Chapter II: The Vinland of the Northmen (1)

THE idea that the western hemisphere was known to the Old World, prior to the ever-memorable voyage of Columbus four centuries ago, has reproduced itself in varying phases, not only in the venerable Greek legend of the lost Atlantis; and the still vaguer myth of the Garden of the Hesperides on the far ocean horizon, the region of the setting sun; but in mediæval fancies and mythical epics. The Breton, in _The Earthly Paradise_ of William Morris—

Spoke of gardens ever blossoming
Across the western sea, where none grew old,
E’en as the books at Micklegarth had told;
And said moreover that an English knight
Had had the Earthly Paradise in sight;
And heard the songs of those that dwelt therein;
But entered not; being hindered by his sin.

A legend of mediæval hagiology tells of the Island of St. Brandon, the retreat of an Irish hermit of the sixth century. Another tale comes down to us from the time of the Caliph Walid, and the invincible Musa, of the “Seven Islands” whither the Christians of Gothic Spain fled under the guidance of their seven bishops, when, in the eighth century, the peninsula passed under the yoke of the victorious Saracens. The Eyrbyggja Saga has a romantic story of Biorn Ashbrandsson, who narrowly escapes in a tempest raised by his enemy, with the aid of one skilled in the black art. After undergoing many surprising adventures, he is finally discovered by voyagers, “in the latter days of Olaf the Saint,” in a strange land beyond the ocean, the chief of a warlike race speaking a language that seemed to be Irish. Biorn warned the voyagers to depart, for the people had evil designs against them. But before they sailed, he took a gold ring from his hand, and gave it to Gudleif, their leader, along with a goodly sword; and commissioned him to give the sword to Kiartan, the son of Thurid, wife of an Iceland thane at Froda, of whom he had been enamoured; and the gold ring to his mother. This done, he warned them that no man venture to renew the search for what later commentators refer to as White Man’s Land. In equally vague form the fancy of lands beyond the ocean perpetuated itself in an imaginary island of Brazil that flitted about the charts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with ever-varying site and proportions, till it vanished in the light of modern exploration.

A more definite character has been given to the tale of Madoc, a Welsh prince of the twelfth century. Southey wove into an elaborate epic this legend of the son of Owen Gwyneth, king of North Wales, who, _circa_ A.D. 1170, sailed into the unknown west in search of a resting-place beyond reach of his brother Yorwerth, then ridding himself of all rivals to the throne. He found a home in the New World, returned to Wales for additional colonists to join the pioneer band; and setting sail with them, vanished beyond the western horizon, and was heard of no more. The poet, while adapting it to the purpose of his art, was not without faith in the genuineness of the legend which he amplified into his epic; and notes in the preface appended to it: “Strong evidence has been adduced that he (Prince Madoc) reached America; and that his posterity exist there to this day on the southern branch of the Missouri, retaining their complexion, their language, and in some degree, their arts.” But later explorations have failed to discover any “Welsh Indians” on the Missouri or its tributaries.

A small grain of fact will suffice at times for the crystallisation of vague and visionary fancies into a well-credited tradition. Before the printing-press came into play, with its perpetuation of definite records, and prosaic sifting of evidence, this was no uncommon occurrence; but even in recent times fancy may be seen transmuted into accepted fact.

When exploring the great earthworks of the Ohio valley, in 1874, I found myself on one occasion in a large Welsh settlement, a few miles from Newark, where a generation of native-born Americans still perpetuate the language of their Cymric forefathers, and conduct their religious services in the Welsh tongue. My attention was first called to this by the farmer, who had invited me to an early dinner after a morning’s digging in a mound on “The Evan’s Farm,” preceding our repast with a long Welsh grace. From him I learned that the district had been settled in 1802 by a Welsh colony; and that in two churches in neighbouring valleys—one Calvinistic Congregational and another Methodist,—the entire services are still conducted in their mother tongue. Such a perpetuation of the language and traditions of the race, in a quiet rural district, only required time and the confusion of dates and genealogies by younger generations, to have engrafted the story of Prince Madoc on the substantial basis of a genuine Welsh settlement. Southey’s epic was published in 1805, within three years after this Welsh immigration to the Ohio valley. The subject of the poem naturally gave it a special attraction for American readers; and it was speedily reprinted in the United States, doubtless with the same indifference to the author’s claim of copyright as long continued to characterise the ideas of literary ethics beyond the Atlantic. But the idea of a Welsh Columbus of the twelfth century was by no means received with universal favour there. Southey quoted at a long-subsequent date a critical pamphleteer who denounced the author of _Madoc_ as having “meditated a most serious injury against the reputation of the New World by attributing its discovery and colonisation to a vagabond Welsh prince; this being a most insidious attempt against the honour of America, and the reputation of Columbus!”

It is inevitable that America should look back to the Old World when in search of some elements of civilisation, and for the diversities of race and language traceable throughout the western hemisphere. The early students of the sculptured monuments and hieroglyphic records of Mexico, Central America, and Peru, naturally turned to Egypt as their probable source; though mature reflection has dissipated much of the reasoning based on superficial analogies. The gradations from the most primitive picture-writing of the Indian savage to ideography and abbreviated symbolism, are so clearly traceable in the various stages of progress, from the rude forest tribes to the native centres of civilisation in Central and Southern America, that no necessity remains for assuming any foreign source for their origin.

That the world beyond the Atlantic had remained through unnumbered centuries apart from Europe and the old East, until that memorable year 1492, is indisputable; and there was at one time a disposition to resent any rivalry with the grand triumph of Columbus; as though patriotic spirit and national pride demanded an unquestioning faith in that as the sole link that bound America to the Old World. But the same spirit stimulated other nations to claim precedence of Spain and the great Genoese; and for this the Scandinavian colonists of Iceland had every probability in their favour. They had navigated the Arctic Ocean with no other compass than the stars; and the publication in 1845, by the Danish antiquaries, of the _Grenlands Historiske Mindesmærker_ recalled minute details of their settlements in the inhospitable region of the western hemisphere to which they gave the strange misnomer of Greenland. But the year 1837 may be regarded as marking an epoch in the history of ante-Columbian research. The issue in that earlier year of the _Antiquitates Americanæ, sive scriptores septentrionales rerum ante-Columbiarum in America_, by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, under the editorship of Professor Charles Christian Rafn, produced a revolution, alike in the form and the reception of illustrations of ante-Columbian American history. The publication of that work gave a fresh interest to the vaguest intimations of a dubious past; while it superseded them by tangible disclosures, which, though modern in comparison with such mythic antiquities as the Atlantis of Plato’s _Dialogues_, nevertheless added some five centuries to the history of the New World. From its appearance, accordingly, may be dated the systematic aim of American antiquaries and historians to find evidence of intercourse with the ancient world prior to the fifteenth century.

This influence became manifest in all ways; and abundant traces of the novel idea are to be found in the popular literature of the time. It seemed as though the adventurous spirit of the early Greenland explorers had revived, as in the days of the first Vinlanders, as told in the Saga of Eric the Red: “About this time there began to be much talk at Brattahlid, to the effect that Vinland the Good should be explored; for it was said that country must be possessed of many good qualities. And so it came to pass that Karlsefne and Snorri fitted out their ship for the purpose of going in search of that country.” Only the modern Vinlanders who follow in their wake have had for their problem to—

Sail up the current of departed time
And seek along its banks that vanished clime
By ancient Scalds in Runic verse renowned,
Now like old Babylon no longer found.[4]

The indomitable race that emerged from the Scandinavian peninsula, and the islands and shores of the Baltic, and overran and conquered the deserted Roman world, supplied the maritime energy of Europe from the fifth to the tenth century; and colonised northern Italy with the element to which we must assign the rise of its great maritime republics, including the one that was to furnish the discoverer of America in the fifteenth century. Genoese and Spaniards could not have made for themselves a home either in Greenland or Iceland. Had the Northmen of the tenth century been less hardy, they would probably have prosecuted their discoveries, and found more genial settlements, such as have since then proved the centres of colonisation for the Anglo-American race. But of their actual discovery of some portion of the mainland of North America, prior to the eleventh century, there can be no reasonable doubt. The wonder rather is that after establishing permanent settlements both in Iceland and Greenland, their southern explorations were prosecuted with such partial and transient results. The indomitable Vikings were conquering fresh territories on the coasts and islands of the North Sea, and giving a new name to the fairest region of northern Gaul wrested by the Northmen from its Frank conquerors. The same hardy supplanters were following up such acquisitions by expeditions to the Mediterranean that resulted in the establishment of their supremacy over ancient historic races there, and training leaders for later crusading adventure.

The voyage from Greenland, or even from Iceland, to the New England shores was not more difficult than from the native fiords of the Northmen to the Atlantic seaboard, or to the coasts and islands of the Mediterranean. Everywhere they left their record in graven runes. At Maeshowe in the Orkneys, on Holy Island in the Firth of Clyde, and at Kirk Michael, Kirk Andreas, and Kirk Braddon, on the Isle of Man; or as the relic of a more ancient past, on the marble lion of the Piræus, now at the arsenal of Venice: their runic records are to be seen graven in the same characters as those which have been recovered during the present century from their early settlements beyond the Atlantic. Numerous similar inscriptions from the homes of the Northmen are furnished in Professor George Stephens’ _Old Northern Runic Monuments_, which perpetuate memorials of the love of adventure of those daring rovers, and the pride they took in their expeditions to remote and strange lands. Intensified at a later stage by religious fervour, the same spirit emboldened them as leaders in the Crusades; and some of their runic inscriptions tell of adventurous pilgrimages to the Holy Land. An Icelandic rover is designated on his rune-stone _Rafn Hlmrckfari_ as a successful voyager to Ireland. Norwegian and Danish bautastein frequently preserve the epithet of _Englandsfari_ for the leaders of expeditions to the British Isles, or more vaguely refer to their adventures in “the western parts.” King Sigurd of Norway proudly blazoned the title of _Jórsolafari_ as one who had achieved the pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and the literate memorials of the Northmen of Orkney, recovered in 1861, on the opening of the famous Maeshowe Tumulus, include those of a band of Crusaders, or Jerusalem-farers, who, in 1153, followed Earl Ragnvald to the Holy Land.

The inscribed rune-stones brought from the sites of the ancient Norse colonies in Greenland, and now deposited in the Royal Museum of Northern Antiquities, at Copenhagen, are simple personal or sepulchral inscriptions. But they are graven in the northern runes, and as such constitute monuments of great historical value: furnishing indisputable evidence of the presence of European colonists beyond the Atlantic centuries before that memorable 12th of October 1492, on which the eyes of the wistful gazers from the deck of the “Santa Maria” were gladdened with their first glimpse of what they believed to be the India of the far east: the Cipango in search of which they had entered on their adventurous voyage.

The colonies of Greenland, after being occupied, according to Norwegian and Danish tradition, from the tenth to the fifteenth century, were entirely forgotten. The colonists are believed to have been exterminated by the native Eskimo. The very locality chosen for their settlements was so completely lost sight of that, when an interest in their history revived, and expeditions were sent out to revisit the scene of early Norse colonisation beyond the Atlantic, much time was lost in a fruitless search on the coast lying directly west from Iceland. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, an oar drifted to the Iceland coast, a relic, as was believed, of the long-lost colony of Greenland, bearing this inscription in runic characters: OFT VAR EK DASA DUR EK DRO THICK—_Oft was I weary when I drew thee_; but it was not till the close of the century that the traditions of the old Greenlanders began to excite attention. Many a Norse legend pictured the enviable delights of the fabled Hesperian region discovered within the Arctic circle, yet meriting by the luxuriance of its fertile valleys its name of Greenland; and the fancies and legendary traditions that gradually displaced the history of the old colony, had been interwoven by the poet Montgomery with the tale of self-sacrificing labours of Moravian Missionaries, in the cantos of his _Greenland_ epic, long before the _Antiquitates Americanæ_ issued from the Copenhagen press.

The narrations of ancient voyagers, and their explorations in the New World, as brought to light in 1835 by the Copenhagen volume on pre-Columbian America, were too truthful in their aspect to be slighted; and too fascinating in their revelations of a long-forgotten intercourse between the Old World and the New, to be willingly subjected to incredulous analysis. From the genuine literary memorials of older centuries, sufficient evidence could be gleaned to place beyond question, not only the discovery and colonisation of Greenland by Eric the Red,—apparently in the year 985,—but also the exploration of southern lands, some of which must have formed part of the American continent. The manuscripts whence those narratives are derived are of various dates, and differ widely in value; but of the genuineness and historical significance of the oldest of them, no doubt can be entertained. The accounts which some of them furnish are so simple, and devoid of anything extravagant or improbable, that the internal evidence of truthfulness is worthy of great consideration. The exuberant fancy of the Northmen, which revels in their mythology and songs, would have constructed a very different tale had it been employed in the invention of a southern continent, or earthly Paradise fashioned from the dreams of Icelandic and Greenland rovers.

The narrative attaches itself to genuine Icelandic history; and furnishes a coherent, and seemingly unexaggerated account of a voyage characterised by nothing that is supernatural; and little that is even romantic. Eric Thorvaldsson, more commonly referred to as Erikr Rauthi, or Eric the Red, a banished Icelandic jarl, made his way to the Greenland coast and effected a settlement at Igalikko, or Brattalid, as it was at first called, from whence one of the runic inscriptions now in the Copenhagen museum was taken. Before the close of the century, if not in the very year A.D. 1000, in which St. Olaf was introducing Christianity into Norway, Leif, or Leiv Ericson, a son of the first coloniser of Greenland, appears to have accidentally discovered the American mainland. The story, current in Norwegian and Icelandic tradition, and repeated with additions and variations in successive Sagas, most frequently ascribes to Leif an actual exploratory voyage in quest of southern lands already reported to have been seen by Bjarni Herjulfson. But the Sagas from whence the revived story of Vinland is derived are of different dates, and very varying degrees of credibility. Of those, the narrative in which the name of Bjarni Herjulfson first appears occurs in a manuscript of the latter part of the fourteenth century; and exhibits both amplifications and inconsistencies abundantly justifying its rejection as an authority for depriving Leif Ericson of the honour of the discovery of the North American continent. He was on his way from Norway to Greenland when he was driven out of his course, and so reached the mainland of the New World in that early century; even as, five centuries later, the Portuguese admiral, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, when on his way to the Cape, was driven westward to the coast of Brazil, and so to the discovery of the southern continent. For later generations the tale of the old Vinland explorers—whose goodly land of the vine, and of fertile meads of grain, had faded away as a dream,—naturally gathered around it exaggerations and legendary fable; but such terms are wholly inapplicable to the original Saga. The story of Thorfinn’s expedition to effect a settlement on the new-found land, within three or four years after Leif Ericson’s reported discovery, is a simple, consistent narrative, rendered attractive by natural and highly suggestive incidents, but entirely free from mythical or legendary features. This is obviously the basis of the varying and inconsistent tales of later Sagas. The year 1003 is the date assigned to the expedition in which Thorfinn set out, with three ships and a considerable company of adventurers, and effected a temporary settlement of Vinland. Voyaging southward, he first landed on a barren coast where a great plain covered with flat stones stretched from the sea to a lofty range of ice-clad mountains. To this he gave the name of Helluland, from _hella_, a flat stone. The earlier editor, having the requirements of his main theory in view, found in its characteristics evidence sufficient to identify it with Newfoundland; but Professor Gustav Storm assigns reasons for preferring Labrador as more probable.[5] The next point touched presented a low shore of white sand, and beyond it a level country covered with forest, to which the name of Markland, or woodland, was given. This, which, so far as the description can guide us, might be anywhere on the American coast, was assumed by the editor of the _Antiquitates Americanæ_ to be Nova Scotia; but, according to Professor Storm, can have been no other country than Newfoundland. The voyagers, after two more days at sea, again saw land; and of this the characteristic that the dew upon the grass tasted sweet, was accepted as sufficient evidence that Nantucket, where honey-dew abounds, is the place referred to. Their further course shoreward, and up a river into the lake from which it flowed, has been assumed to have been up the Pacasset River to Mount Hope Bay. There the voyagers passed the winter. After erecting temporary booths, their leader divided them into two parties, which alternately proceeded on exploring excursions. One of his followers, a southerner,—_sudrmadr_, or German, as he is assumed to have been,—having wandered, he reported on his return the discovery of wine-trees and grapes; and hence the name of Vineland, given to the locality.

This land of the vine, discovered by ancient voyagers on the shores of the New World, naturally awakened the liveliest interest in the minds of American antiquaries and historical students; nor is that interest even now wholly a thing of the past. Is this “Vinland the Good” a reality? Can it be located on any definite site? Montgomery’s _Greenland_ epic was published in 1819; and the poet, with no American or Canadian pride of locality to beguile him in his interpretation of the evidence, observes in one of the notes to his poem: “Leif and his party wintered there, and observed that on the shortest day the sun rose about eight o’clock, which may correspond with the forty-ninth degree of latitude, and denotes the situation of Newfoundland, or the River St. Lawrence.” The reference here is to the sole data on which all subsequent attempts to determine the geographical location of Vinland have been based; and after upwards of sixty years of speculation and conjecture, Professor Gustav Storm in his _Studier over Vinlandsreiserne_, arrives at a nearly similar conclusion. Vinland cannot have lain farther north than 49°. How far southward of this its site may be sought for is matter of conjecture; but all probabilities are opposed to its discovery so far south as Rhode Island.

Professor Rafn, however, arrived at very different results; and found abundant confirmation in the sympathetic responses of the Rhode Island antiquaries. The famous Dighton Rock was produced, with its assumed runic inscription. The Newport Round Tower was a still more satisfactory indication of permanent settlement by its supposed Norse builders; and “The Skeleton in Armour,” on which Longfellow founded his ballad romance, was accepted without hesitation as a glimpse of one of the actual colonists of Vinland in the eleventh century. Professor Rafn accordingly summed up the inquiry, and set forth the conclusions arrived at, in this definite fashion. “It is the total result of the nautical, geographical, and astronomical evidence in the original documents, which places the situations of the countries discovered beyond all doubt. The number of days’ sail between the several newly-found lands, the striking description of the coasts, especially the sand-banks of Nova Scotia; and the long beaches and downs of a peculiar appearance on Cape Cod (the _Kialarnes_ and _Furdustrandir_ of the Northmen,) are not to be mistaken. In addition hereto we have the astronomical remark that the shortest day in Vinland was nine hours long, which fixes the latitude of 41° 24′ 10″, or just that of the promontories which limit the entrance to Mount Hope Bay, where Leif’s booths were built, and in the district around which the old Northmen had their head establishment, which was named by them _Hóp_, or the Creek.”

The Dighton Rock runes erelong fell into woeful discredit; and as for the Newport Round Tower, it has been identified as “The Old Stone Mill” built there by Governor Benedict Arnold, who removed from Providence to Newport in 1653. Though therefore no longer to be accredited to the Northmen, it is of very respectable architectural antiquity, according to New World reckoning. Nevertheless, in spite of such failure of all confirmatory evidence, the general summary of results was presented by Professor Rafn in such absolute terms, and the geographical details of the assumed localities were so confidently accredited by the members of the Rhode Island Historical Society, that his conclusions were accepted as a whole without cavil. In reality, however, when we revert to the evidence from which such definite results were derived, it proves vague, if not illusory. The voyagers crossed over from Greenland to Helluland, which we may assume without hesitation to have been the inhospitable coast of Labrador. They then pursued a south-western course, in a voyage in all of four days, subdivided into two nearly equal parts, until they landed on a coast where wild grapes grew, and which accordingly they named the Land of the Vine. To Icelandic or Greenland voyagers, the vine, with its clusters of grapes, however unpalatable, could not fail to prove an object of special note. But there is no need to prolong the four days’ run, and land the explorers beyond Cape Cod, in order to find the wild grape. It grows in sheltered localities in Nova Scotia; and so in no degree conflicts with the later deductions based on the same astronomical evidence of the length of the shortest day, which have induced subsequent investigators to adopt conclusions much more nearly approximating to those suggested by the poet Montgomery fully sixteen years before the issue of Professor Rafn’s learned quarto from the Copenhagen press.

The topographical details which have to be relied upon in any attempt to identify the precise locality are little less vague than those of the astronomical data from which the editor of the _Antiquitates Americanæ_ assumed to compute his assigned latitude. The voyagers, after their first wintering, pursued their course southward; and again approaching the shore, made their way up a river, to a lake from whence it flowed. The land was wooded, with wild “wheat” in the low meadows, and on the high banks grape-bearing vines. The aspect of this strange land was tempting to voyagers from the north, so they erected booths, and wintered there. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence southward to Rhode Island, the coast is indented with many an estuary, up any of which the old voyagers may have found their way into lake or expanded basin, with overhanging forest trees, meadow flats, and other features sufficiently corresponding to all that we learn from the old Saga of the temporary settlement of Thorfinn and his fellow-voyagers. Fresh claimants accordingly enter the lists to contend for the honours that pertain to the landing-place of those first Pilgrim Fathers. New Englanders above all not unnaturally cherish the pleasant fancy that they had for their precursors the hardy Vikings, who, resenting the oppression of King Harold the fair-haired, sailed into the unknown west to find a free home for themselves. The fancy had a double claim on the gifted musician Ole Bull. Himself a wanderer from the Scandinavian fatherland, he started the proposition which was to give an air of indisputable reality to the old legend; and which culminated in the erection, on Boston Common, in 1888, of a fine statue of Leif Ericson.

“South of Greenland is Helluland; next is Markland; from thence is not far to Vinland the Good.” So reads the old Saga; and with the rearing of the statue of its finder, it seemed incumbent on some loyal son of the Commonwealth to demonstrate the site of the good land within the area of Massachusetts. In the following year, accordingly, Professor Eben Norton Horsford, of Cambridge, undertook the search, and was able to identify to his entire satisfaction the site of Leif’s, or Karlsefne’s booths, in his own neighbourhood on the Charles river. First appeared in 1889 _The Problem of the Northmen_; and in the following year, in choicest typography, and amplitude of attractive illustrations, _The Discovery of the Ancient City of Norumbega, at Watertown on the River Charles_. There the ephemeral booths of the old winterers in Vinland had left enduring traces after a lapse of more than eight centuries. The discoverer, resolved to arrest “Time’s decaying fingers,” which had thus far been laid with such unwonted gentleness on the pioneer relics, has marked the spot with a memorial tower, and an elaborately inscribed tablet, one clause of which runs thus: “=River, The Charles, discovered by Leif Erikson 1000 a.d. Explored by Thorwald, Leif’s Brother, 1003 a.d. Colonised by Thorfinn Karlsefni 1007 a.d. First Bishop Erik Gnupson 1121 a.d.=”

The entire evidence has been readduced with minutest critical accuracy in _The Finding of Wineland the Good: the History of the Icelandic Discovery of America_, by the late gifted Arthur Middleton Reeves. His verdict is thus briefly stated: “There is no suggestion in Icelandic records of a permanent occupation of the county; and after the exploration at the beginning of the eleventh century, it is not known that Wineland was ever again visited by Icelanders, although it would appear that a voyage thither was attempted in the year 1121, but with what result is not known.”[6] In the Codex Frisianus is an apt heading which might, better than a more lengthy inscription, have given expression to the pleasant fancy that the footprints of Leif Ericson’s followers had been recovered on the banks of the Charles river, “FUNDIT VINLAND GOTHA”—Vineland the Good found! Maps old and new illustrate the topography of the newly-assigned site; and among the rest, one which specially aims at reproducing the most definite feature of the old narrative is thus titled:—“River flowing through a lake into the sea; Vinland of the Northmen; site of Leif’s houses.” To his own satisfaction, at least, it is manifest that the author has identified the site.

But a great deal more than Leif’s booths is involved. It is the discovery of the ancient city of Norumbega, of which also the inscribed tablet makes due record; including the statement, set forth more fully in the printed text, that the name is only an Indian transmutation of “Norbega, the ancient form of Norvega, Norway, to which Vinland was subject!” The name, though probably unfamiliar to most modern readers, was once as well known as that of Utopia, or El Dorado. One of Sir John Hawkins’ fellow-voyagers claimed to have seen the city of Norumbega still standing in 1568: a gorgeous Indian town outvying the capital of Montezuma, and resplendent in pearls and gold. Hakluyt proposed its recolonisation; Sir Humphrey Gilbert went in search of it; and it figures both as a city and a country on maps familiar to older generations than the founders of New England. Above all, Milton has given it a place in the Tenth Book of his _Paradise Lost_. When the Divine Creator is represented as readapting this world to a fallen race—

Some say he bid his Angels turn askance
The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more
From the sun’s axle. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . Now from the north
Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore,
Bursting their brazen dungeon, arm’d with ice,
And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw,
Boreas . . .

which seems to imply very Icelandic and Arctic associations of the Miltonic muse. But the gentle New England poet, Whittier, who had sung of his Christian knight in vain quest of the marvellous city, thus writes in sober prose to its modern discoverer: “I had supposed that the famed city of Norumbega was on the Penobscot when I wrote my poem some years ago; but I am glad to think of it as on the Charles, in our own Massachusetts.” This work of rearing anew on the banks of the river Charles the metropolis of Vinland the Good may be best entrusted to the poets of New England.

All praise is due to the enthusiastic editors of the _Antiquitates Americanæ_ for their reproduction of the original records on which the history and the legends of Vinland rest. They found only too willing recipients of the theories and assumptions with which they supplemented the genuine narrative; nor has the uncritical spirit of credulous deduction wholly ceased. In the untimely death of Professor Munch, the historian of Norway, the University of Christiana lost a ripe and acutely critical scholar in the very flower of his years. But in Dr. Gustav Storm a successor has been found not unworthy to fill his place, and represent the younger generation of Northern antiquaries, who have now taken in hand, in a more critical spirit, yet with no less enthusiasm, the work so well begun by Rafn, Finn Magnusen, and Sveinbiorn Egilsson. In the same year in which Leif Ericson’s statue was set up in Boston, and all the old enthusiasm for the identification of the lost Vinland was revived, there appeared in the _Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord_ a series of _Studies on the Vineland Voyages_, from the pen of Professor Storm, embodying a critical analysis of the evidence relating to the Vinland voyages, which is treated still more fully in his _Studier over Vinlandsreiserne, Vinlands Geografi og Ethnographi_. The whole is now available, along with valuable additions, including photographic facsimiles illustrative of the original MSS., in Reeves’ _Finding of Wineland the Good_.[7] The evidence has to be gleaned from two independent series of narratives: the one the Icelandic Sagas and other embodiments of the Vinland tradition; the other the more amplified, but less reliable narratives of Norwegian chroniclers. The earliest Icelandic accounts are derived directly or indirectly from Ari froði, more particularly referred to on a later page, whose date as an author is given as about 1120; thereby marking the transmission of the narrative to a younger generation before it was committed to writing. Ari froði, _i.e._ the learned, derived the story from his paternal uncle Thorkell Gellisson of Helgufell, who lived in the latter half of the eleventh century; and so was a contemporary of Adam of Bremen, who, when resident at the Danish Court, about the year 1070, obtained the information relating to the Northern regions which he embodied in his _Descriptio insularum aquilonis_. Ari’s uncle, Thorkell, is said to have spoken, when in Greenland, with a man who, in the year 985, had accompanied Erik the Red on his expedition from Iceland; so that the authority is good, if the narrative were sufficiently ample; but unfortunately, though Ari’s notes of what he learned from his uncle are still extant in the _Libellus Islandorum_, they are exceedingly meagre. The Vinland explorations had no such importance for the men of that age as they possess for us, and are accordingly dealt with as a very secondary matter. Professor Gustav Storm, in his _Studies on the Vineland Voyages_, notes that Thorkell seems to have told his nephew most about the colonisation of Greenland. In Professor Storm’s _Studies_, and in the exhaustive _Finding of Wineland the Good_, by Arthur Middleton Reeves, the entire bearings of the evidence, and the relative value of the various ancient authorities, are discussed with minute care; and lead alike to the inevitable conclusion that any assignment of a site for the lost Vinland, either on Rhode Island, or on any part of the New England coast, is untenable. The deductions of Professor Rafn from the same evidence were accepted as a final verdict, until the too eager confirmation of his Rhode Island correspondents brought them into discredit. Now when we undertake an unbiassed review of them, it is manifest that too much weight has been attached to his estimate of distances measured by the vague standard of a day’s sail of a rude galley dependent on wind and tide. This Professor Rafn assumed as equivalent to twenty-four geographical miles. But very slight consideration suffices to show that, with an indefinite starting-point, and only a vague indication of the direction of sailing, with the unknown influences of wind and tide, any such arbitrary deduction of a definite measurement from the log of the old Northmen is not only valueless, but misleading.

A reconsideration of the evidence furnished by the references to the fauna and flora of the different points touched at, shows that others of Professor Rafn’s deductions are equally open to correction. Helluland, a barren region, of large stone slabs, with no other trace of life than the Arctic fox, presented the same aspect as Labrador still offers to the eye of the voyager. But there is no need to traverse the entire Canadian and New England coasts before a region can be found answering to the descriptions of a forest-clad country, of numerous deer, or even of the vine, as noted by the old explorers from Greenland. To the eye of the Greenlander, the Markland, or forest-clad land, lay within sight no farther south than Newfoundland or Cape Breton. To those who are accustomed to associate the vine with the Rhine land, or the plains of Champagne, it sounds equally extravagant to speak of the Maritime Provinces, or of the New England States, as “Vinland the Good.” But numerous allusions of voyagers and travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries refer with commendation to the wild grapes of North America. Jacques Cartier on making his way up the St. Lawrence, in his second voyage, gave to the Isle of Orleans the name of the Isle de Bacchus, because of the many wild vines found there; though he notes that, “not being cultivated nor pruned, the grapes are neither so large nor so sweet as ours”—that is, those of France. Lescarbot, in like manner, in 1606, records the grape vine as growing at Chuakouet, or Saco, in Maine, and in the following year they are noted as abundant along the banks of the river St. John in New Brunswick.

To voyagers from Iceland or Greenland many portions of the coast of Nova Scotia would present the aspect of a region clothed with forest, and, as such, “extremely beautiful.” Deer are still abundant both there and in Newfoundland; and as for the grapes gathered by Leif Ericson, or those brought back to Thorvald by Hake and Hekia, the swift runners, at their more northern place of landing, the wild vine is well known at the present time in sheltered localities of Nova Scotia. Having therefore carefully studied the earliest maps and charts, of which reduced copies are furnished in the _Mémoires_, and reviewed the whole evidence with minute care, Professor Storm thus unhesitatingly states the results: “Kjalarnes, the northern extremity of Vinland, becomes Cape Breton Island, specially described as low-lying and sandy. The fiord into which the Northmen steered, on the country becoming _fjorthskorit_, _i.e._ ‘fiord-indented,’ may have been one of the bays of Guysborough, the county of Nova Scotia lying farthest to the north-east; possibly indeed Canso Bay, or some one of the bays south of it. Therefore much further to the south in Nova Scotia must we seek the mouth of the river where Karlsefn made his abortive attempt at colonisation. . . . The west coast of northern Vinland is characterised as a region of uninhabited forest tracks, with few open spots, a statement admirably agreeing with the topographical conditions distinguishing the west coast of Cape Breton Island, which in a modern book of travels is spoken of as ‘an unexplored and trackless land of forests and mountains.’ Hence to the south of this region search has to be made for the mouth of the streamlet where Thorvald Eriksson was killed.” Various points, accordingly, such as Salmon river, or one of the rivers flowing into Pictou harbour, are suggested as furnishing features of resemblance and inviting to further research.

Here, then, is the same problem submitted to the historical antiquaries of Nova Scotia which those of Rhode Island took up upwards of half a century ago, with unbounded zeal, and very surprising results. Nor is there a “Dighton Rock” wanting; for Nova Scotia has its inscribed stone, already interpreted as graphic runes, replete with equally suggestive traces of the Northmen of the tenth century. The inscribed rock at Yarmouth has long been an object of curious interest. So far back as 1857 I received from Dr. J. G. Farish a full-sized copy of the inscription, with the following account of it: “The inscription, of which the accompanying sketch is an exact copy,

was discovered forty-five years ago, at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. The rock on which the characters are engraved is about two feet in diameter, of an irregular hemispherical shape, with one naturally smooth surface. It lies on the shore of a small inlet, at high-water mark, and close to the bank, on which it may formerly have rested. The stone has been split where a very thin vein of quartz once traversed it, but the corresponding half could never be found. The tracing has been done with a sharp-pointed instrument carried onward, by successive blows of a hammer or mallet, the effect of which is plainly visible. The point of the instrument barely penetrated the layer of quartz, which is almost as thin as the black marks of the sketch. The inscription has been shown to several learned gentlemen,—one intimately acquainted with the characters of the Micmac and Millicet Indians who once inhabited this country; another, familiar with the Icelandic and other Scandinavian languages; but no person has yet been able to decipher it.” Again, in 1880, I received from Mr. J. Y. Bulmer, Secretary of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, a photograph of the Yarmouth rock, with an accompanying letter, in which he remarks: “I am directed by the council of the Nova Scotia Historical Society to forward to you a photographic view of a stone found near the ocean, in Yarmouth county, N.S., and having an inscription which, if not runic or Phœnician, is supposed by many to be the work of man. As ancient remains are most likely to be preserved by calling attention to all such works and inscriptions, we thought it best to forward it to you, where it could be examined by yourself and others likely to detect a fraud, or translate an inscription. The stone is now—or was one hundred years ago,—near, or in fact on, the edge of the sea. It has since been removed to Yarmouth for preservation. It was found near Cape Sable, a cape that must have been visited by nearly every navigator, whether ancient or modern.”

The earlier description of Dr. Farish is valuable, as it preserves an account of the rock while it still occupied its original site. He speaks, moreover, definitely as to the period when it first attracted attention; and which, though more recent than the “one hundred years” of my later correspondent, or a nearly equivalent statement in the _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, that “it has been known for nearly an hundred years,” is sufficiently remote to remove all idea of fraud, at least by any person of the present generation. The description given by Dr. Farish of the apparent execution of the inscription by means of a sharp-pointed instrument—meaning thereby no doubt a metallic tool,—and a hammer or mallet, clearly points to other than native Indian workmanship, whatever may have been the date of its execution. As will be seen from the accompanying copy, it is in arbitrary linear characters bearing no resemblance to the abbreviated symbols familiar to us in Indian epigraphy; and at the same time it may be described as unique in character. Having been known to people resident in its vicinity for many years before the attention of students of the early monuments of the continent was invited to it, it appears to be beyond suspicion of purposed fraud. I did not attempt any solution of the enigma thus repeatedly submitted to my consideration; but it was this graven stone that was referred to when, in the inaugural address to the section of History and Archæology of the Royal Society of Canada, in 1882, the remark was made: “I know of but one inscription in Canada which seems to suggest the possibility of a genuine native record.”

On nearly every recurrence of an inscription in any linear form of alphabetic character brought to light in the western hemisphere, the first idea has been to suggest a Phœnician origin; and this is, no doubt, implied in the statement of its runic decipherer, in the _Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society_, that “the glyphs have been at various times copied and sent abroad to men of learning who have made more or less attempts at deciphering them, more than one savant seeing traces of Semitic origin.” But latterly with the reported discovery of any linear inscription on the eastern seaboard, the temptation has been to refer it to the Northmen of the eleventh century. To this accordingly the allusions of both of my Nova-Scotian correspondents pointed. But the characters of the Scandinavian futhork are sufficiently definite to satisfy any one familiar with Scottish and Manx runic inscriptions, or with Professor George Stephens’ ample illustrations of them as they are found in the native home of the Northmen, that it is vain to look to either for a key to the graven legend on the Yarmouth rock. The presence of the Northmen, not only in Iceland and Greenland, but as transient visitors on some portion of the North American mainland, now rests on satisfactory historical evidence. In Greenland they left indisputable literate records of their colonisation of the region to which they gave the inapt name it still retains. The runic inscriptions brought to Copenhagen in 1831 not only determine the sites of settlements effected by the companions and successors of Eric, but they serve to show the kind of evidence to be looked for, alike to the north and the south of the St. Lawrence, if any traces yet survive of their having attempted to colonise the old Markland and Vinland, whether the latter is recovered in Nova Scotia or New England. Their genuine memorials are not less definite than those left by the Romans in Gaul or Britain; and corresponding traces of them in the assumed Vinland, and elsewhere in the United States, have been perseveringly, but vainly, sought for. One unmistakably definite Scandinavian inscription, that of the “Huidœrk,” professedly found on the river Potomac, does not lay claim to serious criticism. It was affirmed to have been discovered in 1867 graven on a rock on the banks of the Potomac; but to any student familiar with the genuine examples figured in the _Antiquitates Americanæ_, it will be readily recognised as a clever hoax, fabricated by the correspondent of the _Washington Union_ out of genuine Greenland inscriptions. It reads thus: =hir huilir syasy fagrharrdr avstfirthingr iki a kildi systr thorg samfethra halfthritgr gleda gvd sal henar=. To this are added certain symbols, suggested it may be presumed by the Kingiktorsoak inscription, from which the translator professes to derive the date A.D. 1051.

In the interval between the dates of the two communications previously referred to, a rubbing of the inscription on the Yarmouth rock was forwarded to Mr. Henry Phillips jr., of Philadelphia. It appears to have been under consideration by him at intervals for nine years, when at length it was made the subject of a paper read before the American Philosophical Society, and printed in its _Proceedings_ in 1884. After a description of the locality, and the discovery of the inscribed stone on its original site, “about the end of the last century, by a man named Fletcher,” Mr. Phillips states the reasons which sufficed to satisfy him that the inscription is a genuine one. He then proceeds thus: “Having become imbued with a belief that no deception was intended, or practised, I entered upon the study of the markings with a mind totally and entirely free from prejudice. So far from believing that the inscription was a relic of the pre-Columbian discovery of America, I had never given any credence to that theory.” Thus, not only entirely unbiassed, but, as he says, “somewhat prejudiced against the authenticity of any inscription on this continent purporting to emanate from the hardy and intrepid Norsemen,” he proceeded to grapple with the strange characters. “As in a kaleidoscope, word after word appeared in disjointed form, and each was in turn rejected, until at last an intelligible word came forth, followed by another and another, until a real sentence with a meaning stood forth to my astonished gaze: _Harkussen men varu_—Hako’s son addressed the men.” On reverting to the old Vinland narrative this seemed all unexpectedly to tally with it, for Mr. Phillips found that in the expedition of Thorfinn Karlsefne, in 1007, one named Haki occurs among those who accompanied him. Still more noteworthy, as it appears, though overlooked by him, this oldest record of a European visitor to the Nova-Scotian shores, if actually referable to Hake, the fellow-voyager of Thorfinn, was no Northman, but a Scot! For Thorfinn himself, the old Saga, as reproduced in the _Antiquitates Americanæ_, claims a comprehensive genealogy in which his own Scottish ancestry is not overlooked. In the summer of 1006, according to the narrative of the “settlement effected in Vinland by Thorfinn,” “there arrived in Greenland two ships from Iceland; the one was commanded by Thorfinn, having the very significant surname of Karlsefn (_i.e._ who promises, or is destined to be an able or great man), a wealthy and powerful man, of illustrious lineage, and sprung from Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Irish and Scottish ancestors, some of whom were kings of royal descent. He was accompanied by Snorre Thorbrandson, who was also a man of distinguished lineage. The other ship was commanded by Bjarne Grimolfson, of Breidefiord, and Thorhall Gamlison, of Austfiord. They kept the festival of Yule at Brattalid. Thorfinn became enamoured of Gudrida, and obtained the consent of her brother-in-law, Leif, and their marriage was celebrated during the winter. On this, as on former occasions, the voyage to Vinland formed a favourite theme of conversation, and Thorfinn was urged both by his wife and others to undertake such a voyage. It was accordingly resolved on in the spring of 1007.” This later narrative distinctly sets forth an organised scheme of permanent settlement in the tempting land of the vine. Thorvald, who was in command of one of the three ships fitted out for the expedition, was married to Freydisa, a natural daughter of Eric the Red. “On board this ship was also a man of the name of Thorhall, who had long served Eric as a huntsman in summer, and as house-steward in winter, and who had much acquaintance with the uncolonised parts of Greenland. They had in all 160 men. They took with them all kinds of live stock, it being their intention to establish a colony, if possible.” Then follows the notice of their observations of the characteristic features, and of the fauna and flora of Helluland, Markland, and subsequent points; to the last of which, characterised by “trackless deserts and long beaches with sands,” they gave the name of Furdustrandir. After passing this, the characteristic feature is noted that the land began to be indented by inlets, or bays. Then follows the notice of Hake, the Scot, to whom Mr. Phillips conceives the Yarmouth inscription may be due. The reference, accordingly, with its accompanying description of the country, has a special claim to notice here. “They had,” says the Saga, “two Scots with them, Haki and Hekia, whom Leif had formerly received from the Norwegian King, Olaf Tryggvason,” it may be assumed as slaves carried off in some marauding expedition to the British Islands. The two Scots, man and woman, it is added, “were very swift of foot. They put them on shore recommending them to proceed in a south-west direction, and explore the country. After the lapse of three days they returned, bringing with them some grapes and ears of wheat, which grew wild in that region. They continued their course until they came to a place where the firth penetrated far into the country. Off the mouth of it was an island past which there ran strong currents, which was also the case further up the firth. On the island there was an immense number of eider ducks, so that it was scarcely possible to walk without treading on their eggs. They called the island Straumey (Stream Isle), and the firth Straumfiordr (Stream Firth). They landed on the shore of this firth, and made preparations for their winter residence. The country was extremely beautiful,” as we may readily imagine a sheltered nook of Nova Scotia to have appeared to voyagers fresh from Iceland and the Greenland shores. It may be well to note here that the incident of the discovery of the vine and the gathering of grapes reappears in different narratives under varying forms. It was a feature to be specially looked for by all later voyagers in search of the Vinland of the first expedition, that set out in search for the southern lands of which Bjarni Herjulfson is reported to have brought back an account to Greenland. Nor is the discovery of the vine by successive explorers along the American seaboard in any degree improbable, though it can scarcely be doubted that some of the later accounts are mere amplifications of the original narrative. It is, at any rate, to be noted that the scene of Haki the Scot’s discovery, was not the Hóp, identified by the Rhode Island Historical Society with their own Mount Hope Bay. As for Thorhall and his shipmates, they turned back, northward, in search of Vinland, and so deserted their fellow-voyagers before the scene of attempted colonisation was reached, and were ultimately reported to have been wrecked on the Irish coast.