Stories about Iceland and other Norse Discoveries

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Subject: Norwegian Sailors in American Waters - 21-30

Acknowledgment

The following selection is taken from "Norwegian Sailors in American
Waters" published by the Norwegian-American Historical Association (NAHA)
in 1933. The volume is out of print and not available from NAHA at
http://www.naha.stolaf.edu/ where you will also find the first 33 volumes
of Studies and Records online. This chapter is published with the kind
permission of NAHA. The book this selection is drawn from is under
copyright and permission has been granted for educational purposes and it
is not to be used in any way for any commercial purposes.

[21]
CHAPTER TWO
NORSE DISCOVERIES IN THE WEST
GREENLAND

THE establishment of colonies and the development of overseas commerce by
the seafaring Vikings was accompanied by epoch-making progress in ocean
navigation, which ultimately led to important discoveries and the opening
up of new regions to civilized man. Iceland was discovered by Norse
voyagers before 874 and was colonized so rapidly that when the first
government was established there in 980 the island is said to have had
twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Frequent voyages to this far-away
colony lying in the western seas close to the arctic circle now became a
necessity.
While on a voyage to Iceland about the year 900, a Norwegian voyager
named Gunnbjørn struck a course far to the westward, where, he claimed,
he had discovered some islands, later referred to in Iceland as
Gunnbjørn's Skerries. Some time passed before more definite attempts were
made to explore those distant waters, but the task was finally undertaken
by Eirik the Red.
Eirik and his father, who had been forced to leave their home in Jæderen,
Norway, because of homicides they had committed, had gone to Iceland and
settled at Drangar on the northwest coast. After his father's death and
his marriage to Thorhild, or Thjodhild, Eirik had moved to his wife's
home, Haukadal, in western Iceland. He soon became involved in new feuds
and slayings and was banished from Iceland. In 982 he equipped a vessel
and with a few companions sailed westward in the hope of finding the land
that Gunnbjørn said he had seen. He reached the east coast of Greenland,
but finding it covered with glaciers and uninhabitable, he continued
southward, rounded Cape Farewell, and came finally to a fjord on the
southwest coast, which he called Eiriksfjord (Tunugdliarfik), where
conditions were more favorable. {1}
During the summer months a belt of vegetation stretches along the west
coast of Greenland; the weather is agreeable and the scenery beautiful.
In the more protected districts along the fjords, some distance from the
sea, there is often an abundance of brush, grass, flowers, and wild
berries, which furnish sufficient pasture for domestic animals. As
conditions here were much the same as in Iceland, Eirik seems to have
been well pleased with the land; he called it "Greenland," a name
probably suggested to him by the green vegetation in a region for the
most part covered with glaciers, though the old Icelandic writer Are
Frode says that he called it Greenland because he thought it would be
easier to persuade people to settle there if the land had a fine name.
{2} After spending three years in exploring the country and in selecting
places where colonies might be established, he returned to Iceland to
induce people to settle there. {3} In 985 or 986 thirty-five vessels
sailed with colonists for the newly discovered land, but only fourteen
ships reached their destination, the rest being shipwrecked or forced to
return.
Though numerous traces of human beings convinced them that the country
had been inhabited, the colonists found no inhabitants where they
settled; the Skraelings, or Eskimos, who had once occupied the region,
had evidently moved away. This made it less difficult to found permanent
settlements, for there was no danger of conflicts with natives. Two
settlements were founded on the west coast, one known as the Eastern
Settlement, in 60 degrees, 61 minutes, north latitude, in what is now the
Julianehaab district; and another, the Western Settlement, farther up the
coast, in what is now the Godthaab district, in 64 degrees, 65 minutes,
north latitude. The Eastern Settlement at one time had 190 farmsteads, 12
churches, and 2 monasteries; the Western Settlement, 90 farmsteads and 4
churches. Ruins of these houses and churches, which were built of stone,
are still to be found in Greenland. The colonists established the same
kind of government they had known in Iceland; an Althing, or general
assembly, met at Gardar every summer, and here was established also a
bishop's seat after Christianity was introduced, about the year 1000.
Apparently the bishopric was established about 1110, though Arnaldr, who
was consecrated bishop in Lund in southern Sweden in 1124, was the first
bishop of Greenland known to have been ordained.
The colonists were impelled partly by necessity and partly by love of
adventure to carry on extensive explorations in the region. In the summer
they sailed northward along the coast to a place called Norðrsetur, in
the region of Disco Bay, to hunt seal and gather driftwood. How far north
they penetrated is not known, but the discovery in 1824 of a rune stone
on the island of Kingigtorsuak, in 72 degrees, 55 minutes, 20 seconds,
north latitude proves that they had gone at least that far.
The discovery and colonization of Greenland, an island continent with an
area estimated to contain over 827,000 square miles, brought another
region to the knowledge of the world. The limits of ocean travel were
extended, and a transoceanic route of commerce was established from
Norway and the British Isles to Iceland and Greenland, for the settlers
were dependent on overseas trade for most of their commodities, including
staples. Long voyages to these distant colonies, through the dangers of
drifting icebergs and the fogs and darkness of the arctic seas, which now
became a necessity, put to severe test the skill and daring of the Norse
navigators, sailing without compass or other nautical instruments. The
navigation of the Atlantic Ocean had ceased to be a mere adventure and
had become an organized maritime pursuit.

THE DISCOVERY OF VINLAND ON THE COAST OF NORTH AMERICA

In 999 Leif Eiriksson, a son of Eirik the Red, also called Leif the
Lucky, struck boldly across the Atlantic, and sailed from Greenland to
Norway by way of the Hebrides without touching Iceland, thus making the
first direct voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, one of the most noteworthy
achievements in ocean navigation. On his return voyage in the spring of
the year 1000, after being long buffeted about in the sea, he came
finally to a land where he found self-sown grain, grape vines, and large
trees, of which he brought some samples with him to Greenland. {4} He had
reached Vinland on the coast of the continent of North America. It was
only natural that eventually some navigator bound for Greenland, seeking
to find his way without compass in these dangerous and uncharted waters,
would stray so far from his course as to find the neighboring mainland of
America.
The people talked much about a voyage of exploration to the country that
Leif had discovered, says the "Saga of Eirik the Red." {5} In the year
1001 Thorstein, a brother of Leif, fitted out a ship for a voyage
thither, but he was unsuccessful and had to return to Greenland in the
fall. About a year later he died. The next year Thorfinn Karlsefne, a
merchant voyager from Iceland, came to Greenland. He was accompanied by
Snorre Thorbrandsson and forty men in a second vessel and by the
chieftains Bjarne Grimolfsson and Thorhall Gamlason and another crew of
forty men in a third ship. During the winter they were the guests of
Eirik the Red at his chieftain's seat, Brattahlid, where Karlsefne
married Gudrid, the widow of Thorstein Eiriksson; in the spring they
fitted out the three ships for a voyage to the land discovered by Leif
Eiriksson. Gudrid accompanied her husband on the voyage, and Freydis, an
illegitimate daughter of Eirik the Red, also joined the expedition. One
ship was sailed by Karlsefne and Snorre Thorbrandsson, the second by
Bjarne Grimolfsson and Thorhall Gamlason, and the third by Eirik the
Red's son Thorvald and the experienced pilot Thorhall Veiðimaðr (The
Hunter). In all 160 people set sail for the Western Settlement.
.From there they went to the Bjarneyjar (Bear Islands), whence they
proceeded southward along the coast. After they had sailed for two days,
they came to a region which they called Helluland (the Land of Flat
Stones), evidently northern Labrador. Farther on they found a region
which they called Markland (Forestland). They continued southward for
some days, but did not find the land that Leif Eiriksson had discovered.
{6} The first winter they spent at a place they called Straumsfjord
(Streamfirth), where they suffered greatly for lack of provisions. Here
Karlsefne's wife Gudrid gave birth to a son, Snorre, the first white
child born on American soil.
When spring came, there was disagreement among them as to what course
they should take in continuing their voyage, with the result that
Thorhall the Hunter left the expedition with one ship and nine men. The
others followed Karlsefne, who continued southward along the coast. After
a time they found the mouth of a river, into which they sailed. They
called the place Hop (a small land-locked bay). Here they built cabins
and tried to establish a colony, but before long they were attacked by
hostile natives and some of them were killed. Karlsefne saw that it would
be difficult to establish a colony so far from home in a region inhabited
by a hostile people; consequently, after spending three years in the
undertaking, he resolved to abandon the plan. He returned to Iceland,
where his son Snorre grew up and married; from him were descended several
of the bishops of Iceland.
As to the probable location of Vinland, scholars have differed. Rasmus B.
Anderson, John Fiske, William Hovgaard, and others, who accept in the
main the theory of the Danish scholar C. C. Rafn, hold that Vinland was
located on the coast of what is now the state of Massachusetts. The
English scholar Geoffrey M. Gathorne-Hardy believes that on his
expedition to colonize Vinland Karlsefne reached the western extremity of
Long Island, where Hop is located, and that Straumsfjord is Long Island
Sound. {7} Another theory subscribed to by many is that advanced by the
Norwegian scholar and historian Gustav Storm, who places Vinland on the
east coast of Nova Scotia. {8} Two later writers, Andrew Fossum and H. P.
Steensby, {9} who differ with Storm in regard to many details, hold that
Vinland was located in the region of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, not far
from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. It is probable that the Norse
voyagers did not penetrate far beyond the St. Lawrence basin, but lack of
evidence has made it impossible to determine the exact location of
Vinland.
As the colonists in Greenland were much in need of timber for
shipbuilding and other purposes and as it could be found only on the
American coast, they must have made frequent voyages to the region they
so appropriately named Markland, or Forestland. About such voyages we
have positive evidence in the Icelandic annals (Skálholt Annals) for the
year 1347, which state: "There came also a ship from Greenland, smaller
in size than the small vessels that trade to Iceland [ships sailing
between Norway and Iceland]; it was without an anchor. There were
seventeen men on board, and they had sailed to Markland, but afterwards
they were driven hither [to Iceland]." The small size of the ship
indicates that it had been built in Greenland, where timber was scarce
because it had to be brought from the coast of America.

OTHER NORSE VOYAGES TO AMERICA
DURING THE PERIOD OF DISCOVERY

Accounts of other voyages to the American coast by Norwegian sailors in
the period of discovery are given in the "Flatey Book," written in
Iceland between 1387 and 1395, partly by the priest Jon Thordarson. We
learn here of a voyage to Greenland by Bjarni, a promising and successful
merchant and owner of a vessel, who dwelt at Eyrar, between Vág and
Reykjanaes in Iceland. He made regular trips to Norway and spent
alternate winters there and in Iceland with his father. The last winter
Bjarni was in Norway his father, Herjulf, went with Eirik the Red to
Greenland and settled at Herjulfsness, where he became prominent. When
Bjarni came to Eyrar the next summer and learned that his father had gone
to Greenland, he decided not to unload his ship. When his men asked him
what he planned to do, he answered that he intended to keep up his old
custom of spending the winter with his father; that he would sail to
Greenland if they were willing to make the voyage with him. All expressed
their willingness, and so they hoisted sail again and sailed westward for
three days, during which Iceland disappeared below the horizon. Then the
fair wind failed and they encountered north winds and fogs, and they knew
not where they went, says the saga. It was several days before they saw
the sun again and could determine direction. They then hoisted sail and
sailed all that day before they saw land. They deliberated with one
another as to what land it might be and decided to sail close to it, but
they felt sure that it could not be Greenland, since it had only low
hills instead of mountains and was covered with forests.
So they sailed away with the land on the larboard and two days passed
before they saw land again. The men asked Bjarni whether he thought that
this was Greenland, but he thought not, for the glaciers were said to be
large in Greenland and this land was flat and forest-covered. Fair wind
failing them at this time, the men were in favor of landing, but Bjarni
would not, since they lacked neither food nor water. Some of the men did
not like this, but he bade them hoist the sail, and again they turned the
prow seaward and sailed with a southwesterly wind for three days, at the
end of which they saw a land with high mountains and glaciers. The men
asked Bjarni whether he would land there, but again he would not, and
they did not lower the sail, for they found that it was an island. Again
they held out to sea with a fair wind, but as the wind grew stronger they
had to reef their sail. After sailing four days they again saw a land
that looked like Greenland. At eventide they came near to it and saw a
boat there. The land was Herjulfsness, where Bjarni's father had settled.
Bjarni now stayed there with his father and did not sail any more while
his father lived; also after his father's death he continued to reside
there. {10} This voyage having been made shortly after 986, Bjarni
Herjulfsson and his companions were the first white men to see the coast
of North America.
In his Studier over Vinlandereiserne Gustav Storm has discredited the
"Flatey Book" as an historical source, but many later scholars of high
repute feel that in his criticism he has at times gone too far. Even if
it be conceded that the "Saga of Eirik the Red" is a more authentic
historical document, there is no reason for entirely discarding the
"Flatey Book" narrative, which seems to be based on other sources of
information. Gathorne-Hardy points out that Herjulf, who is mentioned in
the "Flatey Book" narrative, was undoubtedly a real person, since his
name and pedigree appear in the Landndmabóc; that it seems to have been
definitely established that he was one of Eirik the Red's companions when
Greenland was colonized in 985 or 986; that a well-known headland in
Greenland was named after him; and that no one hitherto has ventured to
question his existence or his emigration to Greenland. Says
Gathorne-Hardy:

We start then from the certain fact that Herjulf, Bjarni's father, has
sailed to Greenland about the summer of 986. If he had a sailor son,
absent in Norway on a trading voyage, that son on his return to Iceland
would almost certainly endeavor to rejoin his parent in the new colony.
All the best available pilots are gone, neither Bjarni nor his crew have
any clear knowledge of the seas they will have to traverse, and it is
with a knowledge of their risk, clearly stated, that they start sailing
west in the direction of Greenland, separated from them by a distance
imperfectly known, and also, if there is the slightest deviation to the
south of Cape Farewell, in the direction of America. To America we are
accordingly informed that they came, driven thither by suitable winds and
weather. From America, without landing, without any information to impart
as to these strange countries, they returned to Greenland, and Iceland
saw no more of Bjarni thenceforward. As fiction, it is a pointless and
barren narrative, whatever may be its historical interest to persons of a
post-Columbian age. It was evidently disappointing to those who heard and
to those who subsequently wrote the story. So far from being treated as a
hero, as Professor Fischer would have us believe, we are told that Bjarni
received nothing but blame for his lack of enterprise and curiosity on
the occasion which chance and unsuccessful navigation had thrown in his
way. {11}

As already pointed out, it is by no means strange that in periods of fogs
and stormy weather the masters of vessels sailing to Greenland without
compass or astrolabe, should have strayed from their course and reached
the American coast. This is what happened in the case of Leif Eiriksson;
it might as well have happened in the case of Bjarni Herjulfsson and in
fact in the case of many others about whom no narrative was ever written.
Another feature that leads us to believe in the essential truthfulness of
the "Flatey Book" narrative of Bjarni's voyage is the description of the
American coast. During the many days that Bjarni and his men sailed
before reaching Greenland, they must have struck the coast of southern
Labrador. They found the coast hilly and forest-covered and in some
places flat. As they proceeded north the mountains became high and steep
and covered with glaciers. These are the actual characteristics of the
Labrador coast. Dr. Andrew Fossum, who traveled along this coast in 1914,
describes it as follows:

Though the coast of southern Labrador is often cut up by rivers, bays and
fjords that go far into the land, yet all the heights and islands are
nearly of the same level, and the whole country has the appearance of
being flat and level. . . . Northern Labrador has a high and bold
appearance. The lofty mountains on the east coast of North America lie
there. They reach back into the interior less than fifty miles and heap
themselves up along the coast. At Nain the cliffs along the coast are
high; at Port Manvers, in latitude 57°, they reach a height of 2,000
feet; but at Cape Mugford, in latitude 58°, they climb to 3,000 feet, and
convince the traveler that he has come into a new land. There are three
mountain ranges in north Labrador. Some fifteen miles north of Port
Manvers lies east and west a chain which is called Kiglapait, or the
Great Sierra. From the sea one can count ten peaks ranging from 2,500 to
4,000 feet. Fifty miles farther north, in latitude 58°, lie the Kaumajet,
or White Mountains, so named because they are usually covered with snow.
This range terminates in the mighty promontory of Cape Mugford, which
rises as a bare cliff almost straight out of the sea, with large masses
of snow above. It is an island and is separated from the mainland by the
narrow Mugford Tickle. . . . Near it lies the still higher Bishop's
Mitre, also with patches of snow. Many other snowy peaks lie along the
coast to the northwest. . . . This, in my opinion, is the third land that
Bjarni saw on his way north. He says that this land was "high and
mountainous with frozen snow on top." {12}

That a person could have written in the years between 1387 and 1395 a
tale in which he describes features of the Labrador coast agreeing so
closely with actual conditions both as to location and topography without
basing the narrative on authentic information of any kind seems
improbable; moreover, there was no object in inventing such a story when
the country was full of seamen who were making voyages to Greenland and
telling their experiences.

1. Ari Thorgilsson (Fróði), Islendingabóc, ch. 6 (Vald. Asmundarson
edition, Reykjavik, 1891); Julius E. Olson, ed., "The Voyages of the
Northmen," and Edward G. Bourne, ed., "The Voyages of Columbus and of
John Cabot," in The Northmen, Columbus, and Cabot, 985-1503 (J. Franklin
Jameson, ed., Original Narratives of American History - New York, 1906);
Landndmabóc, pt. 2, p. 14 (Vald. Asmundarson edition, Reykjavik, 1891).

2. "The Saga of Eric the Red," in The Northmen, Columbus, and Cabot, 17.

3. "The Vinland History of the Flat Island Book," in The Northmen,
Columbus, and Cabot, 46.

4. "The Saga of Eric the Red," in The Northmen, Columbus, and Cabot,
25f. The discovery of Vinland is also mentioned in chapter 6 of the
reliable old work Islendingabóc; in the Landnámabóc, pt. 3, ch. 10; and
in Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesia Pontificum, bk. 4, p.
38.

5. "Saga of Eric the Red," in The Northmen, Columbus, and Cabot, 26.

6. Landnámabóc, pt. 8, ch. 10; "Saga of Eric the Red," in The Northmen,
Columbus, and Cabot, 31 ff.

7. Geoffrey M. Gathorne-Hardy, The Norse Discoverers of America: The
Wine-land Sagas, 27l ff. (Oxford, 1921).

8. Gustav Storm, Studier over Vinlandsreiserne: Vinlands Geografi og
Ethnografi (Copenhagen, 1888).

9. Andrew Fossum, The Norse Discovery of America (Minneapolis, 1918); H.
P. Steensby, The Norsemen's Route from Greenland to Wineland (Copenhagen,
1918).

10. "Olafssaga Tryggvasonar," in Flateyjarbóc: en Samliung af norske
Kongesagaer med indskudte mindre Fortaellinger om Begivenheder i og udenf
or Norge samt Annaler, vol. 1, ch. 342 (Christiania, 1860). See also "The
Vinland History of the Flat Island Book," in The Northmen, Columbus and
Cabot, 47 ff.

11. Gathorne-Hardy, Norse Discoverers of America, 114 f.

12. Fossum, Norse Discovery of America, 84 f.

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