Vinland

“ CHAPTER X THROUGH WHICH THE CHAMPIONS CHASE VINLAND ELK
Through the forest and out like flitting shadows, pausing only to make sure that the trail they were following was fresher than any of those which crossed it. Over a pond and across a bog and zigzag up a hill,—they had not grazed a stone or snapped a twig; it seemed that every stride must bring them in sight of the game. Then, on the other side of the slope, Alrek blundered. Descending at lightning speed, he turned his head to look behind, and in so doing unconsciously straightened his body ever so little from the required bend. ”

“ At the same instant Alrek answered them with the glad cry: "Vinland elk!"
The next instant he had added a command to halt, checking his own advance by a thrust of his skee-staff into the snow, and following that act by casting it aside and swiftly unslinging his bow: "Be on your guard! They have not deer's tempers."
Even as he spoke, the bull in the lead flung up his mighty antlered head and, while the other five moved on, wheeled and faced the foe, like a chief covering his people's retreat. ”

“ Vinland waited hundreds of years after that for the hardy Icelander's kindred to come from old England to build their houses and spend the rest of their lives upon its good corn-land and among the shadows of its great pine-trees. There was room enough for all Greenland, and to spare, but we cannot help suspecting that the Northmen were not very good farmers, that they loved fighting too well, and would rather go a thousand miles across a stormy sea to plunder another man of his crops than to patiently raise their own corn and wool and make an honest living at home. ”

“ From some instinctive foreboding, Alrek glanced hastily across at Gard. Finding the Ugly One's dark face as lowering as a storm cloud, while Brand's beside him was aflash with excitement, the trouble in the young chief's eyes deepened. Yet he answered steadily: "You are over-chief in Vinland, Karlsefne, and must have your way about everything. Yet will you not first take the seat of honor——"
"I will accept no hospitality here until this matter is cleared," the Lawman grimly cut him short; then turned upon the Ugly One. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Next came to Brattahlid Thorfin Karlsefne, the Viking from Iceland, who loved and married Gudrid and from her heard the story of Vinland, and desired it for his own. In good time went he forth in a long ship with his wife, and there went with him three other valiant ships. They had altogether one hundred and sixty men and five women, with cattle, grain and all things fit for a settlement. This was seven years after Leif Ericsson found Vinland. Among the stores for trading was scarlet cloth, which the Skroelings greatly covet, insomuch that one small strip of scarlet would buy many rich furs. ”

“ 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 Other references. Vinland is tacitly assumed to be a known geographical situation to which others may be referred. ”

“ There is nothing in the story to indicate that the Northmen ever founded (p. 216) a colony in There is no reason for supposing that the Northmen founded a colony in Vinland. Vinland, or built durable buildings there. The distinction implicitly drawn by Adam of Bremen, who narrates the colonization of Iceland and Greenland, and then goes on to speak of Vinland, not as colonized, but simply as discovered, is a distinction amply borne out by our chronicles. Nowhere is there the slightest hint of a colony or settlement established in Vinland. ”

“ Laing!) thinks it necessary to remind us that all the grape-juice in Vinland would not fuddle a man unless it had been fermented,—and then goes on to ascribe the absurdity to our innocent chronicle, instead of the stupid annotator. See Heimskringla, vol. i. p. 168. [Back to Main Text]
Footnote 185: On the homeward voyage he rescued some shipwrecked sailors near the coast of Greenland, and was thenceforward called Leif the Lucky (et postea cognominatus est Leivus Fortunatus) . The pleasant reports from the newly found country gave it the name of "Vinland the Good." ”

“ It is told that Thorfinn Karlsefne cut wood here to ornament his house, [252] went afterwards to seek out Vinland the Good, and came there where they thought the land was, but did not reach it, and got none of the wealth of the land. [253] Leif the Lucky first discovered Vinland, and then he met some merchants in distress at sea, and by God's grace, saved their lives; and he introduced Christianity into Greenland, and it flourished so there that an Episcopal seat was set up in the place, called [Pg 109] Gardar. England and Scotland are an island, and yet each is a separate kingdom. ”

“ Beyond the next rise there was a plain, fringed by a thicket; and there in the packed and trampled snow and the gnawed branches and peeled bark they found yet more tangible proof of what they had lost.
"We should have got a herd if nobody had spoiled it," Gard grunted.
Before Brand also could voice his reproach, [Pg 110] Alrek—darting here and there among the trees in search of the new trail—uttered his low whistle and was off like a hare. Like hounds after hare they were after him, and Vinland trees looked their first upon real skee-running. ”

“ After much anxiety and search, he was discovered, having found during his wanderings a region which afforded an abundance of grapes. The country, from this incident, was named Vinland or Wineland. From the mention which they made of the rising and the setting of the sun, at the shortest day, it has been inferred that the island was Nantucket, and the region called Vinland embraced the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They returned to Greenland the following season.
Thorwald, a brother of Leif, next undertook to make a voyage, to the newly discovered land beyond the ocean. ”

“ It is related that other explorations succeeded this, and that in 1007 a temporary settlement was formed in sunny Vinland, where the colonists, nearly one hundred in number, "had all the good things of the country, both of grapes and of all sorts of game and other things." Trading voyages to the new country now became frequent, say the sagas, and considerable shipments of timber were made from Vinland to Greenland. Eric Upsi, a Greenland bishop, is alleged, on doubtful authority, to have gone to Vinland in 1121 ”

“ Time’s noblest offspring is the last.
The visionary philosopher followed up his project so far as to transport himself—not to the Summer Islands of which Waller had sung,—but to that same Rhode Island which Danish and New England antiquaries were at a later date to identify, whether rightly or not, as the Vinland of the Icelandic Sagas. One of these ancient chroniclers had chanced to note that, on the shortest day of the year in Vinland, they had the sun above the horizon at eykt and dagmat; that is at their regular evening and morning meal. ”

“ These figures clearly indicate a considerable population. This is still more strongly proved by the fact, that as early as 1121, an Irishman, Erick-Upsi, was created Bishop of Greenland, and had eighteen successors. Vinland was in the jurisdiction of this diocese. The tithes of this country figured among the revenues of the Church in the fourteenth century, and were paid in kind.
This prosperity, and the regular relations between Europe, Greenland, and Vinland seem to have lasted till towards the middle of the fourteenth century. About this time the Skrellings attacked Vesterbygd ”

“ There is one story which tells of a voyage to Vinland made by Freydis, Erik's daughter, a cruel, hard-hearted woman, who, during the voyage, killed her husband's brothers and seized the ship; but for this she was punished by Leif on her return. Then there is another story of Gudrid, a beautiful woman who had married Thorstein, Erik's youngest son, who died while getting ready to go to Vinland. Gudrid married after this a man by the name of Thorfinn, who took her to Vinland to live, and here was born their son Snorri, who was perhaps the first white child born in America. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At sight of Erlend, the ten waved their hands in careless greeting; at sight of the kirtled figure of Gudrid, they sat up in unmistakable disapproval; and a long lean wrestler with a mane of red hair stamped petulantly when he was obliged to retire from the field to the bordering trees where his tunic and cloak awaited him.
"Though no more than seven women are in Vinland, a man can not get away from them [Pg 138] though he go into the heart of a wood," he sputtered.
"Hush! She will hear you," muttered Gard, who stood beside him ”

“ Here occurs the earliest mention of Vinland, and here are also references of great interest to Russia and Kiev, to the heathen Prussians, the Wends and other Slav races of the South Baltic coast, and to Finland, Thule or Iceland, Greenland and the Polar seas which Harald Hardrada and the nobles of Frisia had attempted to explore in Adam’s own day (before 1066) . ”

“ He afterwards became the founder of a great family in Iceland, which gave the island several of its first bishops. Thorfinn finally left Vinland because he found it difficult to sustain himself against the attacks of the natives. The next to undertake a voyage was a wicked woman named Freydis, a sister to Leif Ericson, who went to Vinland in 1011, where she lived for a time with her two ships, in the same places occupied by Leif and Thorfinn. Before she returned, she caused the crew of one ship to be cruelly murdered, assisting in the butchery with her own hands. ”

“ Furdustrandir is the name of a land. There are such hard frosts there that it is not habitable as far as is known. South of it is Helluland, which is called Skraeling’s land. From there it is not far to Vinland the good, which some think goes out from Africa. Between Vinland and Greenland is Ginnungagap which flows from the sea called Mare Oceanum that encompasses the whole earth.” [61] On a map made by Sigurd Stephanius, an Icelander, in 1570, Helluland, Markland, Skraeling’s land, and the promontory of Vinland are represented as parts of the country now called Greenland. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII AT THE HALL OF THE VINLAND CHAMPIONS
"Whether you think so or not, I know that Gudrid would not keep milk in a fish-pail," the Bull's voice rose above the racket.
There was not a little racket to surmount, for it was rising time at the new band's new booth. In the high-seat that had been built for him midway the length of the hall, the red-cloaked chief occupied the interval before breakfast with rune-carving; but that was the only employment which was being carried on in silence. Whistling boys were lacing their high boots along the benches right and left of the high-seat ”

“ On the rocks grew vineberries, or mountain cranberries, and Knutson thought that perhaps these and not true grapes were the fruit found in Vinland. He sent a party of a dozen men, Anders and Thorolf leading, to explore the forest, ascend some hill if possible and return the same day. He himself remained with the ships and kept Nils by him. He rather expected that the natives, learning of the strangers' arrival, would be drawn by curiosity to visit the bay. ”

“ Then there was mooted the project that Vinland, discovered some years before by Leif, should be explored and settled. Thorfin Karlsefni and his friend Snorri fitted out their ship for the adventurous voyage and Bjarni Grimolfson and Thorhall also joined with their ship. Thorhall had long served Red Erik as his huntsman. He was a man of great strength and gigantic stature. Erik’s third son Thorwald accompanied him. There was a third ship, the one in which Thorbjörn and Gudrid had arrived in Greenland. ”

“ The day after you met the one on the Cape, a host of them appeared before the Vinland booths,—to see, it is likely, if the others had your mind toward them. But Karlsefne made so plain his good intentions that they went away after doing nothing worse than stare. And yesterday they came again, with bundles of fur which they traded with much friendliness. [Pg 71] It is his belief that they also have young fire-heads among them so that they understand how little value is to be put upon——"
Stretching out his freed arms, the Sword-Bearer gripped Hjalmar's hand to the point of crushing. ”