Part 2

With reference to the Vinland voyages, there is proof of an unusually strong tradition in the fact that it has come down from two sources, the only case of such a phenomenon among the Icelandic sagas proper. It does not invalidate the general truth of the tradition that these two sources clash in various matters. These disagreements are not so serious but that fair-minded American scholars have found it "easy to believe that the narratives contained in the sagas are true in their general outlines and important features." It lies within the province of Old Norse scholarship to determine which of the two Vinland sagas has the better literary and historical antecedents. After this point has been established, the truthfulness and credibility of the selected narrative in its details must be maintained on the internal evidence in conjunction with the geographical and other data of early America. And here American scholarship may legitimately speak.

These sagas have in recent years been subjected, especially by Dr. Gustav Storm of Christiania,[8-1] to most searching textual and historical criticism, and the result has been that the simpler narrative of Hauk's Book and AM. 557 is pronounced the more reliable account.[8-2] In respect to literary quality, it has the characteristics of the Icelandic sagas proper, as distinguished from the later sagas by well-known literary men like Snorri. Where it grazes facts of Northern history it is equally strong. Thus, there is serious question as to the first sighting of land by Biarni Herjulfson, who is mentioned only in the Flat Island narrative, and nowhere else in the rich genealogical literature of Iceland, although his alleged father was an important man, of whom there are reliable accounts. On the other hand, the record of the "Saga of Eric the Red," giving the priority of discovery to Leif Ericson, can be collaterally confirmed.[8-3] The whole account of Biarni seems suspicious, and the main facts, viewed with reference to Leif's discovery, run counter to Northern chronology and history. There are, however, two incidental touches in the Flat Island Book narrative, which are absent from the other saga, namely, the observation concerning the length of the day in Vinland, and the reference to finding "three skin-canoes, with three men under each." The improbabilities of the Flat Island Book saga are easily detected, if one uses as a guide the simpler narrative of the "Saga of Eric the Red," the only doubtful part of which is the "uniped" episode, a touch of mediaeval superstition so palpable as not to be deceptive.

Aside from such things as picking grapes in the spring, sipping sweet dew from the grass, and the presence of an apparition, the Flat Island Book account, when read by itself, with no attempt to make it harmonize with the statements of the "Saga of Eric the Red" or other facts of Scandinavian history, is a sufficiently straightforward narrative. The difficulty begins when it is placed in juxtaposition to these facts and statements. It should not be and need not be discarded, but in giving an account of the Vinland voyages it must be used with circumspection. From an historical standpoint it must occupy a subordinate place. If Rafn in his _Antiquitates Americanae_ had given emphatic precedence to the saga as found in Hauk's Book and AM. 557, had left to American scholars the Dighton Rock and the Newport Tower, and had not been so confident in the matter of identifying the exact localities that the explorers visited, he might have carried conviction, instead of bringing confusion, to American scholars.

The general results of the work of the Norwegian scholar Dr. Storm, together with a unique presentation of the original narratives, are accessible in _The Finding of Wineland_ (London, 1890 and 1895), by an American scholar, the late Arthur Middleton Reeves. This work contains a lucid account of the important investigations on the subject, photographs of all the vellum pages that give the various narratives, a printed text accompanying these, page by page and line by line, and also translations into English. There is one phase of the subject that this work does not discuss: the identifications of the regions visited by the Northmen. Dr. Storm, however, has gone into this subject, and is convinced that Helluland, Markland, and Vinland of the sagas, are Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia.[10-1] The sailing directions in the "Saga of Eric the Red" are given with surprising detail. These, with other observations, seem to fit Nova Scotia remarkably well. Only one thing appears to speak against Storm's view, and that is the _abundance_ of grapes to which the Flat Island Book account testifies. But coupled with this testimony are statements (to say nothing of the unreliability of this saga in other respects) that indicate that the Icelandic narrators had come to believe that grapes were gathered in the spring, thus invalidating the testimony as to abundance.

Whether the savages that the sagas describe were Indians or Eskimos is a question of some interest. John Fiske[10-2] believes that the explorers came in contact with American Indians; Vigfusson, on the other hand, believes that the sagas describe Eskimos. Here, however, the American has the better right to an opinion.

On this point, it is of importance to call attention to the fact that the Norse colonists in Greenland found no natives there, only vestiges of them. They were at that time farther north in Greenland; the colonists came in contact with them much later,--too late to admit of descriptions of them in any of the classical Icelandic sagas, in which the Greenland colonists play no inconspicuous part. Ari, the great authority on early Norse history, speaking of the Greenland colonists, says in his _Libellus Islandorum_:[11-1] "They found there men's habitations both east and west in the land [_i.e._, in both the Eastern and Western settlements] both broken cayaks and stone-smithery, whereby it may be seen that the same kind of folk had been there as they which inhabited Vinland, and whom the men of Greenland [_i.e._, the explorers] called Skrellings."

A sort of negative corroboration of this is offered by a work of high rank, the famous _Speculum Regale_, written in Old Norse in Norway in the middle of the thirteenth century. It contains much trustworthy information on Greenland; it tells, "with bald common sense," of such characteristic things as glaciers and northern lights, discusses the question as to whether Greenland is an island or a peninsula, tells of exports and imports, the climate, the means of subsistence, and especially the fauna, _but not one word concerning any natives_. Moreover Ivar Bardsen's account[11-2] of Greenland, which is entirely trustworthy, gives a distinct impression that the colonists did not come into conflict with the Eskimos until the fourteenth century.

There is consequently no valid reason for doubting that the savages described in the sagas were natives of Vinland and Markland. But whether it can ever be satisfactorily demonstrated that the Norse explorers came in contact with Algonquin, Micmac, or Beothuk Indians, and just where they landed, are not matters of essential importance. The incontrovertible facts of the various Norse expeditions are that Leif Ericson and Thorfinn Karlsefni are as surely historical characters as Christopher Columbus, that they visited, in the early part of the eleventh century, some part of North America where the grape grew, and that in that region the colonists found savages, whose hostility upset their plans of permanent settlement.

According to the usually accepted chronology, Leif's voyage from Norway to Greenland (during which voyage he found Vinland) was made in the year 1000, and Karlsefni's attempt at colonization within the decade following. On the basis of genealogical records (so often treacherous) some doubt has recently been cast on this chronology by Vigfusson, in _Origines Islandicae_[12-1] (1905). Vigfusson died in 1889, sixteen years before the publication of this work. He had no opportunity to consider the investigations of Dr. Storm, who accepts without question the first decade of the eleventh century for the Vinland voyages. Nor do Storm's evidences and arguments on this point appear in the work as published. Therefore we are obliged to say of Vigfusson's observations on the chronology of the Vinland voyages, that they stand as question-marks which call for confirmation.

We are surprised, moreover, to find that _Origines Islandicae_ prints the Flat Island Book story first, apparently on account of the belief that this story contains the "truer account of the first sighting of the American continent" by Biarni Herjulfson.[12-2] It is impossible to believe that this would have been done, if the editors (Vigfusson and Powell) had known the results of Dr. Storm's work, which is not mentioned. There is, furthermore, no attempt in the _Origines Islandicae_ to refute or explain away an opinion on AM. 557 expressed by the same authorities, in 1879,[12-3] to the effect that "it is free from grave errors of fact which disfigure the latter [the Flat Island Book saga]." We are almost forced to the conclusion that a hand less cunning than Vigfusson's has had to do with the unfinished section of the work.

In regard to the extract from Adam of Bremen, which we print, it should be observed that its only importance lies in the fact that it corroborates the Icelandic tradition of a land called Vinland, where there were grapes and "unsown grain," and thus serves to strengthen faith in the trustworthiness of the saga narrative. The annals and papal letters that follow need no further discussion, we think, than that contained in the annotations.

Besides the texts in Icelandic, already described, by Rafn, Reeves, Vigfusson and Powell, and Storm, it may be mentioned that the Flat Island text is given in Vol. I. of _Flateyjar-bok_, ed. Vigfusson and Unger, Christiania, 1860. There are translations of both texts in Beamish, _Discovery of North America by the Northmen_ (London, 1841), in Slafter, _Voyages of the Northmen_ (Boston, 1877), and in De Costa, _Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen_ (Albany, 1901). But most of these are confused in arrangement, and the best is that by the late Mr. Reeves, which by the kind consent of his representatives we are permitted to use in this volume.

JULIUS E. OLSON.

FOOTNOTES:

[4-1] _Eiriks Saga Raudha_ (Copenhagen, 1891), p. xv.

[5-1] A translation, with the title "The Story of Thorfinn Carlsemne," based on AM. 557, may be found in _Origines Islandicae_, II. 610.

[5-2] _Origines Islandicae_, II. 590.

[6-1] _Den oldnorske og oldislandske Litteraturs Historie_ (Copenhagen, 1901), II. 648.

[6-2] _The Discovery of America_, p. 212.

[6-3] Prolegomena, _Sturlunga Saga_, p. lxix.

[7-1] Snorri, the Icelandic historian, says that "it was more than 240 years from the settlement of Iceland (about 870) before sagas began to be written" and that "Ari (1067-1148) was the first man who wrote in the vernacular stories of things old and new."

[7-2] "Among the mediaeval literatures of Europe, that of Iceland is unrivalled in the profusion of detail with which the facts of ordinary life are recorded, and the clearness with which the individual character of numberless real persons stands out from the historic background.... The Icelanders of the Saga-age were not a secluded self-centred race; they were untiring in their desire to learn all that could be known of the lands round about them, and it is to their zeal for this knowledge, their sound historical sense, and their trained memories, that we owe much information regarding the British Isles themselves from the ninth to the thirteenth century. The contact of the Scandinavian peoples with the English race on the one hand, and the Gaelic on the other, has been an important factor in the subsequent history of Britain; and this is naturally a subject on which the Icelandic evidence is of the highest value." Prefatory Note to _Origines Islandicae_.

[8-1] _Studies on the Vinland Voyages_ (Copenhagen, 1889) and _Eiriks Saga Raudha_ (Copenhagen, 1891).

[8-2] Of the same opinion are Professor Hugo Gering of Kiel, _Zeitschrift fuer deutsche Philologie_, XXIV. (1892), and Professor Finnur Jonsson of Copenhagen, _Den oldnorske og oldislandske Litteraturs Historie_, II. 646.

[8-3] The Kristni-Saga, which tells of the conversion of Iceland, says: "That summer [1000] King Olaf [of Norway] went out of the country to Wendland in the south, and he sent Leif Eric's son to Greenland to preach the faith there. It was then that Leif discovered Vinland the Good. He also discovered a crew on the wreck of a ship out in the deep sea, and so he got the name of Leif the Lucky." For passages from other sagas that corroborate Leif's discovery on his voyage from Norway to Greenland (_i.e._, in the year that Olaf Tryggvason fell, namely, 1000), see Reeves, _The Finding of Wineland the Good_ (London, 1895), pp. 7-18.

[10-1] See, in support of Storm, Juul Dieserud's paper, "Norse Discoveries in America," _Bulletin of the American Geographical Society_, Feb., 1901.

[10-2] _Discovery of America_, p. 182.

[11-1] See _Origines Islandicae_, I. 294.

[11-2] See notes 6 and 8 to Papal Letters, p. 71 of this volume.

[12-1] See note 1, p. 43.

[12-2] In other respects the editors speak highly of the saga as found in Hauk's Book and AM. 557: "This saga has never been so well known as the other, though it is probably of even higher value. Unlike the other, it has the form and style of one of the 'Islendinga Sogor' [the Icelandic sagas proper]; its phrasing is broken, its dialogue is excellent, it contains situations of great pathos, such as the beautiful incident at the end of Bearne's self-sacrifice, and scenes of high interest, such as that of the Sibyl's prophesying in Greenland...." II. 591.

[12-3] _Icelandic Prose Reader_ (where AM. 557 is printed), notes, p. 377.

THE SAGA OF ERIC THE RED

ALSO CALLED THE SAGA OF THORFINN KARLSEFNI[14-1]

_The Saga of Eric the Red, also called the Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni and Snorri Thorbrandsson._[14-2]--Olaf was the name of a warrior-king, who was called Olaf the White. He was the son of King Ingiald, Helgi's son, the son of Olaf, Gudraud's son, son of Halfdan Whiteleg, king of the Uplands-men.[14-3] Olaf engaged in a Western freebooting expedition and captured Dublin in Ireland and the Shire of Dublin, over which he became king.[14-4] He married Aud the Wealthy, daughter of Ketil Flatnose, son of Biorn Buna, a famous man of Norway. Their son was called Thorstein the Red. Olaf was killed in battle in Ireland, and Aud and Thorstein went then to the Hebrides; there Thorstein married Thurid, daughter of Eyvind Easterling, sister of Helgi the Lean; they had many children. Thorstein became a warrior-king, and entered into fellowship with Earl Sigurd the Mighty, son of Eystein the Rattler. They conquered Caithness and Sutherland, Ross and Moray, and more than the half of Scotland. Over these Thorstein became king, ere he was betrayed by the Scots, and was slain there in battle. Aud was at Caithness when she heard of Thorstein's death; she thereupon caused a ship to be secretly built in the forest, and when she was ready, she sailed out to the Orkneys. There she bestowed Groa, Thorstein the Red's daughter, in marriage; she was the mother of Grelad, whom Earl Thorfinn, Skull-cleaver, married. After this Aud set out to seek Iceland, and had on board her ship twenty freemen. Aud arrived in Iceland, and passed the first winter at Biarnarhoefn with her brother, Biorn. And afterwards took possession of all the Dale country between Doegurdar river and Skraumuhlaups river. She lived at Hvamm, and held her orisons at Krossholar, where she caused crosses to be erected, for she had been baptized and was a devout believer. With her there came out [to Iceland] many distinguished men, who had been captured in the Western freebooting expedition, and were called slaves. Vifil was the name of one of these: he was a highborn man, who had been taken captive in the Western sea, and was called a slave, before Aud freed him; now when Aud gave homesteads to the members of her crew, Vifil asked wherefore she gave him no homestead as to the other men. Aud replied, that this should make no difference to him, saying, that he would be regarded as a distinguished man wherever he was. She gave him Vifilsdal, and there he dwelt. He married a woman whose name was...;[15-1] their sons were Thorbiorn and Thorgeir. They were men of promise, and grew up with their father.[15-2]

_Eric the Red finds Greenland._--There was a man named Thorvald; he was a son of Asvald, Ulf's son, Eyxna-Thori's son. His son's name was Eric. He and his father went from Jaederen[15-3] to Iceland, on account of manslaughter, and settled on Hornstrandir, and dwelt at Drangar. There Thorvald died, and Eric then married Thorhild, a daughter of Jorund, Atli's son, and Thorbiorg the Ship-chested, who had been married before to Thorbiorn of the Haukadal family. Eric then removed from the North, and cleared land in Haukadal, and dwelt at Ericsstadir by Vatnshorn. Then Eric's thralls caused a land-slide on Valthiof's farm, Valthiofsstadir. Eyiolf the Foul, Valthiof's kinsman, slew the thralls near Skeidsbrekkur above Vatnshorn. For this Eric killed Eyiolf the Foul, and he also killed Duelling-Hrafn, at Leikskalar. Geirstein and Odd of Jorva, Eyiolf's kinsmen, conducted the prosecution for the slaying of their kinsmen, and Eric was, in consequence, banished from Haukadal. He then took possession of Brokey and Eyxney, and dwelt at Tradir on Sudrey, the first winter. It was at this time that he loaned Thorgest his outer dais-boards;[16-1] Eric afterwards went to Eyxney, and dwelt at Ericsstad. He then demanded his outer dais-boards, but did not obtain them. Eric then carried the outer dais-boards away from Breidabolstad, and Thorgest gave chase. They came to blows a short distance from the farm of Drangar. There two of Thorgest's sons were killed and certain other men besides. After this each of them retained a considerable body of men with him at his home. Styr gave Eric his support, as did also Eyiolf of Sviney, Thorbiorn, Vifil's son, and the sons of Thorbrand of Alptafirth; while Thorgest was backed by the sons of Thord the Yeller, and Thorgeir of Hitardal, Aslak of Langadal and his son, Illugi. Eric and his people were condemned to outlawry at Thorsness-thing. He equipped his ship for a voyage, in Ericsvag; while Eyiolf concealed him in Dimunarvag, when Thorgest and his people were searching for him among the islands. He said to them, that it was his intention to go in search of that land which Gunnbiorn, son of Ulf the Crow, saw when he was driven out of his course, westward across the main, and discovered Gunnbiorns-skerries.[16-2] He told them that he would return again to his friends, if he should succeed in finding that country. Thorbiorn, and Eyiolf, and Styr accompanied Eric out beyond the islands, and they parted with the greatest friendliness; Eric said to them that he would render them similar aid, so far as it might lie within his power, if they should ever stand in need of his help. Eric sailed out to sea from Snaefells-iokul, and arrived at that ice-mountain which is called Blacksark. Thence he sailed to the southward, that he might ascertain whether there was habitable country in that direction. He passed the first winter at Ericsey, near the middle of the Western Settlement.[17-1] In the following spring he proceeded to Ericsfirth, and selected a site there for his homestead. That summer he explored the western uninhabited region, remaining there for a long time, and assigning many local names there. The second winter he spent at Ericsholms beyond Hvarfsgnipa. But the third summer he sailed northward to Snaefell,[17-2] and into Hrafnsfirth. He believed then that he had reached the head of Ericsfirth; he turned back then, and remained the third winter at Ericsey at the mouth of Ericsfirth. The following summer he sailed to Iceland, and landed in Breidafirth. He remained that winter with Ingolf at Holmlatr. In the spring he and Thorgest fought together, and Eric was defeated; after this a reconciliation was effected between them. That summer Eric set out to colonize the land which he had discovered, and which he called Greenland, because, he said, men would be the more readily persuaded thither if the land had a good name.[17-3]

_Concerning Thorbiorn._--Thorgeir, Vifil's son, married, and took to wife Arnora, daughter of Einar of Laugarbrekka, Sigmund's son, son of Ketil Thistil, who settled Thistilsfirth. Einar had another daughter named Hallveig; she was married to Thorbiorn, Vifil's son, who got with her Laugarbrekkaland on Hellisvellir. Thorbiorn moved thither, and became a very distinguished man. He was an excellent husbandman, and had a great estate. Gudrid was the name of Thorbiorn's daughter. She was the most beautiful of her sex, and in every respect a very superior woman. There dwelt at Arnarstapi a man named Orm, whose wife's name was Halldis. Orm was a good husbandman, and a great friend of Thorbiorn, and Gudrid lived with him for a long time as a foster-daughter. There was a man named Thorgeir, who lived at Thorgeirsfell; he was very wealthy and had been manumitted; he had a son named Einar, who was a handsome, well-bred man, and very showy in his dress. Einar was engaged in trading-voyages from one country to the other, and had prospered in this. He always spent his winters alternately either in Iceland or in Norway.