Julius Emil Olson

“ His work The Book of Icelanders is unfortunately lost, but an abridgment of it, Libellus Islandorium, made by Ari himself, contains a significant reference to Vinland. It tells that the colonists in Greenland found "both broken cayaks (canoes) and stone implements, whereby it may be seen that the same kind of folk had been there as they which inhabited Vinland, and whom the men of Greenland {i.e. the explorers) called the skrælings (i.e. inferior people) ." From this allusion one cannot but think that so keen and alert a writer as Ari had given some attention to Vinland in the lost work. ”

“ Later, in 1003, an Icelander, Thorfinn Karlsefni, who was visiting the Greenland colony, and who had married Gudrid, the widow of Leif's brother Thorstein, set out with four vessels and 160 followers to found a colony in the new lands. Here they remained three years, during which time a son, Snorri, was born to Thorfinn and Gudrid. This expedition, too, found "grapes and self-sown wheat," though seemingly not in any great abundance. Concerning the southern-most region of Vinland, the saga says: "They found self-sown wheat fields in the lowlands, but vines everywhere on higher places. ”

“ In Iceland they lived active, not to say tumultuous, lives, and left fine literary records of their doings and achievements. The Icelandic colony was an interesting forerunner of the American republic, having a prosperous population living under a republican government, and maintaining an independent national spirit for nearly four centuries. ”

“ The only important phase of the Vinland voyages that has not been definitely settled is the identifications of the regions visited by Leif and Thorfinn. The Danish antiquarian Rafn, in his monumental Antiquitates Americanae, published in 1837, and much discussed in America at that time, held for Rhode Island as Leif's landfall and the locality of Thorfinn's colony. ”

“ But in 1887 Professor Storm announced his conviction that the lands visited by the Norsemen in the early part of the 11th century were Labrador, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. And a careful reading of the Hauk's Book narrative seems to show that the numerous details of the saga fit Nova Scotia remarkably well, and much better than any other part of the continent. This view has in recent years been quite generally accepted by American scholars. ”

“ Modern investigators have been interested in establishing the superiority of one over the other of the two narratives. One of them is the "Saga of Eric the Red" as found in the collection known as Hauk's Book, so called because the manuscript was made by Hauk Erlendsson, an Icelander who spent much of his life in Norway. ”

“ Later the saga says: "No snow came there, and all of their live stock lived by grazing, and thrived." The natives appeared again the next spring, and a clash occurred. Fearing continued trouble with them, Karlsefni resolved to return to Greenland. This he did a year later, and spent the winter of 1006-7 there, whereupon he settled in Iceland. From him and Gudrid a number of prominent ecclesiastics claimed descent, and also Hauk Erlendsson. The Vinland story was doubtless a cherished family possession, and was put into writing, when writing sagas, instead of telling them, came into fashion. ”