granite and garnet-gneiss. Now to the Icelander, whose own island was virtually treeless, one of the outstanding features of a fjall was its bareness. Almost any rugged, bare, rocky structure rising above the surrounding country, such as is found in the Chesterfield fjordland, would have been termed fjòll. There is, then, no essential incongruity here; and in all other respects the Chesterfield region strikingly resembles that of Straumfjord. Even on this point there is a clear re-

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semblance: the fjoll at Straumfjord were inside the fjord, not at its mouth, precisely as the rougher, higher cliffs at Chesterfield are within the inlet, along its inner banks. It would be well-nigh impossible to discover another site which corresponds so closely with the description of Straumfjord. If the island to which the colonists removed during the winter was Straumey, then it must be identified with the largest of the islands in the mouth of Chesterfield Inlet. It seems probable, however, that the island on which they wintered was not Straumey. The strong currents alone would have given them pause; and Straumey, packed with eiders' nests so thickly that a man's foot could scarcely step between the eggs, must have been bare of vegetation. So bleak and exposed a site as that indicated for Straumey would not have made a tolerable winter camp. Therefore their winter quarters probably lay on one of the larger islands near their first fjordland settlement, more nearly midway of the fjord: perhaps somewhat west of the mouth of the Quoich River. They must have been careful to winter on an island which gave them a better lee than either Straumey or the fjordland, and one which was well grassed; for the saga reports that their cattle did well there. The island must have been rather large, since it took some days to find the hiding place of Thorhall the Hunter. When spring came, the colonists—though food was now plentiful—made plans to go elsewhere. Apparently they did not care to risk another hungry winter, even though their experience had taught them that they could fare tolerably if they took advantage of the summer plenty to lay up a food supply for the cold months. This experience they later

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turned to profit, when they were forced to return to Straumfjord from Hop. They planned to seek Vinland: presumably not the country immediately around Leif's Houses, since there they could not claim homes for themselves, but Vinland in the larger sense in which the term had come to be used after Thorvald's explorations. This was a natural and human desire: Straumfjord, though tolerable enough, was certainly no improvement on their native Iceland. Migrants look not for conditions of life similar to those which they leave, but for better conditions. Therefore nothing could be gained by remaining where they were. Vinland, they knew, was warmer, better sheltered, more abundant in food at all seasons of the year. TZiri\s Saga informs us, probably incorrectly, that there was a difference of opinion over the direction in which Vinland lay. Karlsefni wished to look in the south for Vinland; Thorhall "wanted to go north around FurSustrandir and Kjalarness and seek Vinland that way." It may be doubted that Thorhall had any such notion. Experienced rover that he was, he could hardly have imagined that the warmer, more abundant Vinland lay north of Straumfjord. Moreover, in the verses which the saga puts in Thorhall's mouth, he expressed determination not to seek Vinland at all, but to go home. He mocked those "tireless seamen" who were content to settle in the bleak new lands and cook whales, and laid his course for Greenland. Evidently, then, Straumfjord seemed to Thorhall, at least, a less tolerable home than Greenland; and this is fair evidence that Straumfjord lay approximately where we have placed it.

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The question debated by Karlsefni and his men, therefore, was not whether to seek Vinland in the south or in the north, but whether to seek south for Vinland, and so hold fast to the original design of founding a colony in the New World, or whether to abandon all their hopes and return beaten to their old home. In the end Thorhall sailed northward with nine companions, while the rest of the company stayed with Karlsefni. Although the craft in which Thorhall sailed is called a "ship," he certainly did not take one of the expedition's ships. He did not own any of the company's vessels, and his crew was too small to man one of them. Evidently he and his handful were permitted to take one of the ships' boats. These had the same design, on a smaller scale, as the ships themselves: they were equipped with mast and sail, and were provided with from four to a dozen oars. Thorhall was perfectly familiar with such craft and competent to manage them. Under ordinary circumstances the return to Greenland would not have been unduly dangerous: the voyage, except for the crossing of Davis Strait, would not have been considered as much more than coastwise sailing. But Thorhall and his crew, we are told, met stormy weather, and were cast ashore on the Irish coast, where Thorhall perished. Thorfinn Karlsefni and the rest of the party sailed south along the land. Vinland, of course, must be reached in this direction, if at all; so much they knew. Karlsefni may have suspected now that they would find neither Leif s nor Thorvald's Vinland, since their course, more northerly than those of Eirik's sons from the moment they left Greenland, had

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carried them to other landfalls. But he knew, at least, that they must find a warmer climate and better conditions of life the farther south they went. And this proved correct. They sailed a long time, and all the time, until they came to a river landlocked by great shoals and sand bars at its mouth. The language of the text implies that, as they sailed south, they followed a long shoreline devoid of fjords, harbors, sheltering islands, or other attractive features—a point of some importance to identifying the landlocked river at the end of the cruise. The bars and shoals prevented them from entering the mouth of the river until high tide, but afforded their ships the most perfect possible shelter once they had entered the stream. The land, moreover, was one of plenty. The forest was full of wild beasts "of every kind"; every brook swarmed with fish. The men dug pits at the edge of high tide, and when the tide ebbed they found flatfish in the pits. There was excellent pasture; and the inevitable "self-sown wheat and grapes" (or at least vines—vinvidr) were found. The river flowed down from the land into a body of water (vain) and then into the sea. There was no snow during the winter, and the cattle grazed out. The name which the Northmen gave this land, like all other names which they gave their landfalls, was descriptive. They called it H6p (i H6pi), from the chief peculiarity of the haven afforded by the landlocked river. A h6p is "a small landlocked bay," "an inlet, fiord, or harbor, characterized by a narrow entrance, often the outlet of a river, and widening out inside, not far from the entrance, to a larger expanse of water, frequendy a lake, or lagoon, into which a

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river empties."1* The narrowness of the entrance, in this case, was effected by the presence of those sandbars (eyrar) which lay before the river mouth. Karlsefni's men took possession of this land, confident that they had at length found a most desirable site for a permanent settlement. Their satisfaction, indeed, was so great that for two full weeks they gave themselves over to enjoyment of its delights. This implies that they felt fully assured of a reliable food supply throughout the year, and that the climate was milder than that at Straumfjord. This mildness, of course, was only comparative; but it supports the statement of the text that Hop lay some distance to the south of Straumfjord. This gives us one rough criterion for the identification of Hop: it lay far south of Straumfjord; and between the two regions lay a long stretch of unsatisfactory, featureless coast. More detailed evidence must be sought in the description of the land: its topography, flora, and fauna. That there was good grazing is demonstrated by the prosperous condition of their cattle. We must accept the statement that the land was well wooded, since it is made not as a direct assertion, but indirectly and in context: "There was great plenty of game in the forest A bull that Karlsefni owned ran out of the forest." The description of the river and its mouth, and of the nature of the harborage, is clear and detailed: the fine shelter which it afforded, and the considerable landlocked basin within the mouth, constituted one of the chief attractions of the site. The abundance of game and fish, of both fresh- and salt-water 18 Hovgaard, Voyages of the Norsemen, p. 235. See also Fritzner, Ordbog over det gamle Norskfi Sprog, Vol. II, p. 38.

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species, contrasted strikingly with conditions at Straumfjord, whose treeless expanse compelled the game to migrate in the late fall. One variety of fish is specially mentioned: the flatfish {helgir fissar) which the colonists caught in pits at ebb tide. The Norse term is not precise: it may mean either halibut or flounder. Among the flora of Hop the saga mentions "wine vines" (vinvidr) and self-sown wheat. Now it is impossible that Karlsefni and his men should have found grapes in any region they could have visited: wild grapes do not now grow, and presumably never grew, in or north of Newfoundland. Professor Fernald believed that the "wine berries" (yinber) and the vinvidr of the sagas were the mountain cranberry (Vaccintum Vitis-Idaa), which, in the seventeenth century, was called "wine berry" in England and Scotland." We have seen that the "wine berries" found by Leif were certainly true grapes ; but if Karlsefni's men found any berries from which a drink could be made, they were likely to have been mountain cranberry, which grows abundantly in the Hudsonian zone.181 am inclined to agree with Hovgaard that the fields of "self-sown wheat" "are either a pure product of the imagination, or else... refer to certain grasses which, on first view, resembled wheat, but of which nothing was heard later because they proved of no value."1" It seems most probable that thè discovery of both "wine vines" and self-sown wheat by Karlsefni's men is entirely imaginary. Self-sown wheat is never mentioned in the Greenland Version; it appears three times in the Icelandic Version. It is first mentioned in the brief and unacceptable Ibid., chap. viii. Bethune, Canada's Western Northland, p. 139. 19 Voyages of the Norsemen, p. 161. 17

18

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account of Leif's voyage in Eiri\s Saga: Leif, on his way from Norway to Greenland, is said to have sighted hitherto unknown lands, where self-sown wheat and vines grew. Again, Eiribj Saga reports that Karlsefni's Scotch runners returned from exploration south of FurSustrandir bearing "wine berries" and self-sown wheat. Finally, it affirms the presence of both these plants at Hop. T h e Greenland Version of Leif's voyage, which we have found to be trustworthy, ascribes to the German Tyrker the discovery of grapes in Vinland; and this we may accept. It says nothing whatever of self-sown wheat. In the Icelandic Version, grapes and self-sown wheat are always mentioned together, as found in regions where, we know, grapes can never have grown. It seems safe to assert that these enticing plants, like the snowless winter at Hop, were drawn into the Icelandic Version from the tradition of Leif's finding grapes in Vinland. For all men knew of Leif's discovery; he had built his houses where there was no frost and where grapes grew wild. Recollection of some cereal-like grass may have been sufficient to account for the self-sown wheat. Karlsefni's colonists, who failed in the major goal of their enterprise, might, no doubt, have attributed to Hop qualities it did not possess; some of them might even have claimed to have reached Vinland and enjoyed its marvelous flora." The entire narrative of Eirikj Saga unconsciously demonstrates that they did not find Vinland, and that their explorations were far to the north of Leif's and Thorvald's. Yet, in spite of its detailed descriptions of lands colder and more northerly than Leif's Houses, Hau\sb6\ inserts the clause "when they sailed from Vinland" in the sentence which 20 Ibid.,

p. 237.

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tells of Karlsefni's departure from Straumfjord for Markland and Greenland. This insertion is, of course, an absurdity. Straumfjord was far, and vastly different, from Vinland; the very fact that it bears a distinct name of its own is sufficient to prove this. But we must not take the inserted claim too seriously. It could hardly have been present in the original from which A M 544 and A M 557 derive, or it would surely have remained in both the extant MSS. It attests only that the scribe of Hau\sb6\ thought, or wished to think, that Karlsefni had found Leif's Vinland. If the Iceland tradition itself had previously associated the colonization expedition with Vinland proper, Eirtks Saga would not have differed widely in its account of Karlsefni's voyage from Groenlendinga pdttr. But it does differ, and fundamentally. The chances are that Karlsefni and his fellows did not seek to mislead anyone concerning the regions which they visited. Yet the notion that self-sown wheat was found by someone, and in Vinland, was firmly established by the time of Adam of Bremen. All other elements of the description of Hop are, I believe, faithfully reported, since they are consistent in themselves and echo nothing in the accounts of Leif's and Thorvald's voyages. We are, then, to look for Hop at the end of a long sail approximately due south of Straumfjord. The coastline between should be relatively unattractive and featureless. Hop itself must be a region well supplied with both forest and grazing land, through which runs a river corresponding, with respect to its mouth, its landlocked inner basin, and the bars and shoals outside, with that described in the saga. It must be a land of game and fish.

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Apparently it must also be characterized by elevations which may be called fjoll; for later in the saga there is a reference to "those fjoll which were in Hop." With the single exception of significant elevations, the region thus described finds its most perfect correspondence in the mouth and the lower valley of the Nelson River, on the southwest coast of Hudson Bay. It lies almost due south of Chesterfield Inlet, and about four hundred and sixty miles away—a distance which would certainly account for the words "they sailed a long time, and all the t i m e . . . " (J6ru lengi o\ til pess...). This entire long coastline is indeed uninviting and featureless: " . . . f r o m Eskimo Cape southward the land near the coast is very low lying and the shoreline itself extremely flat and featureless."21 No similar expanse of coastline along the Atlantic, from Labrador to southern New England, corresponds so well to the evidently profitless reach between Straumfjord and Hop. The Nelson River, moreover, presents striking similarities to the river at Hop. There are shoals and sand bars at its mouth, and these do prevent ships from entering except at high tide. A very considerable body of water landlocked inside its bar-protected mouth may reasonably be identified with the similarly protected vatn of the saga. The land about the river has today, as Hop had in the eleventh century, both ample grassland and forest. The absence from this region of anything resembling mountains constitutes the only effective argument against identifying it as Hop. Hovgaard believes that Karlsefni's Hop was either Sop's Arm or one of the other inlets east of it, on the east coast of Le Petit Nord, Newfoundland. In 21

Bethune, Canada's Western Northland, p. 27.

154 TAc Norse Discoveries in America this vicinity he could point to a most convincing mountain range, rising to a maximum of 2,540 feet.53 But the coast between it and Sandwich Bay, which Hovgaard identifies with Straumfjord, is so far from featureless that, had he actually cruised along it, Karlsefni would certainly have altered course before reaching Le Petit Nord. He would undoubtedly have turned into the Strait of Belle Isle instead, and made his settlement on the comparatively pleasant shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. One other point, of some significance, argues against identification of Hop with any point so far south as Le Petit Nord, or on the Atlantic coast. The fish which the colonists caught in pits—the only fish mentioned by name—are flatfish. Thefishmost characteristic off the waters in and about the Petit Nord are salmon and trout. Butflatfishare abundant in the Nelson River area. Mr. J. J. Cowie, Acting Deputy Minister, Department of Fisheries, Ottawa, writes me that "salmon are not present in the rivers in question [i.e., the rivers emptying into western Hudson Bay], so far as the Department's information goes, andfloundersand soles are." If Karlsefni's men had caught salmon at Hop, tradition would have preserved the fact. Salmon were—as they still are—more highly valued among the Northmen than most other fish. Groenlendinga pattr records the abundance of salmon in Leif's Vinland; but, so far as we are told, no salmon were found at Hop. Positive identification of Hop is, of course, impossible, in the absence of more tangible evidence than we have. But the author can discover no other site which corresponds so 25

Voyages of the Norsemen, pp. 211-212, 241, 252.

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closely, in so many particulars, to the statements of the text as does the Nelson River country. The absence of mountains is a serious objection; but it is entirely possible that Icelanders of the period might have applied the term fjoll to the "granites and gneisses forming rounded hills" in the upper course of the Nelson River.23 These, around Split Lake (the source of Nelson River), rise to a height of somewhat more than a hundred feet above the level of the lake, which itself lies at an elevation four hundred and seventy feet higher than Port Nelson, at the mouth of the river. These rocky heights could certainly have been termed fjoll by Icelanders. Eiriks Saga tells us tantalizingly little about the establishment of the little colony of Hop: we learn only that "they made their settlements up from the landlocked water, and some of the houses were near the lagoon, some farther away." Variations in the readings of the two manuscripts render the meaning somewhat uncertain: the word which I have translated "setdements" is bygdir in A M 557, budir in Hau\sb6\ ( A M 544). BMir would imply temporary dwellings, not permanent houses. The word used in both MSS for those buildings erected "some near the lagoon, some farther away" is s\Marnir, with the suffixed definite article. Since this word, with the article, most probably refers to the actual dwellings, the term b68ir in A M 544 seems otiose and contradictory, and the reading of A M 557 is to be preferred. There would be little sense in the statement that they erected temporary houses up from the lagoon, and permanent dwellings as well. The sentence in A M 557 makes excellent sense: they selected a site up from the la23

Letter to the author from the Department of Mines and Resources, Ottawa.

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goon for their settlements, and within the individual holdings they placed their houses on the most suitable building sites, some of which were close to the landlocked water, others at a distance from it. If this is correct, then we have a meager but plausible account of the establishment of individual holdings, or claims, by the various members of the ships' companies. Bearing in mind the customs of the Northmen at this time, we may suppose that due care was exercised to give each man a strip of land affording water frontage on the landlocked lagoon and extending back from it for some distance. The new country afforded ample space for such a distribution, and Norse legal conceptions favored it. It marked the colony's transition from a communal basis to one of individual self-sustenance. Before the choosing of claims, the expedition had necessarily gathered food in common for the common use; thereafter each pioneer provided for himself or for his family. Presumably, dissatisfaction was avoided by the assignment to each man, or family head, of a share of the beach, so that each might have fishing rights; and it is probable that claims were laid out on both sides of the landlocked water at Hop. Since a permanent settlement was intended, fullest use would be made of the natural facilities. The grazing land, however, may have been held in common: it is unlikely that its incidence would have been such as to make equable distribution possible; and it is most improbable that the beasts brought over in two or three ships were either numerous or the property of more than a few chief colonists. How far up the course of the river toward Split Lake the settlement extended cannot be determined; probably not far, considering the numbers of the company.

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The enterprise so happily begun, in a land of comfort and plenty, was destined to frustration by unforeseeable circumstance. One morning—apparently at the end of the first fortnight at Hop—a party of natives, probably Indians, appeared in nine hide boats. Perceiving the peaceful intentions of the Northmen, they rowed up, landed, and stared at the colonists in astonishment; then, after a time, they rowed off to the southward. This was obviously the first intimation either people had of the other's existence. But in the following spring the natives appeared again, in many canoes. This time they came to trade, and offered skins in exchange for red cloth. Wisely, Karlsefni refused to sell them weapons. We must obviously assume that those natives who had first encountered the Northmen in the previous summer or fall had reported the presence of the white strangers to their villages. If they had not been already informed that there were men living on the river, the Indians would not have come prepared to trade, with boats laden with furs. The whole situation parallels so perfectly the historical encounters of later European explorers and colonists in America that we can hardly doubt its truth. The astonishment which the natives displayed at their first sight of white men, their peacefulness until molested or frightened, their readiness to trade, their eagerness for red cloth, their desire to trade for weapons—all these things recur in the narratives of French and English voyagers. Moreover, the very fact that the Indians did not come to trade their furs until the spring after they first met the Northmen gives the saga narrative the stamp of truth, for trapping of prime furs can be done only during winter.

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This part of the narrative, moreover, has special value as a test of a variant version which affirms that "some men say Bjarni and Gudrid remained behind [at Straumfjord] with twenty men, and went no further, and that Karlsefni and Snorri and forty men went south, did not stay at Hop more than two months, and returned the same summer." This variant clearly represents a relatively late and confused tradition, since Karlsefni and Snorri could hardly have encountered the Skraelings both in the summer and in the following spring unless they had remained in Hop throughout the winter. Indeed, all the experiences of Karlsefni's men with the natives (except the fantastic episodes in which Freydis and Thorvald appear) bear the unmistakable stamp of truth. Certainly typical of the dealings of white men with natives is the colonists' exploitation of the passion of the Skraelings for red cloth. At first the agreed exchange was one span of cloth for one good fur; but, as their supply of cloth diminished, the Northmen gave less and less, until the Skraelings were fain to exchange each pelt for a finger's breadth! Although the Greenland Version gives a somewhat different account of Karlsefni's meetings with the Indians, the two sagas agree so strikingly in most essentials that we can entertain no doubt of the general accuracy of the story. The Greenland Version is, in the main, the less authoritative; but the large area of agreement affords confirmation of the historical soundness of the Icelandic tradition. The trading was rudely interrupted by Karlsefni's bull, which ran out of the forest bellowing loudly. To the Indians it must have seemed a fearful monster. They fled to their boats and rowed south as fast as they could. They must have

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thought the bull's actions a deliberate breach of the peace; for when they next appeared, three weeks later, the Skraelings came in multitudes, with hostile demonstrations, and attacked at once. They flung missiles (spears or arrows) and used slings; and a ball-shaped object which they cast from a pole crashed to the earth with so terrible a sound that the Northmen, seized with momentary panic, fled along the river till they reached a projecting cliff, where they turned at bay. After a hard fight, the Skraelings fled in their turn, ran to their ships, and pulled away. Eiri\s Saga attributes the flight of the Skraelings to the bold if mysterious conduct of Freydis, who is said to have snatched up the sword of the slain Thorbrand Snorrason and to have confronted the onrushing Skraelings with it— not using it as a weapon, but stroking her bared breast with it. Tfyis terrified them, and they fled. It is hard to believe that Indians who had once succeeded in driving their foes to flight would have been frightened by any such spectacle. The temporary panic and flight of the Northmen is more convincingly, if still somewhat unsatisfactorily motivated. Karlsefni and his men "were struck with fear" at the noisy impact of the ball-like object which the Indians launched from poles and which flew up over the white men; they then fled up along the river "because the host of the Skraelings seemed to press upon them from every side." After the fighting, Karlsefni and his men reflected upon this, and concluded that their foes had all attacked from the river, and that "the other host must have been an optical illusion." If we have a right to place the two alleged causes of fear in collocation, it would appear that the great noise made by the pole-slung ball behind the backs of the Northmen made

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them think that they were being attacked from the rear as well as in front. Considering the overwhelming numerical superiority of the enemy, which is several times stressed, their fear of being surrounded was not unnatural, and their flight is easily understood. After such an experience, it is no wonder that the colonists "concluded that, though the resources of the country were excellent, constant strife and peril would have to be expected there" from the natives. They therefore made preparations to sail back to their own country. The decision to return home must have been as bitter as it was costly. They had hoped to establish in the new world a colony in which they might enjoy such prosperity as neither Iceland nor Greenland could offer them. For this they had risked the perils of the sea and had endured a cold and hungry winter at Straumfjord. They had had every reason to expect success: they had found, at Hop, a land rich in resources, capable of yielding them an abundant and prosperous livelihood. They had laid out a settlement, built houses, and passed a winter comfortable beyond all comparison with that at Straumfjord. But they had no recourse; it was plain that the natives were too strong and too hostile. If they had intended, before the fight, to send part of their company back to Greenland for recruits, they could not now: to leave a diminished garrison at Hop would be to invite massacre. There was nothing to do but give up—give up their homes in the new land, their hopes, their entire enterprise. The abandonment of Hop meant defeat; but it was either defeat or destruction. They did wisely to go; but the day of their departure must have been the darkest in their lives.

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Since the narrative of the saga rests ultimately upon the report brought first to Greenland, then to Iceland, by the members of the expedition, it is not surprising that the story, from the retreat from Hop to the end, is both brief and confused, in comparison with all that precedes the fight with the Skraelings. Though it had won a battle, the expedition had suffered a complete and final defeat. What remains, although it has some adventurous quality still, is a record of frustration. There is evidence that the men had suffered a severe blow both to their self-respect and to their morale. Had there been no hostile natives, the settlement at Hop might have brought sizable reinforcements from Greenland or from Iceland. There were not enough women in the company, and it is probable that Karlsefni intended to send home for more. Seed might have been imported, more cattle brought, more tools and weapons. All this the Northmen knew; and they undoubtedly felt most keenly the ruin of their hopes. Perhaps to save their pride, they reported, when they reached Greenland, that they had actually succeeded in finding and settling Vinland; the tales of grapes and selfsown wheat, and of a snowless winter, may have been told to give verisimilitude to a face-saving lie. But in spite of their resolve to go home, they did not do so at once. They retraced their course to Straumfjord; and there they spent another winter. Perhaps, by the time they arrived there, it was too late in the season to continue the voyage; perhaps they could not yet bear to return defeated. At some point between Hop and Straumfjord they put in to land and foundfiveSkraelings, clad in skin coats, sleeping on the shore. The natives had with them wooden containers filled with animal marrow mixed with blood. No doubt the

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Northmen were embittered by the tragic outcome of their own clash with the natives at Hop; at all events, they killed all five. The saga contains a curious comment on these Skrselings: Karlsefni and his men "supposed that they must have been banished from their own country." Why should they have imagined this ? Because the Skrselings were so few in number ? We cannot tell. Somewhat further on, the voyagers found a headland on which was a multitude of animals: the headland resembled one vast dung heap, because the animals lay there at night. Soon afterward they reached Straumfjord, and found there great plenty of all they needed. It is strange that this dung-covered headland has received so little attention from scholars, for it throws much brighter light upon the geographical location of Straumfjord and H6p than the misleading statements concerning self-sown wheat and snowless winters, or erroneous sailing directions. Evidently Karlsefni's men were impressed by the great numbers of "animals" on this headland and by the interesting fact that they herded there overnight. The saga contains no explanation, no comment, which could raise any possible doubt: the phenomenon was recorded as it was observed, simply and naively—not to bolster false claims about discoveries made by the colonists. What sort of animals herded on this headland ? Obviously some species of deer, since deer are the only North American animals which herd in this manner. The fact that these animals were observed in summer is good evidence that they were a particular species of deer—the American reindeer or caribou (Rangifer). We have already seen that the migratory game animals which deserted the Straumfjord

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area in winter were caribou, and that these still migrate south from Chesterfield Inlet and the whole Keewatin District in the fall. Another habit of the caribou explains the dung-covered headland: according to information given by Naskaupee Indians and others, these animals spend the summer season on the barren highlands near the coast, where the strong breezes protect them from the annoyance of flies. They range during the summer in large herds over the Keewatin District, and over the rest of the mainland west of Hudson Bay and north of latitude 61 0 N." It is evident, then, that Karlsefni and his companions encountered a large herd of caribou. Since the context makes it clear that the headland was nearer to Straumfjord than to Hop, this observation makes it clear that the headland must have lain north of Cape Eskimo, where the ground is generally higher than to the southward. This accords admirably with the present habits of the caribou in this same region. We have thus obtained valuable confirmation of our views with respect to the locations of Straumfjord and Hop. At present, of course, caribou range similarly in Newfoundland; and it is there, on the western shore of Le Petit Nord, that Hovgaard places the headland in question. But it is extremely improbable that caribou inhabited Newfoundland in the eleventh century, for there, as everywhere along the north Atlantic coast, the climate was at that time much warmer. Certainly one consequence of the warmer climate must have been a much greater extension of the timberline northward; so that, if Karlsefni's Straumfjord had lain in southern Labrador, as Hovgaard believes, the 24

See Extracts from Reports on the District of Ungava or New Quebec, Bureau of Mines, Quebec; also Bethune, Canadds Western Northland, pp. 83 ff.

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caribou would not have needed to migrate in search of forest. The evidence of the saga makes it plain that they did migrate; consequently Straumfjord must have lain in a treeless region. Taken altogether, the descriptions of Straumfjord, Hop, and the dung-covered headland provide the strongest possible argument for a Hudson Bay rather than an Atlantic milieu. Whatever motive prompted the colonists to spend the winter at Straumfjord, instead of going directly home as they had originally intended, we must infer from the statement that they found in Straumfjord plenty of all they required that they took pains to lay in adequate provision for the winter. They had failed to do so during one hungry winter, and they had learned their lesson. From Straumfjord—evidently not long after their return thither—Karlsefni set out in one ship on an exploring expedition. We are told that his purpose was "to find Thorhall the Hunter"; but this is unconvincing. Unhappily it raises once more the question: when Thorhall sailed away from Straumfjord, was his intention to seek Vinland in the north, as the text of the saga asserts, or to go home to Greenland, as the verses attributed to him affirm? If he had sailed for home, Karlsefni's "search" for him from Straumfjord, a year after Thorhall's departure, would have had no chance of finding him. If he had sailed north in search for Vinland, then Karlsefni's course from Straumfjord, as stated in the saga, was in approximately the right direction. In either case, however, Karlsefni, searching for a man who had set off into the unknown a year before, would have had no hope of success. Karlsefni was no fool; he was, in fact a singularly capable man. It seems most probable, therefore, that the

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expedition from Straumfjord was not made in the hope of finding Thorhall at all, but to investigate the territory in the direction of which Karlsefni sailed. He might, perhaps, have said to his companions, when he left, that he would keep an eye out for Thorhall as he sailed; but it is highly unlikely that he expected to find him. Evidently he did not; for Thorhall is not mentioned again. The course which Karlsefni followed is stated very precisely in the saga: "they went north past Kjalarness, and then veered westerly; and the land was on their port side." Unhappily this is a mere reversal of the erroneous and impossible course which the saga reports as laid by Karlsefni on his way from Markland to Straumfjord; and the objections brought against it then apply now with equal force. Hovgaard, whose analysis of the situation is more precise than that of any other investigator, found it necessary to disregard the directions given in the saga in order to arrive at any reasonable conclusion with respect to the region which Karlsefni explored. Having placed Straumfjord in the vicinity of Sandwich Bay in southern Labrador, and Hop at, or near, Sop's Arm on the southeast shore of Le Petit Nord, he now sets the point at which Karlsefni's exploring expedition turned back for Straumfjord at Bonne Bay, "or one of the bays farther south," on the west coast of Newfoundland, southwest of Sop's Arm. This procedure he bases on two statements in the text: ( 1 ) that the mountains at Hop "were the same as those they now viewed" (i.e., at the farthest point of Karlsefni's cruise); and (2) "there appeared to be very nearly the same distance from Straumfjord to both places."*' * Voyages of the'Norsemen,pp. 238-241,253.

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This is reasonable procedure, assuming that Straumfjord was in southern Labrador. I have given what I regard as cogent evidence that it was not. But—allowing for the unreliability of the directions given—Hovgaard's identifications are consistent with the two statements of the text cited above. The mountains at Bonne Bay are the same as those about Sop's Arm; it is about the same distance between Sandwich Bay and Bonne Bay as between Sandwich Bay and Sop's Arm. But there is no way in which Karlsefni could have learned that the mountains were the same at Bonne Bay and at Sop's Arm except by exploring the interior of the country behind the bay. And this he did not do. He could never have established this topographical fact by the oiily procedure which the saga attributes to him: by sailing from Straumfjord to Hop, back to Straumfjord, then from Straumfjord a similar distance in any direction. It does not argue against Hovgaard's view that Bonne Bay is south and southwest of Sandwich Bay, whereas the saga says that Karlsefni sailed north and then west; it does not matter that the saga says that Karlsefni sailed from Straumfjord north past Kjalarness, whereas Hovgaard places Kjalarness far south of Straumfjord; for the directions given in the saga are generally unreliable. But it matters a great deal that Hovgaard has taken as one region, to be identified in terms of its description in the saga, what was evidently several different regions. The saga gives the following account of the cruise: "They sailed north past Kjalarness, and then bore westward, and the land was on their port side. There were stretches of forested wilderness, and when they had sailed a long time, a river flowed down from the land, from east to west. They

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put into the mouth of the river and lay to by the southern bank Then they went back north It appeared to them that those mountains which were in Hop, and those which they found, were the same {oilein); and it was about the same distance from Straumfjord both ways." Hovgaard interprets this account as follows: "In the hope of finding another more suitable and safer place of settlement, Karlsefni soon afterward sailed southward again, this time with only one ship. He sailed through the Strait of Belle Isle, and down along the western, densely wooded coast of Le Petit Nord as far as Bonne Bay or Humber River. They lay to at the southern bank of a river They saw here a mountain range which they believed to be the same as that which they had seen at Hop. Karlsefni... decided to go back to Straumfjord."* That Karlsefni would have had to pass through some strait if he followed either the course laid down in the saganorth past Kjalarness, then west—or the course indicated by Hovgaard—south and southwest—is evident; otherwise he would have rammed the American coast soon after turning west. But no strait is mentioned in the text. Whether or not the land would have lain on the port side would depend on which shore the ship hugged. For this voyage, however, descriptions as well as directions fail us. Hovgaard's assumption that Karlsefni sailed along the wooded shore as far as the river mouth which he identifies as Bonne Bay is incorrect: the text implies that the Norsemen sailed a long way after leaving the forested stretch behind, and before reaching the river. These extensive forests are not part of the approaches or the environs of the river mouth; they lay

"Ibid., p. 253.

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along shores sighted after the shift of course westward. The data given, even if exact, are insufficient to permit identification of these wooded shores. The situation is even worse with respect to the river mouth. If Karlsefni ever did lay to along the southern bank of a river on this cruise, the river is too meagerly described to be identified. Voyagers putting in to Bonne Bay for the first time would never have described it as "the mouth of a river flowing from east to west." The several rivers which flow into Bonne Bay are not visible until one has sailed well in; nor do they constitute a salient feature of the bay. They might well escape notice entirely during a brief visit. Had Karlsefni ever sailed into Bonne Bay, what he would have observed, and the saga then have recorded, must certainly have been the striking conformation of the bay and its shores. The wide entrance, nearly four miles across; the deep southeastern extension of the bay, and its separation into two arms; the steep, imposing Eastern Head; the high, forested cliffs of Woody Point—these would have compelled attention." They are the features the Norsemen would have mentioned had they seen them; they would not have ignored them all, to mention a mere river mouth. They would have called the place, not an estuary (drdss), which is the term used in the text, but a fjord. Still a third landscape may be involved in this "description." The voyagers' conjecture, that "the mountains which were in Hop, and those which they found, were the same," may refer to mountains in the land through which the river flows—though none such are spoken of in the immediate context,—or they may have been mountains sighted after 27

Sailing Directions for Newfoundland, pp. 567-568.

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the river was left. The text merely states that "they went back north It appeared to them that the mountains in Hop..etc. It is evident that the land or, more probably, lands seen by Karlsefni on this cruise are described too loosely to warrant any identification of them. When both the distances and directions given, and the descriptions of lands sighted, are so misleading and ambiguous, nothing can be made of them. The very clause, "Then they went back north," is disturbing: it implies that they had shifted course again, from west to south, to reach the river. Thus their complete course, so far as it is given, must have been north past Kjalarness, then west past the forested wilderness, then south to the river, then north—apparently past the forest again; thence, by ways not stated, back to Straumfjord. No other episode in either of the two saga versions is so puzzling, so nearly impossible of interpretation. This is unfortunate; for, if the story of this cruise is true at all, it contains two potential clues to the positions of the areas to be identified with Straumfjord and Hop. These are, of course, the statement about the mountains (fjoll), and the affirmation that the distance between Straumfjord and this newly explored region (which? the river?) was about the same as that between Straumfjord and Hop. But there are serious objections to the entire episode. Not only is the narrative more muddled and ambiguous here than elsewhere; its whole setting borders on the fantastic. It opens with the statement—which we have already had reason to question—that Karlsefni sailed from Straumfjord in one ship to find Thorhall the Hunter, whom he certainly could have entertained no hope of finding a full year after

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Thorhall's departure. It closes with the impossible yarn of Thorvald's death from an arrow shot by a Uniped. This takes place at the river: while Karlsefni and the rest of his company are gaping at something glinting in a clearing above them, a Uniped, the source of the gleam, springs down the riverbank and looses an arrow at Thorvald. Karlsefni and his men pursue the creature northward; it escapes. "Then they sail back northward, and it seemed to them that they saw the land of the Unipeds. Wishing to avoid further peril to their company," they return to Straumfjord. This is the one thing reported as happening at the river. In short, nothing of consequence happened on the whole cruise: they set out on a patently absurd errand, followed a somewhat confused course, had one supernatural adventure, and returned with nothing accomplished. We have seen in an earlier chapter that this version of Thorvald's death is pure invention: Thorvald had been killed by an Indian before Karlsefni had ever heard of Vinland. An episode beginning and ending as this one does, and containing but one event and that spurious, is unworthy of belief. It is quite possible that Karlsefni never made such a cruise of exploration from Straumfjord; it is certain that, if he did, neither its direction nor the shores he visited can ever be determined. Yet the episode is not without value, for it illuminates the manner in which saga develops. Karlsefni and his entire company passed the winter at Straumfjord; but though there seems to have been no lack of food, there were bitter quarrels. The unmarried men coveted the wives of the married. We do not know whether there was much bloodshed; but dissension and breakdown

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of morale were sufficiently serious to put an end to any thought of continuing the experiment at colonization. In the spring they sailed for Greenland, breaking the voyage at Markland. We are told that in Markland they found five Skraelings, a bearded man, two women, and two boys. They caught the boys; the others "escaped and sank down into the earth!' These boys they took with them, baptized them, and taught them Norse. In an earlier chapter we have given our reasons for disbelieving this episode: it seems a doublet, with imaginary variations, of Karlsefni's discovery and slaughter of five Skraelings on his way from Hop to Straumfjord. The main expedition reached Greenland safely; but Bjarni Grimulfsson's ship was driven into a "sea of maggots!' It is probable enough that he shipwrecked and perished on the way home; but the "sea of maggots" is an echo of folklore at least as old as Tacitus—from whom it may have been directly or indirectly taken." ~Eiri\s the circumstances of Eirik the Red and his family. It reports that Karlsefni spent the winter after his return "with Eirik the Red!' As we have seen, it is inconceivable that Groenlendinga pdttr can be wrong in affirming that Eirik had died in the winter following Leif's return from Vinland. T w o matters remain to be discussed before we leave the story of Karlsefni's expedition. The first is the relation of the birth of Karlsefni's son Snorri to the length of the 28 This is the opinion of Fritzner {Ordbog, Vol. II, p. 617: sec under maSkflhaf). It is the author's view that the passages cited by Fritzner from Tacitus and C z s a r are not sufficiently close to our own story to constitute analogues. It is certain, however, that the "sea of maggots" belongs to folklore rather than to natural history, even if it may have originated from a popular exaggeration of something as actual as the toredo worm.

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colonists' stay in the New World. The second is the question whether the Skraelings encountered by Karlsefni were Indians or Eskimos. According to the Greenland Version, Karlsefni's voyage to Vinland occupied two years; his son Snorri was born in the summer, or perhaps in the early fall, of the year following his arrival at Leif's Houses. The Icelandic Version represents Karlsefni's stay in the New World as longer. Immediately after reporting Karlsefni's cruise to the mysterious river of the Unipeds, it says: "Then they went back and were in Straumfjord the third winter In the first fall Karlsefni's son Snorri was born, and he was three winters old when they went away"—that is, when they sailed back to Greenland. These statements are somewhat ambiguous. It might be supposed, since the birth of Snorri is told immediately after the account of the strife-torn winter at Straumfjord, and since the boy is not mentioned earlier in Eirtks Saga, that he was born "the first fall" after the colonists went back to Straumfjord from Hop. If this be correct, then Karlsefni and his men must have stayed three full winters at Straumfjord after the return from Hop, and the total length of their absence from Greenland must have been six years. It does indeed seem strange that, if Snorri had been born "the first fall" after Karlsefni's landing in the New World, it should not have been mentioned earlier, in more nearly chronological sequence. Nevertheless, though the two saga versions report the events of Karlsefni's expedition somewhat differendy, it seems absurd to ignore the testimony of either on matters recorded by both. "The first fall" {hit fyrsta haust) could, easily and naturally, refer to the first

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autumn spent in America. Assuming this to be true, Snorri must have been born at Straumfjord in the fall preceding the winter of hunger. This is at variance with the testimony of Groenlendinga pattr, which places his birth in the second summer or fall. But if the Icelandic Version is correct, and if its statement means that Snorri was born the first fall at Straumfjord, then the additional clause "and he was three winters old when they went away" lends confirmation to the statement that the winter of strife at Straumfjord, after the return from Hop, was "the third winter!' When we review the entire Iceland narrative, we find that this is corroborated: the first winter in the New World was the hungry winter at Straumfjord; the second was the pleasant winter at Hop; the third was the winter of strife at Straumfjord. By this reckoning, Karlsefni and his companions spent three years in America as against the two years reported in Groenlendinga pdttr. According to the Greenland Version, Snorri was one year old when his parents returned to Greenland. This discrepancy cannot easily be explained. The account, in Eirikj Saga, of the quarrels which broke out at Straumfjord in the third winter is too natural, too true to human nature, to be lightly dismissed; we cannot simply assume that, when the colonists left Hop with the avowed intention of going home, they actually carried out that purpose without passing another winter at Straumfjord. If we could so assume, then one disagreement between the two versions would be solved: the period spent in America would then be two years. But we should still be confronted with another: the disagreement over the time of Snorri's birth, and his age when the expedition returned home. These vari-

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ations in the tradition affect appreciably the chronology of the various voyages to the New World, and have been exploited much more vigorously than they deserve by scholars seeking to discredit one version or the other. The discussion of the chronological question has been ably ventilated by Hovgaard, who prudently avoids committing himself to a particular chronological scheme.20 In this we shall follow his example. The only fixed point— and that is not beyond controversy—is the dating of Leif s discovery of Vinland in the ninety-sixth chapter of Snorri Sturluson's Oldfs Saga Tryggvasonar. Snorri places Leif's voyage in the year of King Olaf's death, A.D. iooo. But at several points in the sequence of voyages there is room for doubting the length of the intervals between one and another. Nothing can be gained by a more precise statement than this: Leif's voyage probably took place either in iooo or in IOOI ; Karlsefni's was doubtless concluded by 1014. The second question, concerning the character of the natives at points visited by Karlsefni, has been widely discussed and vigorously debated. In my opinion, the problem has been admirably analyzed by Hovgaard,*0 whose conclusions I accept in all but one particular. He believes that all the natives met by the Norse voyagers were Indians, except for the five whom Karlsefni surprised on his way from Straumfjord to Markland; these five, Hovgaard thinks, were Eskimos. Since we regard this last supposed encounter with the Skraclings as imaginary, we take to have been Indians all the Skraclings actually seen by the voyagers. On two points, however, additional evidence can be 29

Voyages of the Norsemen, chap. vii. Ibid., chap. ix.

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offered that the natives met by Karlsefni were Indians. Eiriks Saga represents the Skraelings who attacked the Northmen at Hop as using missile weapons and "war slings!' Slings were certainly used by various of the Algonquin Indians inhabiting the region between Hudson Bay and the Atlantic seaboard; and judging from Speck's account, these slings were of considerable size and power.31 The mysterious instrument with which the Skraelings so frightened the Northmen, and with which they cast a round object which fell to the ground with a great noise, may conceivably have been an exceptionally large sling. The five natives whom the Northmen killed on their way from Hop to Straumfjord had with them a container filled with a mixture of animal marrow and blood. Hovgaard's comment, "This corresponds well with the sausages which the Red Indians used to prepare"32 is sound; but the practice of preserving marrow and blood "in the form of a thickened pudding" was not restricted to those now extinct tribes of Labrador. Speck reports it for the Naskaupee, a Northern Algonquin people who now inhabit northern Labrador and whose range extends to the southwest shore of Hudson Bay.83 The term used in the saga for the Skraelings' container is stotyr; and since the usual meaning of this word is a length or section of tree trunk, or a hollow block of wood, we may perhaps assume that these natives kept their mix81

Penobscot Man, p. 179.—A somewhat similar explanation was offered by H. R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, Vol. I, p. 85. Schoolcraft describes an ancient Algonquin weapon consisting of a boulder sewed in a skin and made fast to a pole; he calls this weapon a "ballista," and says of it: "Plunged upon a boat or canoe it was capable of sinking it. Brought down among a group of men on a sudden it produced consternation and death." 32 Voyages of thf Norsemen, p. 190. 38 Nas^api, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1935, p. 92.

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ture of marrow and blood in a hollowed length cut from a small tree stem or a bough. It would be manifestly impossible, in view of the migratory habits of the northern Indians, to determine whether the natives whom the Norsemen met were Athabaskan or Algonquin. It is improbable that they were Eskimo. Thorfinn Karlsefni failed to accomplish his great purpose of establishing a Norse colony in the western world; and he may have felt himself in some measure a beaten man. But he was not so regarded by his contemporaries or by posterity. They recognized in him the qualities of a great leader: they understood the courage which endured the first cold, hungry winter at Straumfjord, and still pressed on; they appreciated the resourcefulness which held together and supported a considerable company in the face of circumstances which might well have divided and broken them; they perceived that he had acted with wisdom in abandoning the fair land of Hop, in view of the overwhelming odds. He had sailed farther than Leif or Thorvald, had experienced more varied labors, and had brought back most of his followers in safety and good health. It was their admiration for his valor, fortitude, and wisdom which earned him his nickname Karlsefni: "Stuff of a Man!'

Chapter VI

DISCOVERY'S END approximately one generation after Bjarni Herjulfsson's accidental glimpses of the New World, Norsemen had discovered and explored considerable areas of the American coast and made a gallant, if unsuccessful, attempt to colonize it. Yet, with the abandonment of Thorfinn Karlsefni's ambitious project, Norse efforts to settle in America ceased; so far as we know, no Norseman ever again saw Vinland until after the United States had become a nation, and no further attempt was made by Scandinavians to colonize in America until the brave but futile Swedish settlement on the Delaware in 1638. It has often been asked why neither the discoverers nor their descendants, after exhibiting so much enterprise, saw fit to exploit the rich and abundant lands which had so much more to offer them, in wealth and comfort, than either Greenland or Iceland; why no attempts were made to colonize Leif's Vinland, at least. Seldom has a people so vigorous relinquished without struggle a hold once established in regions so promising. Vinland—in the sense of that area which was discovered by Leif and explored by Thorvald—must have seemed an earthly paradise to Greenlanders. Thorvald exclaimed at its fairness, and wished to make his home there; Leif persistently refused to give or sell the site of his houses, although he was most generous in lending them. His attitude suggests that he cherished a dream of returning; perhaps, like Thorvald, he would have liked to make his home in VinITHIN

C177]

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land. He must have known, however, that he never would return. For, in the winter following the close of his voyage, his father Eirik died, and Leif became master of BrattahliS. His responsibilities thereafter lay in Greenland, not only by virtue of his ownership of a great estate, but also because he was de facto chief of the Greenland colony. Moreover, the news brought back from Vinland by Thorvald's crew may well have dampened Leif's enthusiasm for further adventuring in the West. The manner of Thorvald's death demonstrated that Leif's earthly paradise nourished a formidable serpent—the Skraelings. A man so clear-sighted as Leif must have understood that to establish and maintain residence in Greenland against the opposition of the natives would have required resources in men, equipment, and weapons far beyond the means not only of BrattahliS but of all the little Greenland settlement as well. Even though no natives had been seen in the vicinity of Leif's Houses, northeast of there Thorvald had fought his last fight; and on an island to the westward traces of native occupation had been found. Any use which Leif might thereafter make of his discovery must be limited to the immediate area of his own winter camp in Vinland; and even this might prove dangerous. He had found no natives in Markland; but Markland seems to have had little attraction for him. It was the land around Leif's Houses to which he clung, and which he nevertheless did not see again. Nor is there any evidence that any other Norseman after Freydis ever revisited Leif's Houses. But there is evidence that Greenlanders continued to voyage to Markland, though none attempted to settle there.

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Karlsefni, undoubtedly informed of Thorvald's fatal encounter with the natives, made preparations on a larger scale than Leif or Thorvald, and attempted to establish his colony in a region which he may well have thought to find unpopulated. One stubborn fight with the Skraelings convinced him that no possible Norse colony could withstand the hostility and the superior numbers of the Skraelings, whose canoes they had seen dotting the bay like charcoal. The reasons for the failure of the Norsemen, whether of Greenland or of Iceland, to establish colonies in the New World ought, in the light of these circumstances, to be evident. Colonization of distant shores across wide seas, in the face of native hostility, is not a project suited to the resources of small populations. It requires many men in many ships, well organized, backed by great wealth, and supported for generations, to accomplish such an end. Greenland, after all, was only a little outpost of Iceland; and Iceland itself had neither many men nor great means to expend on enterprises which were entirely unnecessary, however profitable. In Haugen's trenchant words, "in the year 1000 Europe was not ready to discover America!' 1 Colonization and settlement of the New World had to wait until relatively large and powerful European nations, ruled by governments centralized, strong, and exigent, were prepared to throw themselves into a task which, even then, proved arduous and bloody. The strong and hungry Spain which had at last thrown out the Moors, and now craved treasure to fill its war-emptied coffers, had both the means and the will to open up the lands discovered by Columbus; and that will was kept at fever pitch by the proselyting zeal of the Church. 1

Einar Haugen, Voyages to Vinland, New York, 1942, p. 160.

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Somewhat later, France, both Huguenot and Catholic, embarked on a career of colonial expansion, from motives both religious and mercenary. Behind the attempts at Huguenot colonization were the coffers of wealthy men who hoped both for asylum for their co-religionists and for wealth. The powerful French monarchy poured out its treasure for generations in the attempt to found a New France where royal profits might be made and where no heresy should live. England, a late starter in the colonial race, was impelled by motives equally mixed; but individual Englishmen in great numbers joined colonial expeditions for gain, for glory, and for political or religious liberty. None of these conditions obtained in eleventh-century Scandinavia. The realms of the Northmen, even when politically divided, needed no New World to receive exiles or adventurers. There were no religious persecutions, no zealous missionaries burning to spread the faith in heathen lands; and there was no sense of urgency to make fortunes. Greenland and Iceland provided a good enough living for their people; there were no very rich and no miserably poor. There was, in short, no motive for colonization. And Scandinavia equally lacked means to support enterprises in foreign parts. That, very simply, is why Vinland was never colonized. Had the Norsemen possessed both means and motive, they would certainly have proved more efficient colonizers than those peoples who ultimately succeeded. Karlsefni's expedition supplies abundant proof that Norsemen lacked nothing but the desire and the wealth to make admirable colonists. The hungry Icelanders at Straumfjord managed

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to endure one bitter winter; and when they had to face another winter there, they had learned to collect food against the migration of game animals. Frenchmen and Englishmen made a much worse beginning in the New World: Villegagnon in Brazil, Ribaut in Florida, Carrier and Roberval in Canada, White on Roanoke—all these were driven to ruin by starvation and dissension. They did not know how to provide against hunger, how to gather and store food, how to clear and cultivate, to hunt and fish. All these things the Northmen did know. They did not have to depend on the generosity of Indians for food in winter, and they were equal to any emergency which the New World could produce—except the emergency of native attack in superior numbers. Before this they withdrew; and as colonists they did not return. There was no reason why they should not have withdrawn: their stake in Vinland or in Hop was not sufficiently large to warrant risking extermination. After the return of Freydis and of Karlsefni to Greenland, there is record only of a single attempt to reach Vinland. The Icelandic Annals report that, in 1121, Eirik Gnupsson, Bishop of Greenland, sailed in search of Vinland. What his motives were, or whether he succeeded, we do not know. Three years later, however, his successor as bishop was ordained; and it therefore seems probable that Eirik Gnupsson either perished in the sea or came to his death, with all his company, in the New World. For more than three hundred years after Karlsefni we have no positive evidence of voyages to Markland; but in the Annals of Flateyarb6\, and in the Elder S\dlholt Annals, there are entries for the year 1347 describing the en-

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trance into Straumfjord in Iceland of a small ship from Greenland, which had sailed to Markland and had been driven from its course on the return voyage. This incident demonstrates that Greenlanders had not forgotten the way to Markland. Since the only attraction which Markland had for Greenlanders was its abundant timber supply, we may assume that this little ship of 1347 had sailed thither for timber; and this carries with it the inevitable corollary that other Greenlanders had been exploiting the Markland forests during the centuries since Leif and Karlsefni. This is confirmed by the evidence of archaeology. Poul Nörlund, the eminent scholar whose researches have revolutionized our knowledge of the Greenland settlements, has described a find of thirty-two chests of wood unearthed at Herjulfsness, the materials of which are fir, spruce, and larch. Spruce and fir may have been imported into Greenland from Norway or brought in from Markland; but larch, which grows extensively in Newfoundland and in Labrador, is not native to Scandinavia. It is reasonably certain, therefore, that the larch used by the Greenlanders for their finely made chests came from Markland.2 It is very likely that much of the wood of other varieties used in Greenland also came from Markland, for, after the thirteenth century, communications between Greenland and Norway became more and more infrequent; and the voyage from Greenland to Markland was actually shorter and safer than that from Greenland to Norway." It is obvious that this Markland voyage of 1347 could not have been made unless oral tradition in Greenland had pre" Poul Nörlund, "Buried Norsemen at Herjolfsnes," Meddelelser om Grönland, LXVII, Copenhagen, 1924, pp. 70 fi., 82. 'Brögger, Vinlandsferdene, p. 139.

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served the memory of the course thither. The saga texts from which we learn of the voyages to Markland and Vinland in the eleventh century were written down in Iceland; there were no such written sources in Greenland. It is, therefore, clear that Greenlanders remembered the way to Markland as it had been established either by Leif and Thorvald or by Karlsefni, and passed on the sailing directions by word of mouth from generation to generation. It can scarcely be doubted that, whenever the need of timber in Greenland became critical, and when contact with Norway had become infrequent and unreliable, Greenlanders made cruises to the Markland forests. There is one interesting bit of testimony which shows that Markland and its most important product were remembered, at least traditionally, in Iceland as late as the early seventeenth century. In the year 1625 the Icelander Bjorn Jonsson of Skardsa, who had borrowed Hau\sb6\, made in the manuscript the following annotation: "From Markland's inner coastlines comes driftwood. The region is called Maryland because of the dense forests that are there; and even on the beaches, the tidal beaches, where the beach is dry up to the high point of the neap tide; and [this] will be explained later!'4 T h e latter part of this note is obscure; but the first part leaves little room for doubt that Markland was remembered by Icelanders as an important source of timber, long after voyages thither had ceased. 1 Ur Marhlands botnum kiemur re\atridur, Maryland \allast a) theim tyckva skogi thar er, o\ jafnvel um fiorurnar, i fltedi fiorunum, sem smastraums fhzdur eru turrar o\ sijar mun greint verda. The translation in my text is not my own, but was most kindly made for me by Professor Einar Haugen, of the University of Wisconsin.

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Was this Markland, whence Greenlanders continued to derive much of their timber supply long after the voyages to Vinland had ceased, the Markland discovered by Leif, or that visited by Karlsefni ? As Hovgaard pointed out, and as I have tried to demonstrate, Leif's Markland was not Karlsefni's. Most of those scholars who attempt to discredit the testimony of Groenlendinga pattr believe that the names Helluland and Maryland, supposed to have been given by Leif to his first and second landfalls, are merely lifted from the Eiriks Saga account of the naming of Helluland and Markland by Karlsefni; in other words, that the Greenland tradition of Leif's discovery and naming of those regions is merely a distorted "popular" version of Karlsefni's discovery and naming of these two lands. Actually, the identity of the names, as between the two versions, proves no such thing. Any Norse seafarer who sighted a shore like that of Baffin Island or Resolution, with its striking display of great bare rocks, would infallibly have called the region Helluland; any such seafarer would have called a low shore heavily wooded Markland. It was universal Norse practice to name newly observed regions from their salient characteristics, unless some striking event occurred there to suggest what we might call an "occasional" name. Thus Leif named Vinland from its grapevines; Karlsefni named Straumfjord and Straumey from the strong currents which he encountered there, and named Hop from its landlocked anchorage. FurSustrandir was so named because its long, sandy, shelterless shores were indeed "remarkable strands!' Kjalarness and Thorvald's Krossaness illustrate the "occasional" type of name, given because of a significant event which occurred

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there. Even if Leif and Karlsefni had made their respective discoveries without having known or heard of each other, each would still, and inevitably, have called his Baffin Island landfall Helluland; each would have given the name Maryland to the first extensive, low, forested coast which he might have sighted. This uniform and accurate, if unimaginative, Norse procedure in naming new lands resulted in many duplications in nomenclature. For example, the names Straumfjord and Kjalarness were given to places in Iceland, as well as in America; and Karlsefni was not at all deterred from calling an island off the coast of his Markland "Bear Isle" (Bjarney) simply because there was an island of the same name off the Greenland coast. No: the identity of names as between Leif's and Karlsefni's Helluland and Markland, or as between Thorvald's and Karlsefnfs Kjalarness, proves neither the unoriginality of Groenlendinga pdttr nor the identity of the regions to which identical names were given by different explorers. The terms of the saga accounts themselves compel us to regard Leif's Markland as a different land from Karlsefni's. Our present problem, then, is this: Was the Markland to which Greenlanders continued to resort for timber, at least as late as 1347, Leif's or Karlsefni's Markland ? In attacking this problem we must take into account the divergent circumstances attending the respective voyages of the two explorers. Leif had learned, first from report, then from consultation with Bjarni Herjulfsson, of the three lands which Bjarni had sighted. Leif could not hope to find either of Bjarni's first two American landfalls, or any other land between or south of them, unless he first found Bjarni's third landfall—Baffin Island or Resolution,

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across Davis Strait from Greenland. Had he missed this, he would have become lost in unknown seas. Therefore Leif sought and found Bjarni's third landfall, and named it Helluland. From that point on, however, Leif was a free agent. He could either reverse the course Bjarni had laid from the latter's second landfall to Helluland, in a conscious effort to find Bjarni's second land and no other; or he could cross the entrance to Hudson Strait and coast down the long shoreline of Labrador, until he came to a region distinct from Helluland and interesting in itself. The sequel proves that he chose the latter course; and he must have coasted a long time before finding any land worth investigating. The northeast coast of Labrador is very similar in its rocky and repellent character to southern Baffin Island; only glaciers are wanting. I have tried to show that Leif went even farther, coasted the entire east shore of Labrador, passed through the Strait of Belle Isle, and found on the west coast of Newfoundland the sandy, heavily wooded shores which he called Markland. Karlsefni began his voyage under very different circumstances. Having talked with Leif, and no doubt with members of Thorvald's crew, he must have known all that they could tell him about landfalls, courses, and distances. He did not wish to retrace Leif's course completely, however, since he could not found a colony in Leif's Vinland. Moreover, he had another source of information. Eirt\s Saga tells us that he took with him Thorhall the Hunter, who "had extensive knowledge of the unsetded regions" (honum var vida kunnigt t obygdum). I have pointed out in chapter v that the unsettled regions which Thorhall knew so well

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cannot have been in Greenland, since Karlsefni would not have been moved to take anyone along as an expert in areas which he had no intention of visiting. The obvious reason for Thorhall's presence on the expedition was that he had somehow acquired considerable knowledge of the wastes of Helluland, and of the waters between it and Greenland. It must have been on Thorhall's advice that Karlsefni, instead of sailing from Eiriksfjord as Leif and Thorvald had done, proceeded first to the Western Settlement of Greenland. Hovgaard offers several possible reasons for this procedure: ( 1 ) that Karlsefni may have wished to visit Gudrid's farm at Lysufjord; (2) that he wished to avoid the ice pack which, in the early summer months, blocks the southwest coast of Greenland; (3) that by crossing Davis Strait from the Western Settlement he obtained a good height for the crossing, with the prevailing northerly and northwesterly winds." The first of these reasons is insufficient, in itself, to explain Karlsefni's taking so roundabout a course, though it might have been a contributory cause. The second seems out of the question. The pack ice encountered during the early summer months, in our day, can hardly have constituted a serious peril in the much milder climate of the eleventh century ; and certainly Leif and Thorvald had not been troubled by it. The third reason, and that alone, satisfactorily explains Karlsefni's long, time-consuming cruise from Eiriksfjord to at least as far north as Lysufjord in the Western Settlement, before setting out across Davis Strait. The point at which he left Greenland and sailed out into the strait is at least three hundred miles from Eiriksfjord. A cruise such 5

Hovgaard, Voyages of the Norsemen, p. 229.

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The Norse Discoveries in America

as this would not have been undertaken without compelling reason. The reason, I believe, is to be found in the counsel given him by Thorhall the Hunter, whose special knowledge Eiriks Saga stresses. This counsel must have been that, if he sailed from about the latitude of Lysufjord, he would be able to cross Davis Strait not only at the point where he could expect most favorable winds, but also at the strait's narrowest point. This bears directly on the question of the identity of that Markland which the Greenlanders, in the centuries after Karlsefni, visited for timber. If I am correct in my identification of Karlsefni's Markland with the southern coastline of Ungava Bay, it is this region which Greenlanders after him would be most likely to seek out, rather than Leif's Markland, which I identify with western Newfoundland. The element of distance is in itself decisive. Karlsefni's course from the Western Settlement to his Helluland bears all the marks of a calculated, well-informed one. "Bear Isles" (Bjarneyjar), to which he sailed directly from the Western Settlement, can hardly be Disko, off the Greenland coast, for there would have been neither point nor sense to his sailing three hundred miles yet farther north up the Greenland coast from Lysufjord before crossing the strait. Therefore I have suggested that "Bear Isles" lay off the coast of Baffin Island, approximately in the region of Cumberland Peninsula. From Bear Isles, Karlsefni, after a two-day sail, reached the land which he called Helluland. From there, after sailing for two days with a north wind, and then veering from due south to southeast, he reached his Markland.

Discovery's End

189

Lapsed time and directions, as given in Eiri\s Saga, bear out my identifications. A two-day sail from a point off Cumberland Peninsula could, with a good wind, bring Karlsefni's ships to Frobisher Bay and the shore of Hall Peninsula, which is most likely to have been his Helluland. From there a two-day sail due south, followed by a shorter sail southeasterly, would have brought him to the south shore of Ungava Bay. He could not possibly have reached any other forested shore in the time given in Eiri\s Saga. Now the distance covered by Karlsefni, between the Western Settlement and his Markland, falls into three almost equal stages: from the Western Settlement to Bear Isles (off Cumberland Peninsula), roughly 300 miles; from Cumberland Peninsula to Frobisher Bay, 250-275 miles; from Frobisher Bay to Ungava Bay, about 250-275 miles. From Karlsefni's point of departure in Greenland, then, to his Markland landfall, was a sail of not more than 850 miles, with between 250 and 300 miles between landfalls. This gives the impression of a most carefully planned voyage, laid out beforehand by someone who knew the waters between the Western Setdement and Helluland. The mariner who plotted such a course can have been none other than Thorhall the Hunter, who "had an extensive knowledge of the unsettled regions!' When we measure Leif's course from the Eastern Settlement at Eiriksfjord to his Markland (western Newfoundland), we find that this was a voyage of at least 1,500 miles—nearly twice the distance sailed by Karlsefni from Greenland to his Markland. Moreover, Karlsefni's was an easier and a safer voyage: at the point where he presumably crossed Davis Strait he was in the open sea for only about

190

The Norse Discoveries in America

300 miles, whereas Leif's crossing amounted to about 650 miles of open water. By coasting Greenland from Eiriksfjord to the Western Settlement, Karlsefni avoided more than 300 miles of perilous open sea. And the distance saved on Karlsefni's run from Helluland to his Markland, as against Leif's run from Helluland to his Markland, was almost 700 miles. The longer a sailor must remain at sea, the more numerous are the dangers he must face. All other things being equal, then, those Greenlanders who sailed to Markland after Karlsefni's day would inevitably prefer his course and his Markland to Leif's. To reach Leif's Markland would have involved much more time, longer exposure to the perils of the sea, and greater danger of running out of provisions or being blown out of one's course. Leif's Vinland lay still farther away than his Markland; there were hostile natives living on at least two sides of it; of all its natural products only one—timber—was necessary to Greenlanders; and timber grew abundantly in Karlsefni's Markland. This is the reason why Greenlanders, though they continued to exploit Markland, made no further voyages to Vinland. Leif's Markland had timber; but so did Karlsefni's—the south shore of Ungava Bay between the George and Koksoak rivers. The Forest Classification for Canada reports: "Another timber area is part x»f the valley of the Koksoak around Cambrian Lake and northward; here weathered deposits from the late Precambrian altered sedimentaries appear to have favored tree distribution and growth, and there is an open forest cover of large-sized white spruce, balsam poplar, tamarack, white birch and black spruce!'

Discovery's End

191

The reference to tamarack is of particular interest; for this tree is the American larch—presumably the wood from which the larch chests of Herjulfsness in Greenland were made. In the eleventh century the entire southern shore of Ungava Bay must have been heavily forested with trees of much larger growth than the severe climate of our day permits. It is not impossible that attempts may also have been made to reach Markland from the Eastern Settlement directly; but it seems most probable that, after Karlsefni's voyage had demonstrated the greater speed and safety of the northern route, such Greenlanders as crossed Davis Strait for timber followed his course. Some voyagers, instead of sailing south from Baffin Island into Ungava Bay, may have passed east of Resolution Island and down the east coast of Labrador. Any who did so must have sailed much farther than Karlsefni before they could have found a satisfactory supply of timber; and on the return voyage they would have been obliged to waste much time and face additional perils. Leifs voyage, then, was less productive in the long run than Karlsefni's; and Vinland, with all its wealth and comfort, was of no lasting value to the Greenlanders. We cannot hope to discover how many voyages to Markland were made, or how frequently Greenland ships brought home cargoes of its trees, but we can be sure that much of the timber used in Greenland came from America, for the Greenlanders had only two sources of wood—Norway and Markland. Throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries there must have been frequent contacts between Greenland and Norway, but during the thirteenth century Greenland

192

The Norse Discoveries in America

must have become increasingly more isolated. In 1261 Greenland became the possession of the Norwegian crown; and the very fact that the king then promised to send two ships a year to the Greenland settlements suggests that for some time previous ships from Norway had been few and far between. The royal promise seems not to have been strictly kept; apparently sailings were often years apart. From 1367 to 1410, when the last recorded visit made by any Norwegian vessel to the Greenland colony took place, there is no trace of any contact between Norway and its westernmost dependency. In the meantime the Greenlanders were harassed by oncoming waves of Eskimos, and were beginning to feel the effects, in progressive malnutrition and physical degeneration, of the worsening climate. It is hardly likely that any Greenlanders of Norse stock lived on into the sixteenth century. It seems probable, therefore, that Greenland, during the last two and a half centuries of its existence as a Norse colony, must have depended largely on Markland for timber. Even though our sole record of a Markland voyage during this period is the mention, in the Annals, of the ship of 1347, the continued use and the skillful working of wood in Greenland is evidence enough that wood was being brought in—and not from Norway. Markland was the only alternative source. Much of the material used in the colony was driftwood, a circumstance which lends interest to the difficult note made in Hau\sb6\ by Björn Jonsson: "From Markland's inner coastlines comes driftwood!' o -> *73» 4> 5 Gudrid, 26,31,37,43-45 passim, 58,120,122,123,126,158 Gunnbjorn Skerries, 3, 7,10, 16 n. 8 Gunnbjorn Ulfsson, 3,6-8,9,10

Index

199

Halldor Hermannsson, 54-56 passim Haugen, Einar, 55,179 Hau\sb6\ (AM 544), 22,151, 152,155, 183,192 Helgi, 46,48,52 Helluland [Land of Flat Stones]: Leif's, 24, 29, 56, 61, 65, 75, 96, 127, 130, 184-186 passim, 190; Karlsefni's, 32, 128-130 passim, 142, 184, 185, 188, 189, 190 Herjulf, 12, 15,17 Herjulfsness, 12,15 and n. 7,20,182,191 Hop [Landlocked Water], 4, 34, 37, 39, 122, 131, 134, 141, 142, 148-158,160-169 passim, 173, 184. See also Nelson River Hovgaard, William, 20, 49, 50, 55, 59, 61, 64, 69-71 passim, 78, 83, 85, 86, 92, 109-110, 112, 118-119, 125, 128, 130-137 passim, 150, 163-167 passim, 174,175,184,187 Icelandic Annals, 11-12,181 Indians (Skraelings), 3, 28, 35-42 passim, 44-46, 50-53 passim, 104, 108-111 passim, 115,122,126,157-162,170,171,174-176,178-179 Ivar Bardsson, 5,7,93 Keel, ship's, 27-28, 32, 105, m - 1 1 2 , 135-137, 139. See also Kjalarness King's Mirror, 14,93 Kjalarness [Keel Cape], 4,28,32,34, 37,111-112,114,129,131-135 passim, 137,139, 184, 185 Koksoak River, 129 Kornhjdlm, 27,56,104 Krossaness [Cross Cape], 28,114,122,184 Labrador coast, 3,18,21,64,71,76,128,129,131,133,186,191 Landndmab6\, 6,8,12 Laxdala Saga, 68 Leif Eiriksson, 3,17,20-21,23-27,32, 54,57-59 passim, 60-101,102, 107,114-121 passim, 124-130 passim, 138,151,174,177-178,185, 186,189-190 Leif's Houses (Btidir), 24,25, 29,44,46-47,62,63,73,78,79-80, 83, 92, 97-100 passim, 103-107 passim, 109,112-116 passim, 121,122, 126,146,177,178,195 Lysufjord, 126,187,188

200

Index

MacMillan, D. B., 18 Maggot sea, 43,171 Maine, 78, 79, 84, 91, 95, 97,110, 115 Markland [Forestland], 4,181-184,185,188,191,192; Leif's, 24,62, 64-67, 69-72 passim, 74-76 passim, 96, 97,107, 126, 130, 184,185, 186,189,190; Karlsefni's, 21, 32,128-134 passim, 137-142 passim, 184, 188, 189, 190, 191 Minas Basin, 105,110,112,113 Nansen, Fridtjof, 118 Nelson River, 153, 155. See also Hop Nörlund, Poul, 5,182 Nova Scotia, 72-78 passim, 97, 99, 107-117 passim Olaf Tryggvason, King, 26,32,100,174 Passamaquoddy Bay, 79-86 passim, 95, 97, 107, 113 Rafn, Carl, 193-194 Resolution Island, 19 and n. 12, 56, 60, 61, 184, 185, 191 Scotch thralls, 32,51,53,137-138,151 Snxfellsness, 6, 7,10, 68 Snorri (Karlsefni's son), 4, 38, 43, 45, 171-173 Snorri Sturluson, Oldfs Saga Tryggvasonar, 174 Snorri Thorbrandsson, 12, 30, 31, 34-37 passim, 49, 120, 122, 158 Speck, Frank G., 110-111,175 Storm, Gustav, 17,54-56 passim, 63,118 Straumey [Current Island], 4,33,143,145,184 Straumfjord [Current Fjord], 4, 33, 34, 37-39 passim, 129, 131-135 passim, 137-145 passim, 152, 160-167 passim, 169-173 passim, 184. See also Chesterfield Inlet Thorbjöm (Karlsefni's son), 44 Thorbjörn Vifilsson, 31 Thorbrand Snorrason, 36,122,159 Th6rS, 30 Thorfinn Karlsefni, 4, 21, 30-38, 41-46 passim, 48, 49-59 passim, 118-176, 179-191 passim, 195

Index

201

Thorgunna, 27 Thorhall Gamlason, 30, 31, 120, 122, 132, 146, 147 Thorhall the Hunter, 31, 33, 34, 37, 39, 41-42, 122, 123, 127, 140, 145, 164-165, 169-170, 186-189 passim Thorir, 26 Thorstein Eiriksson, 4, 26, 29-30, 31, 75, 1 1 5 - 1 1 7 Thorvald Eiriksson, 3-4, 27-29, 38-39,41, 51-59 passim, 63, 70-71, 73-75 passim, 78, 96-99 passim, 102-117, 122, 125, 135-136, 170, 177-178 Thorvard, 31, 47-48, 51, 52, 122, 123 Timber, 16, 25-27 passim, 32,44,47, 65, 79, 82, 85, 90,100,103,106, 107, 128-130 passim, 139, 143, 144, 148, 149, 152, 153, 166-169 passim, 182-184,190-191,195 Tyrker, 24-25, 26, 51, 55, 56, 85-86, 8 8 - 8 9 , 1 5 1 Ungava Bay, 129, 142,188-191 passim Uniped episode, 37-42 passim, 5 1 , 1 2 3 , 1 7 0 Vinland, 22, 25, 34, 62, 69-71 passim, 76, 78-100 passim, 102, 109, 113-126 passim, 146,177, 181, 190, 191 West Quoddy Head, 78, 79 Western Settlement, 13, 31, 116, 126, 187-190 passim, 196 Whale episode, 33-34, 44, 140 Wheat, self-sown, 4, 26,32, 34, 88,137,148,150-151,152,161 Withies, 86-88, 90 Yule feast, 30-31, 120, 123-124