Chapter II: Pre-Columbian Voyages (2)

When once the Northmen had found their way to Cape Farewell, it would have been marvellous if such active sailors could long have avoided stumbling upon the continent of North America. Without compass or astrolabe these daring men were accustomed to traverse long stretches of open sea, trusting to the stars; and it needed only a stiff northeasterly breeze, with persistent clouds and fog, to land a westward bound "dragon" anywhere from Cape Race to Cape Cod. This is what appears to have happened to Bjarni Herjulfsson in 986, and something quite like it happened to Henry Hudson in 1609.[200] Curiosity is a motive quite sufficient to explain Leif's making the easy summer voyage to find out what sort of country Bjarni had seen. He found it thickly wooded, and as there was a dearth of good timber both in Greenland and in Iceland, it would naturally occur to Leif's friends that voyages for timber, to be used at home and also to be exported to Iceland, might turn out to be profitable.[201] As Laing says, "to go in quest of the wooded countries to the southwest, from whence driftwood came to their shores, was a reasonable, intelligible motive for making a voyage in search of the lands from whence it came, and where this valuable material could be got for nothing."[202]

[Footnote 200: See Read's _Historical Inquiry concerning Henry
Hudson_, Albany, 1866, p. 160.]

[Footnote 201: "Nú tekst umrædha at nýju um Vínlandsferdh,
thviat sú ferdh thikir bædhi gódh til fjár ok virdhíngar," i.
e. "Now they began to talk again about a voyage to Vinland, for
the voyage thither was both gainful and honourable." Rafn, p.
65.]

[Footnote 202: _Heimskringla_, i, 168.]

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

If now we look at the details of the story we shall find many ear-marks of truth in it. We must not look for absolute accuracy in a narrative which--as we have it--is not the work of Leif or Thorfinn or any of their comrades, but of compilers or copyists, honest and careful as it seems to me, but liable to misplace details and to call by wrong names things which they had never seen. Starting with these modest expectations we shall find the points of verisimilitude numerous. To begin with the least significant, somewhere on our northeastern coast the voyagers found many foxes.[203] These animals, to be sure, are found in a great many countries, but the point for us is that in a southerly and southwesterly course from Cape Farewell these sailors are said to have found them. If our narrators had been drawing upon their imaginations or dealing with semi-mythical materials, they would as likely as not have lugged into the story elephants from Africa or hippogriffs from Dreamland; mediæval writers were blissfully ignorant of all canons of probability in such matters.[204] But our narrators simply mention an animal which has for ages abounded on our northeastern coasts. One such instance is enough to suggest that they were following reports or documents which emanated ultimately from eye-witnesses and told the plain truth. A dozen such instances, if not neutralized by counter-instances, are enough to make this view extremely probable; and then one or two instances which could not have originated in the imagination of a European writer will suffice to prove it.

[Footnote 203: "Fjöldi var thar melrakka," i. e. "ibi vulpium
magnus numerus erat," Rafn, p. 138.]

[Footnote 204: It is extremely difficult for an impostor to
concoct a narrative without making blunders that can easily be
detected by a critical scholar. For example, the Book of
Mormon, in the passage cited (see above, p. 3), in supremely
blissful ignorance introduces oxen, sheep, and silk-worms, as
well as the knowledge of smelting iron, into pre-Columbian
America.]

Let us observe, then, that on coming to Markland they "slew a bear;"[205] the river and lake (or bay) in Vinland abounded with salmon bigger than Leif's people had ever seen;[206] on the coast they caught halibut;[207] they came to an island where there were so many eider ducks breeding that they could hardly avoid treading on their eggs;[208] and, as already observed, it was because of the abundance of wild grapes that Leif named the southernmost country he visited Vinland.

[Footnote 205: "Thar í drápu their einn björn," i. e. "in qua
ursum interfecerunt," id. p. 138.]

[Footnote 206: "Hvorki skorti thar lax í ánni nè í vatninu, ok
stærra lax enn their hefdhi fyrr sèdh," i. e. "ibi neque in
fluvio neque in lacu deerat salmonum copia, et quidem majoris
corporis quam antea vidissent," id. p. 32.]

[Footnote 207: "Helgir fiskar," i. e. "sacri pisces," id. p.
148. The Danish phrase is "helleflyndre," i. e. "holy
flounder." The English _halibut_ is _hali_ = _holy_ + _but_ =
_flounder_. This word _but_ is classed as Middle English, but
may still be heard in the north of England. The fish may have
been so called "from being eaten particularly on holy days"
(_Century Dict._ s.v.); or possibly from a pagan superstition
that water abounding in flat fishes is especially safe for
mariners (Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ ix. 70); or possibly from some
lost folk-tale about St. Peter (Maurer, _Isländische Volkssagen
der Gegenwart_, Leipsic, 1860, p. 195).]

[Footnote 208: "Svâ var mörg ædhr í eynni, at varla mátti gánga
fyri eggjum," i. e. "tantus in insula anatum mollissimarum
numerus erat, ut præ ovis transiri fere non posset," id. p.
141. Eider ducks breed on our northeastern coasts as far south
as Portland, and are sometimes in winter seen as far south as
Delaware. They also abound in Greenland and Iceland, and, as
Wilson observes, "their nests are crowded so close together
that a person can scarcely walk without treading on them....
The Icelanders have for ages known the value of eider down, and
have done an extensive business in it." See Wilson's _American
Ornithology_, vol. iii. p. 50.]

[Sidenote: Northern limit of the vine.]

From the profusion of grapes--such that the ship's stern boat is said on one occasion to have been filled with them[209]--we get a clue, though less decisive than could be wished, to the location of Vinland. The extreme northern limit of the vine in Canada is 47°, the parallel which cuts across the tops of Prince Edward and Cape Breton islands on the map.[210] Near this northern limit, however, wild grapes are by no means plenty; so that the coast upon which Leif wintered must apparently have been south of Cape Breton. Dr. Storm, who holds that Vinland was on the southern coast of Nova Scotia, has collected some interesting testimony as to the growth of wild grapes in that region, but on the whole the abundance of this fruit seems rather to point to the shores of Massachusetts Bay.[211]

[Footnote 209:
{"Svâ er sagt at eptirbátr theirra var fylldr
af vinberjurn."}
{ So it-is-said that afterboat their was filled
of vine-berries.}
Rafn, p. 36.]

[Footnote 210: Storm, "Studies on the Vinland Voyages,"
_Mémoires de la société royale des antiquaires du Nord_,
Copenhagen, 1888, p. 351. The limit of the vine at this
latitude is some distance inland; near the shore the limit is a
little farther south, and in Newfoundland it does not grow at
all. Id. p. 308.]

[Footnote 211: The attempt of Dr. Kohl (_Maine Hist. Soc._, New
Series, vol. i.) to connect the voyage of Thorfinn with the
coast of Maine seems to be successfully refuted by De Costa,
_Northmen in Maine_, etc., Albany, 1870.]

[Sidenote: Length of the winter day.]

We may now observe that, while it is idle to attempt to determine accurately the length of the winter day, as given in our chronicles, nevertheless since that length attracted the attention of the voyagers, as something remarkable, it may fairly be supposed to indicate a latitude lower than they were accustomed to reach in their trading voyages in Europe. Such a latitude as that of Dublin, which lies opposite Labrador, would have presented no novelty to them, for voyages of Icelanders to their kinsmen in Dublin, and in Rouen as well, were common enough. Halifax lies about opposite Bordeaux, and Boston a little south of opposite Cape Finisterre, in Spain, so that either of these latitudes would satisfy the conditions of the case; either would show a longer winter day than Rouen, which was about the southern limit of ordinary trading voyages from Iceland. At all events, the length of day indicates for Vinland a latitude south of Cape Breton.

[Sidenote: Indian corn.]

The next point to be observed is the mention of "self-sown wheat-fields."[212] This is not only an important ear-mark of truth in the narrative, but it helps us somewhat further in determining the position of Vinland. The "self-sown" cereal, which these Icelanders called "wheat," was in all probability what the English settlers six hundred years afterward called "corn," in each case applying to a new and nameless thing the most serviceable name at hand. In England "corn" means either wheat, barley, rye, and oats collectively, or more specifically wheat; in Scotland it generally means oats; in America it means maize, the "Indian corn," the cereal peculiar to the western hemisphere. The beautiful waving plant, with its exquisitely tasselled ears, which was one of the first things to attract Champlain's attention, could not have escaped the notice of such keen observers as we are beginning to find Leif and Thorfinn to have been. A cereal like this, requiring so little cultivation that without much latitude of speech it might be described as growing wild, would be interesting to Europeans visiting the American coast; but it would hardly occur to European fancy to invent such a thing. The mention of it is therefore a very significant ear-mark of the truth of the narrative. As regards the position of Vinland, the presence of maize seems to indicate a somewhat lower latitude than Nova Scotia. Maize requires intensely hot summers, and even under the most careful European cultivation does not flourish north of the Alps. In the sixteenth century its northern-most limit on the American coast seems to have been at the mouth of the Kennebec (44°), though farther inland it was found by Cartier at Hochelaga, on the site of Montreal (45° 30'). A presumption is thus raised in favour of the opinion that Vinland was not farther north than Massachusetts Bay.[213]

[Footnote 212:
{"Sjálfsána hveitiakra" }
{ } Rafn, p. 147.
{ Self-sown wheat-acres }]

[Footnote 213: Dr. Storm makes perhaps too much of this
presumption. He treats it as decisive against his own opinion
that Vinland was the southern coast of Nova Scotia, and
accordingly he tries to prove that the self-sown corn was not
maize, but "wild rice" (_Zizania aquatica_). _Mémoires_, etc.,
p. 356. But his argument is weakened by excess of ingenuity.]

[Sidenote: Winter weather in Vinland.]

This presumption is supported by what is said about the climate of Vinland, though it must be borne in mind that general statements about climate are apt to be very loose and misleading. We are told that it seemed to Leif's people that cattle would be able to pass the winter out of doors there, for there was no frost and the grass was not much withered.[214] On the other hand, Thorfinn's people found the winter severe, and suffered from cold and hunger.[215] Taken in connection with each other, these two statements would apply very well to-day to our variable winters on the coast southward from Cape Ann. The winter of 1889-90 in Cambridge, for example, might very naturally have been described by visitors from higher latitudes as a winter without frost and with grass scarcely withered. Indeed, we might have described it so ourselves. On Narragansett and Buzzard's bays such soft winter weather is still more common; north of Cape Ann it is much less common. The severe winter (_magna hiems_) is of course familiar enough anywhere along the northeastern coast of America.

[Footnote 214: "Thar var svâ gódhr landskostr at thví er theim
sýndist, at thar mundi eingi fènadhr fódhr thurfa á vetrum;
thar kvomu eingi frost á vetrum, ok lítt rènudhu thar grös," i.
e. "tanta autem erat terræ bonitas, ut inde intelligere esset,
pecora hieme pabulo non indigere posse, nullis incidentibus
algoribus hiemalibus, et graminibus parum flaccescentibus."
Rafn, p. 32.]

[Footnote 215: "Thar voru their um vetrinn; ok gjördhist vetr
mikill, en ekki fyri unnit ok gjördhist íllt til matarins, ok
tókust af veidhirnar," i. e. "hic hiemarunt; cum vero magna
incideret hiems, nullumque provisum esset alimentum, cibus
coepit deficere capturaque cessabat," Id. p. 174.]

[Sidenote: Probable situation of Vinland.]

On the whole, we may say with some confidence that the place described by our chroniclers as Vinland was situated somewhere between Point Judith and Cape Breton; possibly we may narrow our limits and say that it was somewhere between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. But the latter conclusion is much less secure than the former. In such a case as this, the more we narrow our limits the greater our liability to error.[216] While by such narrowing, moreover, the question may acquire more interest as a bone of contention among local antiquarians, its value for the general historian is not increased.

[Footnote 216: A favourite method of determining the exact
spots visited by the Northmen has been to compare their
statements regarding the shape and trend of the coasts, their
bays, headlands, etc., with various well-known points on the
New England coast. It is a tempting method, but unfortunately
treacherous, because the same general description will often
apply well enough to several different places. It is like
summer boarders in the country struggling to tell one another
where they have been to drive,--past a school-house, down a
steep hill, through some woods, and by a saw-mill, etc.]

[Sidenote: "Savages" unknown to mediæval Europeans.]

[Sidenote: The natives of Vinland.]

But we have not yet done with the points of verisimilitude in our story. We have now to cite two or three details that are far more striking than any as yet mentioned,--details that could never have been conjured up by the fancy of any mediæval European. We must bear in mind that "savages," whether true savages or people in the lower status of barbarism, were practically unknown to Europeans before the fifteenth century. There were no such people in Europe or in any part of Asia or Africa visited by Europeans before the great voyages of the Portuguese. Mediæval Europeans knew nothing whatever about people who would show surprise at the sight of an iron tool[217] or frantic terror at the voice of a bull, or who would eagerly trade off valuable property for worthless trinkets. Their imagination might be up to inventing hobgoblins and people with heads under their shoulders,[218] but it was not up to inventing such simple touches of nature as these. Bearing this in mind, let us observe that Thorfinn found the natives of Vinland eager to give valuable furs[219] in exchange for little strips of scarlet cloth to bind about their heads. When the Northmen found the cloth growing scarce they cut it into extremely narrow strips, but the desire of the natives was so great that they would still give a whole skin for the smallest strip. They wanted also to buy weapons, but Thorfinn forbade his men to sell them. One of the natives picked up an iron hatchet and cut wood with it; one after another tried and admired it; at length one tried it on a stone and broke its edge, and then they scornfully threw it down.[220] One day while they were trading, Thorfinn's bull ran out before them and bellowed, whereupon the whole company was instantly scattered in headlong flight. After this, when threatened with an attack by the natives, Thorfinn drew up his men for a fight and put the bull in front, very much as Pyrrhus used elephants--at first with success--to frighten the Romans and their horses.[221]

[Footnote 217: It is not meant that stone implements did not
continue to be used in some parts of Europe far into the Middle
Ages. But this was not because iron was not perfectly well
known, but because in many backward regions it was difficult to
obtain or to work, so that stone continued in use. As my
friend, Mr. T. S. Perry, reminds me, Helbig says that
stone-pointed spears were used by some of the English at the
battle of Hastings, and stone battle-axes by some of the Scots
under William Wallace at the end of the thirteenth century.
_Die Italiker in der Poebene_, Leipsic, 1879, p. 42. Helbig's
statement as to Hastings is confirmed by Freeman, _Norman
Conquest of England_, vol. iii. p. 473.]

[Footnote 218: My use of the word "inventing" is, in this
connection, a slip of the pen. Of course the tales of "men
whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," the Sciopedæ,
etc., as told by Sir John Mandeville, were not invented by the
mediæval imagination, but copied from ancient authors. They may
be found in Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, lib. vii., and were mentioned
before his time by Ktesias, as well as by Hecatæus, according
to Stephanus of Byzantium. Cf. Aristophanes, _Aves_, 1553;
Julius Solinus, _Polyhistor_, ed. Salmasius, cap. 240. Just as
these sheets are going to press there comes to me Mr. Perry's
acute and learned _History of Greek Literature_, New York,
1890, in which this subject is mentioned in connection with the
mendacious and medical Ktesias:--These stories have probably
acquired a literary currency "by exercise of the habit, not
unknown even to students of science, of indiscriminate copying
from one's predecessors, so that in reading Mandeville we have
the ghosts of the lies of Ktesias, almost sanctified by the
authority of Pliny, who quoted them and thereby made them a
part of mediæval folk-lore--and from folk-lore, probably, they
took their remote start" (p. 522).]

[Footnote 219: "En that var grávara ok safvali ok allskonar
skinnavara" (Rafn, p. 59),--i. e. gray fur and sable and all
sorts of skinwares; in another account, "skinnavöru ok algrá
skinn," which in the Danish version is "skindvarer og ægte
graaskind" (id. p. 150),--i. e. skinwares and genuine gray
furs. Cartier in Canada and the Puritans in Massachusetts were
not long in finding that the natives had good furs to sell.]

[Footnote 220: Rafn, p. 156.]

[Footnote 221: Much curious information respecting the use of
elephants in war may be found in the learned work of the
Chevalier Armandi, _Histoire militaire des éléphants_, Paris,
1843. As regards Thorfinn's bull, Mr. Laing makes the kind of
blunder that our British cousins are sometimes known to make
when they get the Rocky Mountains within sight of Bunker Hill
monument. "A continental people in that part of America," says
Mr. Laing, "could not be strangers to the much more formidable
bison." _Heimskringla_, p. 169. Bisons on the Atlantic coast,
Mr. Laing?! And then his comparison quite misses the point; a
bison, if the natives had been familiar with him, would not
have been at all formidable as compared to the bull which they
had never before seen. A horse is much less formidable than a
cougar, but Aztec warriors who did not mind a cougar were
paralyzed with terror at the sight of men on horseback. It is
the unknown that frightens in such cases. Thorfinn's natives
were probably familiar with such large animals as moose and
deer, but a deer isn't a bull.]

[Sidenote: Meaning of the epithet "Skrælings."]

These incidents are of surpassing interest, for they were attendant upon the first meeting (in all probability) that ever took place between civilized Europeans and any people below the upper status of barbarism.[222] Who were these natives encountered by Thorfinn? The Northmen called them "Skrælings," a name which one is at first sight strongly tempted to derive from the Icelandic verb _skrækja_, identical with the English _screech_. A crowd of excited Indians might most appropriately be termed Screechers.[223] This derivation, however, is not correct. The word _skræling_ survives in modern Norwegian, and means a feeble or puny or _insignificant_ person. Dr. Storm's suggestion is in all probability correct, that the name "Skrælings," as applied to the natives of America, had no ethnological significance, but simply meant "inferior people;" it gave concise expression to the white man's opinion that they were "a bad lot." In Icelandic literature the name is usually applied to the Eskimos, and hence it has been rashly inferred that Thorfinn found Eskimos in Vinland. Such was Rafn's opinion, and since his time the commentators have gone off upon a wrong trail and much ingenuity has been wasted.[224] It would be well to remember, however, that the Europeans of the eleventh century were not ethnologists; in meeting these inferior peoples for the first time they were more likely to be impressed with the broad fact of their inferiority than to be nice in making distinctions. When we call both Australians and Fuegians "savages," we do not assert identity or relationship between them; and so when the Northmen called Eskimos and Indians by the same disparaging epithet, they doubtless simply meant to call them savages.

[Footnote 222: The Phoenicians, however (who in this connection
may be classed with Europeans), must have met with some such
people in the course of their voyages upon the coasts of
Africa. I shall treat of this more fully below, p. 327.]

[Footnote 223: As for Indians, says Cieza de Leon, they are all
noisy (alharaquientos). _Segunda Parte de la Crónica del Peru_,
cap. xxiii.]

[Footnote 224: For example, Dr. De Costa refers to Dr. Abbott's
discoveries as indicating "that the Indian was preceded by a
people like the Eskimos, whose stone implements are found in
the Trenton gravel." _Pre-Columbian Discovery_, p. 132. Quite
so; but that was in the Glacial Period (!!), and when the edge
of the ice-sheet slowly retreated northward, the Eskimo, who is
emphatically an Arctic creature, doubtless retreated with it,
just as he retreated from Europe. See above, p. 18. There is
not the slightest reason for supposing that there were any
Eskimos south of Labrador so lately as nine hundred years ago.]

[Sidenote: Personal appearance of the Skrælings.]

Our chronicle describes the Skrælings of Vinland as swarthy in hue, ferocious in aspect, with ugly hair, big eyes, and broad cheeks.[225] This will do very well for Indians, except as to the eyes. We are accustomed to think of Indian eyes as small; but in this connection it is worthy of note that a very keen observer, Marc Lescarbot, in his minute and elaborate description of the physical appearance of the Micmacs of Acadia, speaks with some emphasis of their large eyes.[226] Dr. Storm quite reasonably suggests that the Norse expression may refer to the size not of the eye-ball, but of the eye-socket, which in the Indian face is apt to be large; and very likely this is what the Frenchman also had in mind.

[Footnote 225: "Their voru svartir menn ok illiligir, ok havdhu
íllt hár á höfdhi. Their voru mjök eygdhir ok breidhir í
kinnum," i. e. "Hi homines erant nigri, truculenti specie,
foedam in capite comam habentes, oculis magnis et genis latis."
Rafn, p. 149. The Icelandic _svartr_ is more precisely rendered
by the identical English _swarthy_ than by the Latin _niger_.]

[Footnote 226: "Mais quãt à noz Sauvages, pour ce qui regarde
les ïeux ilz ne les ont ni bleuz, ni verds, mais noirs pour la
pluspart, ainsi que les cheveux; & neantmoins ne sont petits,
cõme ceux des anciens Scythes, mais d'une grandeur bien
agréable." Lescarbot, _Histoire de la Nouvelle France_, Paris,
1612, tom. ii. p. 714.]

[Sidenote: The Skrælings of Vinland were Indians,--very likely Algonquins.]

These Skrælings were clad in skins, and their weapons were bows and arrows, slings, and stone hatchets. In the latter we may now, I think, be allowed to recognize the familiar tomahawk; and when we read that, in a sharp fight with the natives, Thorbrand, son of the commander Snorro, was slain, and the woman Freydis afterward found his corpse in the woods, with a flat stone sticking in the head, and his naked sword lying on the ground beside him, we seem to see how it all happened.[227] We seem to see the stealthy Indian suddenly dealing the death-blow, and then obliged for his own safety to dart away among the trees without recovering his tomahawk or seizing the sword. The Skrælings came up the river or lake in a swarm of canoes, all yelling at the top of their voices (_et illi omnes valde acutum ululabant_), and, leaping ashore, began a formidable attack with slings and arrows. The narrative calls these canoes "skin-boats" (_hudhkeipar_), whence it has been inferred that the writer had in mind the _kayaks_ and _umiaks_ of the Eskimos.[228] I suspect that the writer did have such boats in mind, and accordingly used a word not strictly accurate. Very likely his authorities failed to specify a distinction between bark-boats and skin-boats, and simply used the handiest word for designating canoes as contrasted with their own keeled boats.[229]

[Footnote 227: "Hún fann fyrir sèr mann daudhan, thar var
Thorbrandr Snorrason, ok stódh hellusteinn í höfdhi honum;
sverdhit lá bert í hjá honum," i. e. "Illa incidit in mortuum
hominem, Thorbrandum Snorrii filium, cujus capiti lapis planus
impactus stetit; nudus juxta eum gladius jacuit." Rafn, p.
154.]

[Footnote 228: These Eskimo skin-boats are described in Rink's
_Danish Greenland_, pp. 113, 179.]

[Footnote 229: Cf. Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 366, 367.]

One other point which must be noticed here in connection with the Skrælings is a singular manoeuvre which they are said to have practised in the course of the fight. They raised upon the end of a pole a big ball, not unlike a sheep's paunch, and of a bluish colour; this ball they swung from the pole over the heads of the white men, and it fell to the ground with a horrid noise.[230] Now, according to Mr. Schoolcraft, this was a mode of fighting formerly common among the Algonquins, in New England and elsewhere. This big ball was what Mr. Schoolcraft calls the "balista," or what the Indians themselves call the "demon's head." It was a large round boulder, sewed up in a new skin and attached to a pole. As the skin dried it enwrapped the stone tightly; and then it was daubed with grotesque devices in various colours. "It was borne by several warriors who acted as balisteers. Plunged upon a boat or canoe, it was capable of sinking it. Brought down upon a group of men on a sudden, it produced consternation and death."[231] This is a most remarkable feature in the narrative, for it shows us the Icelandic writer (here manifestly controlled by some authoritative source of information) describing a very strange mode of fighting, which we know to have been characteristic of the Algonquins. Karlsefni's men do not seem to have relished this outlandish style of fighting; they retreated along the river bank until they came to a favourable situation among some rocks, where they made a stand and beat off their swarming assailants. The latter, as soon as they found themselves losing many warriors without gaining their point, suddenly turned and fled to their canoes, and paddled away with astonishing celerity. Throughout the account it seems to me perfectly clear that we are dealing with Indians.

[Footnote 230: "That sá their Karlsefni at Skrælíngar færdhu
upp á stöng knött stundar mykinn thví nær til at jafna sem
saudharvömb, ok helzt blán at lit, ok fleygdhu af stönginni upp
á landit yfir lidh theirra Karlsefnis, ok lèt illilega vidhr,
thar sem nidhr kom. Vidh thetta sló ótta myklum á Karlsefni ok
allt lidh hans, svâ at thá fýsti engis annars enn flýja, ok
halda undan upp medh ánni, thvíat theim thótti lidh Skrælínga
drífa at sèr allum megin, ok lètta eigi, fyrr enn their koma
til hamra nokkurra, ok veittu thar vidhrtöku hardha," i. e.
"Viderunt Karlsefniani quod Skrælingi longurio sustulerunt
globum ingentem, ventri ovillo haud absimilem, colore fere
cæruleo; hune ex longurio in terram super manum Karlsefnianorum
contorserunt, qui ut decidit, dirum sonuit. Hac re terrore
perculsus est Karlsefnius suique omnes, ut nihil aliud cuperent
quam fugere et gradum referre sursum secundum fluvium:
credebant enim se ab Skrælingis undique circumveniri. Hinc non
gradum stitere, priusquam ad rupes quasdam pervenissent, ubi
acriter resistebant." Rafn, p. 153.]

[Footnote 231: Schoolcraft, _Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge_,
Philadelphia, 1860, 6 vols. 4to, vol. i. p. 89; a figure of
this weapon is given in the same volume, plate xv. fig. 2, from
a careful description by Chingwauk, an Algonquin chief.]

[Sidenote: The uniped.]

The coexistence of so many unmistakable marks of truth in our narratives may fairly be said to amount to a demonstration that they must be derived, through some eminently trustworthy channel, from the statements of intelligent eye-witnesses who took part in the events related. Here and there, no doubt, we come upon some improbable incident or a touch of superstition, such as we need not go back to the eleventh century to find very common among seamen's narratives; but the remarkable thing in the present case is that there are so few such features. One fabulous creature is mentioned. Thorfinn and his men saw from their vessel a glittering speck upon the shore at an opening in the woods. They hailed it, whereupon the creature proceeded to perform the quite human act of shooting an arrow, which killed the man at the helm. The narrator calls it a "uniped," or some sort of one-footed goblin,[232] but that is hardly reasonable, for after the shooting it went on to perform the further quite human and eminently Indian-like act of running away.[233] Evidently this discreet "uniped" was impressed with the desirableness of living to fight another day. In a narrative otherwise characterized by sobriety, such an instance of fancy, even supposing it to have come down from the original sources, counts for as much or as little as Henry Hudson's description of a mermaid.[234]

[Footnote 232: Rafn, p. 160; De Costa, p. 134; Storm, p. 330.]

[Footnote 233: Here the narrator seems determined to give us a
genuine smack of the marvellous, for when the fleeing uniped
comes to a place where his retreat seems cut off by an arm of
the sea, he runs (glides, or hops?) across the water without
sinking. In Vigfusson's version, however, the marvellous is
eliminated, and the creature simply runs over the stubble and
disappears. The incident is evidently an instance where the
narrative has been "embellished" by introducing a feature from
ancient classical writers. The "Monocoli," or one-legged
people, are mentioned by Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, vii. 2: "Item
hominum genus qui Monocoli vocarentur, singulis cruribus, miræ
pernicitatis ad saltum." Cf. Aulus Gellius, _Noctes Atticæ_,
viii. 4.]

[Footnote 234: Between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, June 15,
1608. For the description, with its droll details, see _Purchas
his Pilgrimes_, iii. 575.]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Misleading associations with the word "saga."]

[Sidenote: Unfortunate comparison between Leif Ericsson and Agamemnon.]

[Sidenote: The story of the Trojan War, as we have it, is pure folk-lore.]

It is now time for a few words upon the character of the records upon which our story is based. And first, let us remark upon a possible source of misapprehension due to the associations with which a certain Norse word has been clothed. The old Norse narrative-writings are called "sagas," a word which we are in the habit of using in English as equivalent to legendary or semi-mythical narratives. To cite a "saga" as authority for a statement seems, therefore, to some people as inadmissible as to cite a fairy-tale; and I cannot help suspecting that to some such misleading association of ideas is due the particular form of the opinion expressed some time ago by a committee of the Massachusetts Historical Society,--"that there is the same sort of reason for believing in the existence of Leif Ericsson that there is for believing in the existence of Agamemnon. They are both traditions accepted by later writers, and there is no more reason for regarding as true the details related about the discoveries of the former than there is for accepting as historic truth the narrative contained in the Homeric poems." The report goes on to observe that "it is antecedently probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part of the eleventh century; and this discovery is confirmed by the same sort of historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon which our belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests."[235] The second of these statements is characterized by critical moderation, and expresses the inevitable and wholesome reaction against the rash enthusiasm of Professor Rafn half a century ago, and the vagaries of many an uninstructed or uncritical writer since his time. But the first statement is singularly unfortunate. It would be difficult to find a comparison more inappropriate than that between Agamemnon and Leif, between the Iliad and the Saga of Eric the Red. The story of the Trojan War and its heroes, as we have it in Homer and the Athenian dramatists, is pure folk-lore as regards form, and chiefly folk-lore as regards contents. It is in a high degree probable that this mass of folk-lore surrounds a kernel of plain fact, that in times long before the first Olympiad an actual "king of men" at Mycenæ conducted an expedition against the great city by the Simois, that the Agamemnon of the poet stands in some such relation toward this chieftain as that in which the Charlemagne of mediæval romance stands toward the mighty Emperor of the West.[236] Nevertheless the story, as we have it, is simply folk-lore. If the Iliad and Odyssey contain faint reminiscences of actual events, these events are so inextricably wrapped up with mythical phraseology that by no cunning of the scholar can they be construed into history. The motives and capabilities of the actors and the conditions under which they accomplish their destinies are such as exist only in fairy-tales. Their world is as remote from that in which we live as the world of Sindbad and Camaralzaman; and this is not essentially altered by the fact that Homer introduces us to definite localities and familiar customs as often as the Irish legends of Finn M'Cumhail.[237]

[Footnote 235: _Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc._, December, 1887.]

[Footnote 236: I used this argument twenty years ago in
qualification of the over-zealous solarizing views of Sir G. W.
Cox and others. See my _Myths and Mythmakers_, pp. 191-202; and
cf. Freeman on "The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early
English History," in his _Historical Essays_, i. 1-39.]

[Footnote 237: Curtin, _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, pp.
12, 204, 303; Kennedy, _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts_,
pp. 203-311.]

[Sidenote: The Saga of Eric the Red is not folk-lore.]

It would be hard to find anything more unlike such writings than the class of Icelandic sagas to which that of Eric the Red belongs. Here we have quiet and sober narrative, not in the least like a fairy-tale, but often much like a ship's log. Whatever such narrative may be, it is not folk-lore. In act and motive, in its conditions and laws, its world is the every-day world in which we live. If now and then a "uniped" happens to stray into it, the incongruity is as conspicuous as in the case of Hudson's mermaid, or a ghost in a modern country inn; whereas in the Homeric fabric the supernatural is warp and woof. To assert a likeness between two kinds of literature so utterly different is to go very far astray.

[Sidenote: Mythical and historical sagas.]

As already observed, I suspect that misleading associations with the word "saga" may have exerted an unconscious influence in producing this particular kind of blunder,--for it is nothing less than a blunder. Resemblance is tacitly assumed between the Iliad and an Icelandic saga. Well, between the Iliad and _some_ Icelandic sagas there is a real and strong resemblance. In truth these sagas are divisible into two well marked and sharply contrasted classes. In the one class belong the Eddic Lays, and the _mythical sagas_, such as the Volsunga, the stories of Ragnar, Frithiof, and others; and along with these, though totally different in source, we may for our present purpose group the _romantic sagas_, such as Parceval, Remund, Karlamagnus, and others brought from southern Europe. These are alike in being composed of legendary and mythical materials; they belong essentially to the literature of folk-lore. In the other class come the _historical sagas_, such as those of Njal and Egil, the Sturlunga, and many others, with the numerous biographies and annals.[238] These writings give us history, and often very good history indeed. "Saga" meant simply any kind of literature in narrative form; the good people of Iceland did not happen to have such a handy word as "history," which they could keep entire when they meant it in sober earnest and chop down into "story" when they meant it otherwise. It is very much as if we were to apply the same word to the Arthur legends and to William of Malmesbury's judicious and accurate chronicles, and call them alike "stories."

[Footnote 238: Nowhere can you find a more masterly critical
account of Icelandic literature than in Vigfusson's
"Prolegomena" to his edition of _Sturlunga Saga_, Oxford, 1878,
vol. i. pp. ix.-ccxiv. There is a good but very brief account
in Horn's _History of the Literature of the Scandinavian
North_, transl. by R. B. Anderson, Chicago, 1884, pp. 50-70.]

[Sidenote: The western or Hauks-bók version of Eric the Red's Saga.]

The narrative upon which our account of the Vinland voyages is chiefly based belongs to the class of historical sagas. It is the Saga of Eric the Red, and it exists in two different versions, of which one seems to have been made in the north, the other in the west, of Iceland. The western version is the earlier and in some respects the better. It is found in two vellums, that of the great collection known as _Hauks-bók_ (AM. 544), and that which is simply known as AM. 557 from its catalogue number in Arni Magnusson's collection. Of these the former, which is the best preserved, was written in a beautiful hand by Hauk Erlendsson, between 1305 and 1334, the year of his death. This western version is the one which has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni." It is the one to which I have most frequently referred in the present chapter.[239]

[Footnote 239: It is printed in Rafn, pp. 84-187, and in
_Grönlands historiske Mindesmærker_, i. 352-443. The most
essential part of it may now be found, under its own name, in
Vigfusson's _Icelandic Prose Reader_, pp. 123-140.]

[Sidenote: The northern or Flateyar-bók version.]

The northern version is that which was made about the year 1387 by the priest Jón Thórdharson, and contained in the famous compilation known as the _Flateyar-bók_, or "Flat Island Book."[240] This priest was editing the saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson, which is contained in that compilation, and inasmuch as Leif Ericsson's presence at King Olaf's court was connected both with the introduction of Christianity into Greenland and with the discovery of Vinland, Jón paused, after the manner of mediæval chroniclers, and inserted then and there what he knew about Eric and Leif and Thorfinn. In doing this, he used parts of the original saga of Eric the Red (as we find it reproduced in the western version), and added thereunto a considerable amount of material concerning the Vinland voyages derived from other sources. Jón's version thus made has generally been printed under the title, "Saga of Eric the Red."[241]

[Footnote 240: It belonged to a man who lived on Flat Island,
in one of the Iceland fiords.]

[Footnote 241: It is printed in Rafn, pp. 1-76, under the title
"Thættir af Eireki Rauda ok Grænlendíngum." For a critical
account of these versions, see Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 319-325; I
do not, in all respects, follow him in his depreciation of the
Flateyar-bók version.]

[Sidenote: Presumption against sources not contemporary.]

Now the older version, written at the beginning of the fourteenth century, gives an account of things which happened three centuries before it was written. A cautious scholar will, as a rule, be slow to consider any historical narrative as quite satisfactory authority, even when it contains no improbable statements, unless it is nearly contemporary with the events which it records. Such was the rule laid down by the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and it is a very good rule; the proper application of it has disencumbered history of much rubbish. At the same time, like all rules, it should be used with judicious caution and not allowed to run away with us. As applied by Lewis to Roman history it would have swept away in one great cataclysm not only kings and decemvirs, but Brennus and his Gauls to boot, and left us with nothing to swear by until the invasion of Pyrrhus.[242] Subsequent research has shown that this was going altogether too far. The mere fact of distance in time between a document and the events which it records is only negative testimony against its value, for it may be a faithful transcript of some earlier document or documents since lost. It is so difficult to prove a negative that the mere lapse of time simply raises a presumption the weight of which should be estimated by a careful survey of all the probabilities in the case. Among the many Icelandic vellums that are known to have perished[243] there may well have been earlier copies of Eric the Red's Saga.

[Footnote 242: Lewis's _Inquiry into the Credibility of the
Early Roman History_, 2 vols., London, 1855.]

[Footnote 243: And notably in that terrible fire of October,
1728, which consumed the University Library at Copenhagen, and
broke the heart of the noble collector of manuscripts, Arni
Magnusson. The great eruption of Hecla in 1390 overwhelmed two
famous homesteads in the immediate neighbourhood. From the
local history of these homesteads and their inmates, Vigfusson
thinks it not unlikely that some records may still be there
"awaiting the spade and pickaxe of a new Schliemann."
_Sturlunga Saga_, p. cliv.]

[Sidenote: Hauk Erlendsson and his manuscripts.]

Hauk Erlendsson reckoned himself a direct descendant, in the eighth generation, from Snorro, son of Thorfinn and Gudrid, born in Vinland. He was an important personage in Iceland, a man of erudition, author of a brief book of contemporary annals and a treatise on arithmetic in which he introduced the Arabic numerals into Iceland. In those days the lover of books, if he would add them to his library, might now and then obtain an original manuscript, but usually he had to copy them or have them copied by hand. The Hauks-bók, with its 200 skins, one of the most extensive Icelandic vellums now in existence, is really Hauk's private library, or what there is left of it, and it shows that he was a man who knew how to make a good choice of books. He did a good deal of his copying himself, and also employed two clerks in the same kind of work.[244]

[Footnote 244: An excellent facsimile of Hauk's handwriting is
given in Rafn, tab. iii., lower part; tab. iv. and the upper
part of tab. iii. are in the hands of his two amanuenses. See
Vigfusson, _op. cit._ p. clxi.]

[Sidenote: The story is not likely to have been preserved to Hauk's time by oral tradition only.]

Now I do not suppose it will occur to any rational being to suggest that Hauk may have written down his version of Eric the Red's Saga from an oral tradition nearly three centuries old. The narrative could not have been so long preserved in its integrity, with so little extravagance of statement and so many marks of truthfulness in details foreign to ordinary Icelandic experience, if it had been entrusted to oral tradition alone. One might as well try to imagine Drake's "World Encompassed" handed down by oral tradition from the days of Queen Elizabeth to the days of Queen Victoria. Such transmission is possible enough with heroic poems and folk-tales, which deal with a few dramatic situations and a stock of mythical conceptions familiar at every fireside; but in a simple matter-of-fact record of sailors' observations and experiences on a strange coast, oral tradition would not be long in distorting and jumbling the details into a result quite undecipherable. The story of the Zeno brothers, presently to be cited, shows what strange perversions occur, even in written tradition, when the copyist, instead of faithfully copying records of unfamiliar events, tries to edit and amend them. One cannot reasonably doubt that Hauk's vellum of Eric the Red's Saga, with its many ear-marks of truth above mentioned, was copied by him--and quite carefully and faithfully withal--from some older vellum not now forthcoming.

[Sidenote: Allusions to Vinland in other documents.]

As we have no clue, however, beyond the internal evidence, to the age or character of the sources from which Hauk copied, there is nothing left for us to do but to look into other Icelandic documents, to see if anywhere they betray a knowledge of Vinland and the voyages thither. Incidental references to Vinland, in narratives concerned with other matters, are of great significance in this connection; for they imply on the part of the narrator a presumption that his readers understand such references, and that it is not necessary to interrupt his story in order to explain them. Such incidental references imply the existence, during the interval between the Vinland voyages and Hauk's manuscript, of many intermediate links of sound testimony that have since dropped out of sight; and therefore they go far toward removing whatever presumption may be alleged against Hauk's manuscript because of its distance from the events.

[Sidenote: Eyrbyggja Saga.]

Now the Eyrbyggja Saga, written between 1230 and 1260, is largely devoted to the settlement of Iceland, and is full of valuable notices of the heathen institutions and customs of the tenth century. The Eyrbyggja, having occasion to speak of Thorbrand Snorrason, observes incidentally that he went from Greenland to Vinland with Karlsefni and was killed in a battle with the Skrælings.[245] We have already mentioned the death of this Thorbrand, and how Freydis found his body in the woods.

[Footnote 245: Vigfusson, _Eyrbyggja Saga_, pp. 91, 92. Another
of Karlsefni's comrades, Thorhall Gamlason, is mentioned in
_Grettis Saga_, Copenhagen, 1859, pp. 22, 70; he went back to
Iceland, settled on a farm there, and was known for the rest of
his life as "the Vinlander." See above, pp. 165, 168.]

[Sidenote: The abbot Nikulas, etc.]

Three Icelandic tracts on geography, between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, mention Helluland and Vinland, and in two of these accounts Markland is interposed between Helluland and Vinland.[246] One of these tracts mentions the voyages of Leif and Thorfinn. It forms part of an essay called "Guide to the Holy Land," by Nikulas Sæmundsson, abbot of Thvera, in the north of Iceland, who died 1159. This Nikulas was curious in matters of geography, and had travelled extensively.

[Footnote 246: Werlauf, _Symbolæ ad Geogr. Medii Ævi_,
Copenhagen, 1820.]

[Sidenote: Ari Fródhi.]

With the celebrated Ari Thorgilsson, usually known as Fródhi, "the learned," we come to testimony nearly contemporaneous in time and extremely valuable in character. This erudite priest, born in 1067, was the founder of historical writing in Iceland. He was the principal author of the "Landnáma-bók," already mentioned as a work of thorough and painstaking research unequalled in mediæval literature. His other principal works were the "Konunga-bók," or chronicle of the kings of Norway, and the "Islendinga-bók," or description of Iceland.[247] Ari's books, written not in monkish Latin, but in a good vigorous vernacular, were a mine of information from which all subsequent Icelandic historians were accustomed to draw such treasures as they needed. To his diligence and acumen they were all, from Snorro Sturlason down, very much indebted. He may be said to have given the tone to history-writing in Iceland, and it was a high tone.

[Footnote 247: For a critical estimate of Ari's literary
activity and the extent of his work, the reader is referred to
Möbius, _Are's Isländerbuch_, Leipsic, 1869; Maurer, "Über Ari
Thorgilsson und sein Isländerbuch," in _Germania_, xv.; Olsen,
_Ari Thorgilsson hinn Fródhi_, Reykjavik, 1889, pp. 214-240.]

[Sidenote: Ari's significant allusion to Vinland.]

Unfortunately Ari's Islendinga-bók has perished. One cannot help suspecting that it may have contained the contemporary materials from which Eric the Red's Saga in the Hauks-bók was ultimately drawn. For Ari made an abridgment or epitome of his great book, and this epitome, commonly known as "Libellus Islandorum," still survives. In it Ari makes brief mention of Greenland, and refers to his paternal uncle, Thorkell Gellison, as authority for his statements. This Thorkell Gellison, of Helgafell, a man of high consideration who flourished about the middle of the eleventh century, had visited Greenland and talked with one of the men who accompanied Eric when he went to settle in Brattahlid in 986. From this source Ari gives us the interesting information that Eric's party found in Greenland "traces of human habitations, fragments of boats, and stone implements; so from this one might conclude that people of the kind who inhabited Vinland and were known by the (Norse) Greenlanders as Skrælings must have roamed about there."[248] Observe the force of this allusion. The settlers in Greenland did not at first (nor for a long time) meet with barbarous or savage natives there, but only with the vestiges of their former presence. But when Ari wrote the above passage, the memory of Vinland and its fierce Skrælings was still fresh, and Ari very properly inferred from the archæological remains in Greenland that a people similar (in point of barbarism) to the Skrælings must have been there. Unless Ari and his readers had a distinct recollection of the accounts of Vinland, such a reference would have been only an attempt to explain the less obscure by the more obscure. It is to be regretted that we have in this book no more allusions to Vinland; but if Ari could only leave us one such allusion, he surely could not have made that one more pointed.

[Footnote 248: Their "fundo thar manna vister bæthi austr ok
vestr á landi ok kæiplabrot ok steinsmíthi, that es af thví má
scilja, at thar hafdhi thessconar thjóth farith es Vínland
hefer bygt, ok Grænlendínger calla Skrelínga," i. e.
"invenerunt ibi, tam in orientali quam occidentali terræ parte,
humanæ habitationis vestigia, navicularum fragmenta et opera
fabrilia ex lapide, ex quo intelligi potest, ibi versatum esse
nationem quæ Vinlandiam incoluit quamque Grænlandi Skrælingos
appellant." Rafn, p. 207.]

[Sidenote: Other references.]

But this is not quite the only reference that Ari makes to Vinland. There are three others that must in all probability be assigned to him. Two occur in the Landnáma-bók, the first in a passage where mention is made of Ari Marsson's voyage to a place in the western ocean near Vinland;[249] the only point in this allusion which need here concern us is that Vinland is tacitly assumed to be a known geographical situation to which others may be referred. The second reference occurs in one of those elaborate and minutely specific genealogies in the Landnáma-bók: "Their son was Thordhr Hest-höfdhi, father of Karlsefni, who found Vinland the Good, Snorri's father," etc.[250] The third reference occurs in the Kristni Saga, a kind of supplement to the Landnáma-bók, giving an account of the introduction of Christianity into Iceland; here it is related how Leif Ericsson came to be called "Leif the Lucky," 1. from having rescued a shipwrecked crew off the coast of Greenland, 2. from having discovered "Vinland the Good."[251] From these brief allusions, and from the general relation in which Ari Fródhi stood to later writers, I suspect that if the greater Islendinga-bók had survived to our time we should have found in it more about Vinland and its discoverers. At any rate, as to the existence of a definite and continuous tradition all the way from Ari down to Hauk Erlendsson, there can be no question whatever.[252]

[Footnote 249: _Landnáma-bók_, part ii. chap. xxii.]

[Footnote 250: Id. part iii. chap. x.]

[Footnote 251: _Kristni Saga_, apud _Biskupa Sögur_,
Copenhagen, 1858, vol. i. p. 20.]