Arthur Middleton Reeves

“ Thorgeirsfell was upon the southern side of Snowfells-ness, to the eastward of Arnarstapi.
(29) The simple fact, that Thorgeir was a freedman, would seem to have offered no valid reason for Thorbiorn's refusal to consider his son's offer for Gudrid's hand, since Thorbiorn was himself the son of a man who had been a thrall; the real ground for his objection was, perhaps, not so much the former thraldom of Einar's father, as the fact that he was a man of humble birth, which Thorbiorn's father, although a slave, evidently was not. ”

“ If the Thorhall who went to Wineland was a young man and unmarried, as is not improbable, it is manifest that he could not have had a married son living in Iceland in 1014, and chronologically it would then appear to be impossible to identify the Thorhall, Gamli's son of Grettis Saga, with the man of the same name in Eric's Saga ”

“ The majority of these were, probably, not serfs by birth, but by conquest, as witness the case of Vifil in this saga. The freeing of thralls was very common in Iceland, and there are frequent references in the sagas to men who were themselves, or whose fathers had been, 'leysingjar,' freedmen. The master could kill his own thrall without punishment; if he killed the slave of another he was required to pay to the master the value of the slave, within three days, or he laid himself liable to condemnation to the lesser outlawry. ”

“ The thralls were severely punished for their misdeeds, but if one man took into his own hands the punishment of the thralls of another, it was held to be an affront which could be, and usually was, promptly revenged by their master. It was this right of revenge for such an affront, which led Eric the Red to kill Eyiolf Saur, who had punished Eric's thralls for a crime committed against Eyiolf's kinsman, Valthiof. ”

“ As the forays of these 'warrior-kings' were mainly directed against the people living in and about the British Isles, and hence to the westward of Norway, the expression, 'at herja í vestrvíking,' 'to engage in a westerly foray,' came to be a general term for a viking descent upon some part of the coast of Great Britain, Ireland, or the adjacent islands. ”

“ Thorbiorn's and Thorgeir's father was the same Vifil, who came out to Iceland with Queen Aud, and who received from her the land on which he settled, Vifilsdale, as has been narrated in this saga, and is thus told in Landnáma: 'Vifil was the name of a freeman of Aud's... She gave him Vifilsdale, where he dwelt... His son was Thorbiorn, father of Gudrid, who married Thorstein, the son of Eric the Red, and afterwards Thorfinn Karlsefni, from whom are descended Bishops Biorn, Thorlak, and Brand. Another son of Vifil's was Thorgeir, who married Arnora,' &c. ”

“ The early settlers of Iceland brought with them many of their thralls from Norway; others were captured in the westerly forays, or purchased in the British Isles,—indeed the ranks of the slaves would appear, both from actual record and from their names, to have been mainly recruited from the British Isles. ”

“ It is not known whether Gunnbiorn ever lived in Iceland, but it would seem to be probable that it was upon a voyage to western Iceland, that he was driven westward across the sea between Iceland and Greenland, and discovered the islands, which received his name, and likewise saw the Greenland coast. ”

“ Heriulf or Heriolf, who accompanied Eric the Red to Greenland, was not, of course, the same man to whom Ingolf allotted land between Vág and Reykianess, for Ingolf set about the colonization of Iceland in 874, more than a century before Eric the Red's voyage to Greenland. The statement of Flatey Book is, therefore, somewhat misleading, and seems to indicate either carelessness or a possible confusion on the part of the scribe. Heriulf, Eric the Red's companion, was a grandson of the 'settler' Heriulf, as is clearly set forth in two passages in Landnáma. ”

“ The reports which the explorers brought back of their having seen a strange man, who, for some reason not now apparent, they believed to have but one leg, may, because Wineland was held to be contiguous to Africa, have given rise to the conclusion that this strange man was indeed a Uniped, and that the explorers had hit upon the African 'land of the Unipeds.' It has also been suggested [26] that the incident of the appearance of the 'One-footer' may have found its way into the saga to lend an additional adornment to the manner of Thorvald's taking-off. ”

“ The winds appear to have been favourable to the explorers; the sail of seven 'dœgr' 'to the southward,' from Greenland with the needful westering, would have brought Karlsefni and his companions off the Labrador coast. ”

“ Einfœtingr, i.e. a One-footer, a man with one leg or foot. In the Flatey Book Thorvald's death is less romantically described. The mediæval belief in a country in which there lived a race of one-legged men, was not unknown in Iceland, for mention is made in Rímbegla, of 'a people of Africa called One-footers, the soles of whose feet are so large, that they shade themselves with these against the heat of the sun when they sleep.' [Rímbegla, l. c. p. 344.] ”

“ The use of the word as indicating a house for the storage of grain is, however, clearly indicated in the Jydske Lov of 1241, wherein we read: 'But if one build upon the land of another either a "hialm" or any other house,' &c. ['æn byggær man annænds iord antugh mæth hialm æth nokær andre hus,' &c. Danmarks gamle Provindslove, ed. Thorsen, Copenh. 1853, pp. 79–80] . As there is no suggestion in the saga of the finding of cultivated fields, it is not apparent for what uses a house for the storage of grain could have been intended. ”

“ It is tolerably clear from this passage, that this could not have been a normal voyage, and yet we are told in Landnáma, that from Stad, in Norway, to Horn, on the eastern side of Iceland, is seven 'dœgra-sigling' [a sail of seven 'dœgr'] . In the same connection it is also stated, that from Snowfells-ness the shortest distance to Hvarf in Western Greenland, is a sail of four 'dœgr;' from Reykianess, on the southern coast of Iceland, southward to Jölduhlaup in Ireland is five [some MSS. have three] 'dœgr' of sea [Landnáma, pt. i. ch. i] . ”

“ This passage is one of the most obscure in the saga. If the conjecture as to the probable site of the Western Settlement, in the vicinity of Godthaab is correct, it is not apparent why Karlsefni should have first directed his course to the north-west, when his destination lay to the south-west. It is only possible to explain the passage by somewhat hazardous conjecture. Leif may have first reached the Western Settlement on his return from the voyage of discovery, and Karlsefni, reversing Leif's itinerary, may have been led to make the Western Settlement his point of departure ”

“ Drangar on Horn-strands, where Eric and his father first established themselves, is on the northern shore of the north-west peninsula of Iceland. Erics-stead, to which Eric removed after his father's death and his own marriage to Thorhild, was is Haukadalr, in western Iceland, and Queen Aud's 'claim;' through this valley the Haukadale river flows, from the east, into the south-easterly bight of Hvamms-firth. ”

“ It has been suggested, that this Thorgunna is the same woman of whom we read in the Eyrbyggja Saga: 'That summer, when Christianity was accepted by law in Iceland, a ship arrived out by Snowfells-ness; this was a Dublin ship...There was a woman of the Hebrides on board, whose name was Thorgunna; the ship's folk reported, that she had brought with her such precious articles as were very rare in Iceland. And when Thurid, the mistress of Fródá, heard this, she was very curious to see these treasures ”

“ As has already been stated, there is no mention in Landnáma or other Icelandic saga, save that of the Flatey Book, of Heriulf's son, Biarni. Reykianess, the southern boundary of Heriulf's 'claim,' is at the south-western extremity of Iceland; Vág was, probably, situated a short distance to the north of this cape, on the western coast of the same peninsula. ”

“ Ketil Flat-nose married Ingvild, daughter of Ketil Wether, a famous man; they had five children....Unn, the Enormously-wealthy, was Ketil's daughter, [she] who married Olaf the White, Ingiald's son, son of Frodi the Brave, who slew the Swertlings.' Aud was one of the few colonists who had accepted the Christian religion before their arrival in Iceland. ”

“ Now if the sun was above the horizon in Wineland on the shortest day from Dagmál to Eyktarstaðr, a day nine hours in length was obtained, which Prof. Thomas Bugge computed gave a latitude of 4o'"22', or, according to Rafn and Finn Magnusen, more exactly, 4i'^24'io". Rafn believed that it followed of a certainty that Wineland was identical with the southern coast of Rhode Island- and Connecticut, directly to the westward of Cape Cod. But very serious objections to this theory suggest themselves. ”

“ If the meaning is, as suggested in this passage, that the 'house-neat' was hewed to the northward of Hop, the only intelligible interpretation of the following clause would seem to be that, although Karlsefni attained the region which corresponded with Leifs accounts of Wineland, he did not succeed, on account of the hostility of the natives which compelled him to beat a retreat, in accomplishing a thorough exploration of the country, nor was he able to carry back with him any of the products of the land. ”

“ Indian corn was a grain entirely unknown to the explorers, and they could not by any possibility have confused it with wheat, even if they had found this corn growing wild, a conjecture for which there is absolutely no support whatever. [Cf. Schübeler, 'Om den Hvede, som Nordmændene i Aaret 1000 fandt vildtvoxende i Vinland,' in Forhandlinger i Videnskabets-Selskab, Chr'a., 1859, pp. 21–30.] The same observation as that made by the Wineland discoverers was recorded by Jacques Cartier five hundred years later, concerning parts of the Canadian territory which he explored. ”

“ Thiodhild is also called Thorhild, and similarly Gudrid is called Thurid. It has been conjectured, that Thorhild and Thurid were the earlier names, which were changed by their owners after their conversion to Christianity, because of the suggestion of the heathen god in the first syllable of their original names [19] .
(38) Such a fall as this of Eric's does not seem to have been generally regarded as an evil omen, if we may be guided by the proverb: 'Fall er farar heill' [Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, Flateyjarbók. l. c. vol. i. p. 231] . ”

“ If this be, indeed, the fact, it follows that Thorbiorn and his daughter must have arrived at Brattahlid during Leif's absence in Norway, and obviously before his return to Greenland, in the autumn of the year 1000. Upon this hypothesis, it is clear, that Thorbiorn and Gudrid must have been converted to Christianity before its legal acceptance in Iceland, that is to say, before the year 1000; and further, that Thorstein Ericsson may have been married to Gudrid in the autumn after his return from his unsuccessful voyage, namely, in the autumn of the year 1001 ”

“ Drangar [Monoliths] and Breiðabólstaðr [Broad-homestead] were both situated on the mainland, a short distance to the southward of the islands on which Eric had established himself.
(21) One of the famous 'settlers' of Iceland, named Thorolf Moster-beard [Mostrarskegg] ; like many another 'settler' [landnámsmaðr] , because he would not acknowledge the supremacy of king Harold Fairhair, left his home in the island of Moster, in south-western Norway, and sailed to Iceland, where he arrived about the year 884 [Vigfusson, Tímatal, l. c. p. 493] . ”

“ The result, therefore, of the application of Professor Storm's simple and logical treatment to this passage in Flatey Book, ' the sun had there Eyktarstad,' &c., is summed up in Capt. Phythian's statement, ' the explorers could not have been, when the record was made, farther north than Lat. [saj'] 49°; ' that is to say, Wineland may have been somewhat farther to the south than northern Newfoundland or the corresponding Canadian coast, but, if we may rely upon the accuracy of this astronomical observation, it is clear that tims far south it must have been. ”

“ It is not apparent, however, whether the Western uninhabited region was between Godthaab and Julianehaab or beyond Godthaab to the north, but it seems clear, that Erics-firth, Hrafns-firth, Snowfell, Hvarfsgnipa, and Ericsey, were all situated upon the western coast of Greenland [14] .
(26) This Ingolf was called Ingolf the Strong [hinn sterki] . There is some confusion in Landnáma concerning his genealogy; he was probably a son of one of the Icelandic colonists, named Thorolf Sparrow [spǫrr] . His home, Hólmslátr [Holm-litter] , was on the southern side of Hvamms-firth. ”

“ In this year, according to the Saga of Olaf Trj'ggvason in ' Heimskringla,' ' King Olaf came with his men the same autumn to Drontheim, and betook himself to Nidaros, where he established himself for the -inter; ' and in the same place we read, ' Leif, the son of Eric the Red, he who first settled Greenland, was come that summer from Greenland to Norway ”

“ Her relatives, however, seem to have lapsed into the old faith soon after her death, for on the same hill on which Aud had erected her cross, they built a heathen altar, and offered sacrifices, believing that, after death, they would pass into the hill. [Landnáma, Pt. ii. ch. xvi.] Earl Sigurd the Mighty, with whom Aud's son, Thorstein, formed his alliance, was the first earl of the Orkneys, and this league was formed ca. 880. [Orkneyinga Saga, ed. Vigfusson, l. c. p. 5.] Vigfusson makes the date of Thorstein the Red's fall, ca. 888, of Aud's arrival in Iceland, ca. ”