# The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway/Volume 1/Chapter 5

CHAP. V. OF THE DISCOVERY OF GREENLAND AND AMERICA BY THE NORTHMEN.
The discovery of Greenland by the Icelanders about the year 981, and the establishment of considerable colonies on one or on both sides of that vast peninsula which terminates at Cape Farewell,—in which Christianity and Christian establishments, parishes, churches, and even monasteries, were flourishing, or at least existing to such an extent that from 1124 to 1389 there was a regular succession of bishops, of whom seventeen are named, for their superintendence, —are facts which no longer admit of any reasonable doubt. The documentary evidence of the saga,—which gave not merely vague accounts of such a discovery and settlement, but statistical details, with the names and the distances from each other of farms or townships, of which there were, according to accounts of the 14th century, ninety in what was called Yestribygd or the western settlement, with four churches, and 190 in the Eystribygd or eastern settlement, with one cathedral, eleven other churches, two towns, and three or four monasteries,—bears all the internal evidence of truth, in the consistency and simplicity of the statements. The saga accounts also are supported by the incidental notice of Greenland by contemporary writers. Adam of Bremen mentions that the people of Greenland, among other northern people, sent to his diocesan, Adalbert archbishop of Bremen, who died in 1075, for clergymen, who accordingly were sent to them. The first bishop of Greenland ​mentioned in the Icelandic accounts was Arnold, who was ordained by the archbishop of Lund, in Scania, in 1121. The bishopric of Greenland was afterwards under the archbishop of Drontheim; and Alf, or Alfus, who is supposed to have died about 1378 in Greenland, is the last who is known to have officiated there. In 1389, Henry, according to Torfæus, was appointed bishop; and in 1406 Askil was appointed to succeed Henry, in case he was dead. But it does not appear, according to Torfæus, that either of them ever reached Greenland; but, since Torfæus's time, a document is said to have been discovered relative to a marriage settlement executed at Garda, the name of the town or episcopal seat in Greenland, by the last bishop, whose name was Endrede Andreasson, not Askil, three years later, viz. in 1409. In 1261, the Greenland settlements appear to have been regularly annexed to the crown of Norway by King Hakon Hakonson, who sent messengers to the people of Greenland; and in the submission which the messengers brought back, it was agreed "that all fines for murders, whether committed by Norwegian or Greenland people, on inhabited or uninhabited land, or even under the pole itself, should be paid to the king." The payments for murders, or other capital offences compounded for by mulcts to the king and relations, were then a considerable branch of the royal revenues. In 1388-9, Henry the bishop, on setting out for Greenland, received instructions to keep the king's revenues safely warehoused in a certain fixed place, those years in which no vessels came to Greenland; which shows that the communications with Iceland were not yearly or regular. A brief of Pope Nicholas V., in 1448, to the bishops of Skalholt and Holum in Iceland, states "that his beloved children dwelling in an island called Greenland, on the utmost verge of the ocean north of Norway, and who are under the archbishop of ​Drontheim, have raised his compassion by their complaint that after having been Christians for 600 years, and converted by the holy Saint Olaf, and having erected many sacred buildings and a splendid cathedral on said island, in which divine service was diligently performed, they had thirty years ago been attacked by the heathens of the neighbouring coast, who came with a fleet against them, and killed and dispersed many, and made slaves of those who were able-bodied; but having now gathered together again, they crave the services of priests and a bishop." The pope therefore desires those bishops, as the nearest, to consult with their diocesan, if the distance permit, and to send the Greenland people a suitable man to be their bishop. The sudden extinction of a colony, which must have attained considerable importance and population to have had a regular succession of bishops for 250 years, is much more extraordinary than its establishment. It vanished, as it were, from the face of the earth, about the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century; and even the memory of its former existence passed away. The Christian colony established in the 10th century in Greenland, with its churches, monasteries, bishops, was considered, notwithstanding the internal and the collateral evidence supporting the sagas, to be a pious delusion of the middle ages, founded on a mere saga fable. The fable itself is short, and appears to have nothing fabulous in it. In the beginning of the 10th century, an Icelander or a Norwegian, called Gunbiorn, son of Ulf Kraka, was driven by a storm to the west of Iceland, and discovered some rocks, which he called Gunbiorn Skerry, and a great country, of which he brought the news to Iceland. Soon after one Eric Red, or Eric the Red, was condemned at Thornæs Thing, in Iceland, to banishment for a murder he had committed. He fitted out a vessel, and told his friends he would go ​and find the land which Gunbiorn had seen, and come back and let them know what land of country it was. Eric sailed west from the Sneefieldsjokul, in Iceland, to the east coast of Greenland, and then followed the coast southwards, looking for a convenient place for dwelling in. He sailed westward round a cape which he called Hvarf, and passed the first winter on an island, which from him was called Eric's Isle. After passing three years in examining the coast he returned to Iceland, and gave such a fine account of the country that it was called Greenland; and the following year twenty-five vessels with colonists set out with him to settle in it, but only about one half reached their destination, some having turned back, and some being lost in the ice. About fourteen years after Eric was settled in Greenland, his son Leif, who afterwards discovered Vinland, went over to Norway to King Olaf Tryggvesson, who had him instructed in Christianity, or baptized, and sent a priest with him to Greenland, who baptized Eric and all the colonists. Many came over from Iceland from time to time, and the country was settled wherever it was inhabitable. In this account there is nothing incredible or inconsistent. Greenland was to Iceland what Iceland had been to Norway—a place of refuge for the surplus population, for those who had no land or means of living. Iceland was originally an aristocratic republic, —a settlement made by people of family and wealth, who alone could fit out vessels for emigrating to it; and these landnammen took possession of the land. Of the lower class many in course of time must have become retainers, tenants, or workpeople under the higher class, and have been ready to emigrate to a country ​where they could get land of their own, and at a distance little more than half of that from Norway to Iceland. The discovery and colonisation of land within a distance so short, compared to the usual voyage from Iceland to Norway, is not incredible, nor wonderful. The means of subsistence in both countries have probably been very much the same. Seals, whales, fish of various kinds, reindeer, hares, wild fowl, would give subsistence; oil, skins, feathers, furs—which in the middle age were in great estimation for dress,—would give surplus products for exchange. Cattle, if we may believe the sagas, were kept in considerable numbers. Corn was not produced in either country. The balance of the natural products which man may subsist on,—such as game, reindeer, seals, fish, and of furs and feathers for barter,—may have been even in favour of Greenland. The extinction of such a colony, after existing for 400 years, is certainly more extraordinary than its establishment, and almost justifies the doubt whether it ever had existed. Several causes are given for this extraordinary circumstance. One is the gradual accumulation of ice on both sides of this vast peninsula, by which not only the pasturages, and temperature in which cattle could subsist, may have been diminished, and with these one main branch of the subsistence of the population; but also the direct communication with small vessels coasting along the shores and through the sounds of Greenland may have been interrupted, and the voyage round Cape Farewell outside of the isles, and ice, and sounds, have been too tempestuous for such vessels as they possessed. Another cause was probably the great pestilence called the black death, which appeared in Europe about 1349, and which seems to have been more universal and destructive than the cholera, the plague, or any other visitation known in the history of the human race. It extinguished entirely populations ​much more numerous, and more wholesomely fed, clothed, and lodged, than we can suppose a colony in Greenland to have been, and it seems to have raged particularly in the north. It is supposed by some that this pestilence either swept off the whole population of the colony, or weakened it so much that the survivors were at last cut off by the Skrtelingers or Esquimaux, with whom the colonists appear to have been always in hostility. The inequality between the most contemptible race of savages and the most civilised people of Europe would be but small, or the advantage probably on the side of the uncivilised, in all warfare between them before the use of fire-arms; which, next to Christianity, has been the great means of diffusing and securing civilisation among the human race. The pope's brief of 1448, if it be a genuine document,—and it is said to have been found in the archives of the Vatican by a Professor Mallet some years ago, but how he got there is not shown,—would prove the truth of the conjecture which has been made, that the colonists were overpowered by the Skrælingers. The existing traditions among the Esquimaux, of their having come in their canoes and surprised and killed all the Kabloon or European people in old times, is not worth much, as evidently it is a tradition only of the moment produced by leading questions put to them. No tradition in any country seems to exist but as an impersonation, as an account of an individual person doing a thing; and it is the individual and his personal feats, not the great act itself, that is delivered by tradition as its principal subject matter. Another cause was, that Queen Margaret, on whom the three northern crowns had devolved in ​1387, had made the trade to Greenland, Iceland, the Feroe Isles, Halogaland, and Finland, a royal monopoly, which could only he carried on in ships belonging to, or licensed by, the sovereign; and certain merchants who had visited Greenland about that time were accused of a treasonable violation of the royal edict, we are told by Torsæus in his "Grænlandia Antiqua," and only escaped punishment by pleading that stress of weather had driven them to those parts. Her successor, Eric of Pomerania, was too much engaged in Swedish affairs, and his successor, Christopher of Bavaria, in his contests with the Hanseatic League, to think of the colony of Greenland. Under the monopoly of trade the Icelanders could have no vessels, and no object for sailing to Greenland; and the vessels fitted out by government, or its lessees, to trade with them, would only be ready to leave Denmark or Bergen for Iceland, at the season they ought to have been ready to leave Iceland to go to Greenland. The colony gradually fell into oblivion. Its former existence even had become a matter of disputed or neglected tradition. Christian III., who came to the throne 1534, abolished the prohibition of sailing to Greenland; and a few feeble attempts were made at discovery by him and his successors from time to time, and at last even these were given up. It was not until 1721 that a Norwegian minister, Hans Egide,—one of those rare men who go on to their purpose unmoved by any selfish interest, and to whom fame, wealth, honour, comfort, are neither object nor reward,—resigned his living in Norway, and obtained permission, after much difficulty and many petitions to government, to settle himself as a missionary on the coast of Davis's Straits among the Esquimaux. The general opinion was, that the lost colony of Old Greenland was situated on the east coast of the peninsula, and not within Davis's Straits; ​and it does not appear that Hans Egide himself, at first, had any idea that he was settling upon the ruined seats of Christian' predecessors of the same tongue and mother country. It is a curious paragraph in the history of the human race, showing how true it is that in the tide of time man and his affairs return to where they set out,—that Christian churches, bishops, and consequently people in some numbers, and in some state of civilisation, had existed, been extinguished, and forgotten, and again on the same spot, after the lapse of 400 years, men have attempted to live, colonise, and Christianise. The feeble attempt in our times, the struggle to subsist, and the trifling amount of population in the modern colony after a century, are strangely in contrast with the state of the old colony. There are but about 150 Europeans at present in these Danish colonies; and the whole population of the natives, from Cape Farewell as far north as man can live, is reckoned under 6000 people, and about five or six vessels only are employed in trading with them; and this is in a country which formerly subsisted a population of European descent, which had at least sixteen ecclesiastical establishments or parishes, a bishop, monasteries, and consequently a number greatly exceeding 150 souls. The old colonists do not appear to have ever made converts among the natives, and their numbers, which must at one time have been considerable, appear to have found abundant subsistence; for we read in the sagas of vessels with sixty men arriving in autumn, being subsisted all winter, and fitted out in spring, and victualled for voyages of uncertain and long duration: and now if one of the vessels fitted out by charitable contributions by the sect of the Moravians to carry food to their missionaries be delayed for a season, they are in danger of starving. Is it man or nature that has changed? Are men less vigorous, less energetic, ​less enduring and hardy, than in those old times of the Northmen? or is the land, the sea, the climate less adapted now for the subsistence of the human animal?
The opinion of almost all antiquaries was, that the main settlement of the old colonists,—the Eystribygd, with its 190 townships, its town of Garda, its cathedral, bishop's seat, and twelve or thirteen churches,—was on the east coast of Greenland, somewhere on the coast north of Cape Farewell, inaccessible now from ice; and the less important Yestribygd to have been west of Cape Farewell, within Davis's Straits. Others supposed that both settlements were on the east coast of Greenland, and that the old colonists did not know that Greenland had a west coast from Cape Farewell. The opinions were founded on certain ancient sailing directions found in the sagas, especially in a saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson, in which it is mentioned that from Stad, the westermost part of Norway, it is a voyage of seven days' sailing due west to Hornpoint, the eastermost part of Iceland; and that from Sneefieldness, the point of Iceland nearest to Greenland, it is a voyage of four days' sailing, also due west, to Greenland: and a rock called Gunbiornskerry is stated to be half-way between Iceland and Greenland; but this course, says one of the ancient accounts of unknown date, but certainly of the 14th century, "was the old way of sailing; but now the ice from the northern gulf has set down so near to this skerry, that nobody can take this course without danger of life." This rock, skerry, or isle, midway between the coast of Iceland and that of Greenland, is proved by Scoresby and other navigators to have no existence; and the east coast of Greenland, as far as it has been possible to explore it, is found to be more inclement, icebound, and in every way less adapted naturally to afford subsistence to man, than the west coast within ​Cape Farewell; although the Eystribygd is represented in all the sagas as the most populous settlement, having 190, and the other only 90 townships. It is now generally admitted that the east coast of Greenland never was inhabited at all by the old colonists; that their east and west settlements had no reference to being east or west of Cape Farewell, but to being easterly or westerly from some place within Davis's Straits, and which formed their division between the two settlements; and in this view the east settlement would be the country nearest to Cape Farewell, and, as at present, the best provided with the natural means of subsistence; and the western and poorer settlement would be the country beyond it to the north; and that Gunbiornskerry was not in the midway, or halfway, as it had been interpreted, in the sea between Iceland and Greenland, but some island on the east coast of Greenland, which was half-way, in point of distance and time, between Iceland and the eastern settlement in Greenland. From it they took a new departure, and coasted along, with sails and oars, round Cape Hvarf, or Cape Farewell, and up Davis's Straits to the eastern settlement. Hans Egide, his son Paul, and others, had from time to time examined and sent home accounts of remains of ancient buildings which they had found on their missionary excursions. Arctander, as early as 1777, had made reports of such remains. The Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen took up the subject with great zeal in this century; and researches have been made of which the result is a kind of synthetic proof, as it may be called, of the veracity of the saga. The remains of former inhabitation of the country, of houses, paths, walls, stepping-stones, churches, foundations of rows of dwellings, show that the saga accounts have not been exaggerated; and it must give every fair unprejudiced reader a confidence which he had not ​before in the sagas, when he finds in this—the most questionable perhaps of all the saga statements—that a considerable Icelandic colony actually had existed in Greenland from the 10th century. The facts they state are fully supported by the discoveries made on the spot within this century. A similar moral confidence in the sagas is given to the few saga readers who happen to be acquainted with the Orkney Islands, from finding, in the Orkneyinga Saga, a minute and accurate knowledge of places, distances, names, and other details of the localities mentioned. In this case of Greenland the remains discovered carry conviction to all. At Karkortog, a branch of a long fiord called Igalik, in latitude 60° 50' north, and longitude 44° 37', near to the settlement of Julianahope, is a ruin of a building 51 feet in length by 25 feet in breadth, with well-built stone walls, 4 feet thick, standing to the height of 16 and 18 feet; and with two round arched windows, one in each gable, and four other windows not arched, on each side, and with two door-ways,—evidently intended for a church. This appears the most perfect of the ruins yet discovered. Foundations, with walls in some parts 4 feet high, have been found of buildings 120 feet in length by 100 feet in breadth; and from such rows being found in various places, the families may be supposed to have lived in contiguous houses. But single dwellings also have been used, as foundations overgrown with dwarf-willow, and the berry-bearing shrubs, are found in favourable situations on the sides of the fiords. In what appears to have been a church, the foundations being 96 feet long by 48 feet broad, at the extremity of the fiord Igalikkoi, latitude 60° 55', a stone with a Bunic inscription was found in 1830; and to the readers of Bunic the inscription offered no difficulty:—"Yigdis, M. D. Hvilir Her. Glsede Gud Sal Hennar;" that is, "Yigdisa rests here: God bless her soul." The ​meaning of the letters M. D. following the name, and which probably refer to the person's family, as Magnus's Daughter, or some similar distinctive use, form the only obscurity. In 1831 the missionary De Fries found near Igigeitum, in latitude 60°, a tombstone used as a door-lintel to a Greenland house, with an inscription in Roman characters—a Her Hvilir Hro Kolgrims;" which is, a Here rests Hroar or Hroaldr Kolgrimson." But the most interesting of these inscriptions is one discovered in 1824, in the island Kingigtorsook in Baffin's Bay, in latitude 72° 55' north, longitude 56° 5' west of Greenwich; as it shows how bold these Northmen have been in their seamanship, and how far they had penetrated into regions supposed to have been unvisited by man before the voyages of our modern navigators. It now appears that Captain Parry and Captain Lyon had only sailed over seas which had been explored by these Northmen in the 12th century. The inscription found in this high latitude was sent to three of the greatest antiquaries and Runic scholars in Europe—Finn Magnusen, Professor Rask, and Dr. Bryniulfson in Iceland; and, without communication with each other, they arrived at the same interpretation, viz. u Erling Sighvatson and Biorne Thordarson and Eindrid Oddson, on Saturday before Ascension Week, raised these marks and cleared ground. 1135." The meaning is, that in token of having taken possession of the land, they had raised marks or mounds of which Kragh and Stephenson observed some vestiges on the spot where the inscription was found, and had cleared a space of ground around, being a symbol of appropriation of the land. The interesting part of this inscription has not been sufficiently noticed and examined. In the Romish church the days of the Ascension Week are of peculiar solemnity. The priests, accompanied by the people, walk in long processions with lighted torches around ​the churches and consecrated ground, chanting, and sprinkling holy water. From the numerous processions going on at this festival, the Ascension Week was called the Gang Dayis, or Ganging Dayis, in old Scotch, — is still called the Gang Week in some parts of England,—was called Gang Dagas in Anglo-Saxon,—and Ascension Day, Gagn Dagr in the Icelandic; and the going in procession, not the Gagn or Gain of Spiritual Victory, has given the name to the Dies Victoria in the northern languages. It appears that there are two festivals which might be called Gagn Dagr in the Romish church, from their being celebrated by processions: one is the Dies Victoriæ Maximus, about the 24th of April; the other procession day is about the 14th of May; and the Laukardakin fyrir Gakndag of the inscription may be the Saturday before either of these procession days. But, to whichsoever it refers, the people who made these marks at that time of the year must have wintered upon the island. By the accounts of all northern voyagers, the sea in Baffin's Bay is not navigable at or near Ascension Week, or any church festival to which Gakn Dagr applies. We must either suppose that these Northmen, without any of our modern outfit of ships for wintering in such high latitudes, did not only winter there, but found the country so endurable as to take possession of it by a formal act indicating an intention to settle in the island; or we must suppose that the cold, within so recent an historical period as 800 years ago, has increased so much in the northern parts of the globe, that countries are now uninhabitable by man which were formerly not so. Both, perhaps, may be taken into account. The capability of enduring cold or heat in extreme degrees may be acquired by individuals or tribes, and the habits and functions of the body become adapted to the temperature. The advance of ice locally in Davis's Straits, and on the east coast of ​Greenland, seems also ascertained by the yearly increase of the fields of ice in the neighbouring seas within the experience of our whale fishers.
The discovery of America, or Vinland, in the 11th century, by the same race of enduring enterprising seamen, is not less satisfactorily established by documentary evidence than the discovery and colonisation of Greenland; but it rests entirely upon documentary evidence, which cannot, as in the case of Greenland, be substantiated by any thing to be discovered in America. One or two adventurers made voyages, came to new countries to the south and west of Greenland, landed, repeated their visits, and even remained for one or two years trading for skins with the natives, and felling timber to take home in their ships; but they established no colony, left none behind them to multiply, and, as in Greenland, to construct, in stone, memorials of their existence on the coast of America. All that can be proved, or that is required to be proved, for establishing the priority of the discovery of America by the Northmen, is that the saga or traditional account of these voyages in the 11th century was committed to writing at a known date, viz. between 1387 and 1395, in a manuscript of unquestionable authenticity, of which these particular sagas or accounts relative to Vinland form but a small portion; and that this known date was eighty years before Columbus visited Iceland to obtain nautical information, viz. in 1477, when he must have heard of this written account of Vinland; and it was not till 1492 that he discovered America. This simple fact, established on documents altogether incontrovertible, is sufficient to prove all that is wanted to be proved, or can be proved, and is much more clearly and ably stated by Thormod Torfieus, the great antiquary of the last century, than it has been since, in his very rare little tract, " Historia Vinlandiæ ​Antiquæ, 1707." This, however, has not been thought sufficient by modern antiquaries, and great research and talent have been expended in overlaying this simple documentary fact, on which alone the claim of the Icelanders to the priority of discovery rests, with a mass of documents of secondary importance and no validity. These are of secondary importance; because the circumstances which led to or happened upon these voyages, the family descent, or even identity of the adventurers, and the truth or falsehood of the details related, do not either confirm or shake the simple fact on which every thing rests,—that a discovery of a new land to the west and south was made and recorded, taken out of the mere traditionary state, and fixed in writing in 1387, or 100 years before Columbus's first voyage. They are of no validity; because, after Columbus's first voyage in 1492, the seafaring people in every country would be talking of and listening to accounts of discoveries, new or old,—imagination would be let loose,—and old sagas would be filled up and new invented; so that no document relative to this question is of real validity which is not proved at setting out to be older than 1492,—that is to say, not merely an older story which may have circulated in the traditionary state from the 10th or 11th century, but older than 1492 on paper or parchment. Saga antiquaries are sometimes given to confounding together in their speculations these two very distinct ages of their documents. The only document of this kind is the one pointed out by Torfæus in 1707, which is in itself good and sufficient, and beyond all suspicion; and to link it to documents of uncertain or suspicious date, or to details which may or may not be true, and which require the aid of imagination, prejudice, or good will to believe, as well as of sober judgment, is weakening, not strengthening, the ​argument. Torfæus kindled a light which the moths have gathered about, and almost put out.
In 1697 Peringskiold published the "Heimskringla" of Snorro Sturleson, with a Latin and Swedish translation of the Icelandic. It was discovered and pointed out by Torfæus, that Peringskiold must have had some inferior manuscript of the work before him, because eight chapters of the Saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson, viz. from Chapter 105. to Chapter 113., are interpolated, and are not to be found in any genuine manuscript of Snorro's work. These eight chapters contain the accounts of the voyages of Leif and of Karlsefne to Vinland. There is internal evidence in Snorro's work itself that these eight chapters are a clumsy interpolation by Peringskiold, or his authority; for they interrupt Snorro's narrative in the most interesting period of King Olaf Tryggvesson's life, and have no connection with the transactions or personages preceding or following; whereas all Snorro's episodes are, with surprising art and judgment, connected with what goes before or is to follow, and are brought in exactly at the right place. It may be thought, at first sight, that the very circumstance of a man of Snorro's knowledge and judgment in the sagas not knowing, or knowing not adopting, the account of the discovery of Yinland given in these eight chapters subsequently interpolated in his work, is conclusive against their value and authenticity. But it is to be remembered that although he probably knew of them, the subject was altogether foreign to his work. Vinland was an object of no interest in his days, and had not, like Greenland, Iceland, the Feroe Isles, or Orkney, been occupied as a colony, or part of the dominions of Norway, and had not employed any of the historical personages of whom he treats; and therefore it would have been inconsistent with his work to introduce the obscure, and in his time unimportant fact, of the ​discovery of new land, or the adventures of the discoverers. The eight chapters in question, by whomsoever they were interpolated into Snorro Sturleson's work, proved to be taken, with few variations, and none of any importance, from the eighth chapter of the Saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson in the " Codex Flatoiensis." This saga gives more details of the reign of that king than Snorro Sturleson's saga of it, and is no doubt the source from which he drew his account, using it often verbatim.
The " Flateyar Annall, or Codex Flatoiensis," by far the most important of Icelandic manuscripts, takes its name from the island Flatö, in Bredefiord in Iceland, where it had been long preserved, and where Bishop Swendson of Skalholt purchased it, about 1650, from the owner, Jonas Torfeson, for King Frederic III., giving in exchange for it the perpetual exemption from land-tax of a small estate of the owner. The manuscript is in large folio, beautifully written on parchment. On the first page stands—" This book is owned by Ion Hakonson. Here are, first, songs; then how Norway was inhabited or settled; then of Eric Yidforla (the far-travelled); thereafter of Olaf Tryggvesson, and all his deeds; then next the saga of King Olaf the Saint, with all his deeds, and therewith the sagas of the Orkney Earls; then the saga of Swerrer, and thereafter the saga of Hakon the Old, with the sagas of King Magnus his son; then are deeds of Einar Sokkeson of Greenland, thereafter of Helge and Ulf the Bad; then begin annals from the time the world was made, showing all to this present. time that is come. The priest Ion Thordarson has written from Eric Yidforla, and the two sagas of the ​Olafs; and priest Magnus Thorhallsson has written from thence, and also what is written before, and has illuminated the whole. God Almighty and the Holy Virgin Mary bless those who wrote, and him who dictated." The writer of this paragraph says, that the annals written out by the priest Magnus Thorhallsson from the beginning of the world come down to the present time, and he has consequently been a contemporary of the scribe Magnus Thorhallsson. These annals end with the year 1395, and the time at which the writing was concluded is thus distinctly ascertained. The time at which the writing was commenced is also distinctly ascertained; for in the piece on "how Norway was inhabited," in giving the series of kings, it is said, on coming to King Olaf Hakonson, "He was king when this book was writing; and then were elapsed from the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ 1300 and 80 and 7 years." The dates of the beginning and ending of this beautiful piece of penmanship are thus fixed, and the handwriting of each of the scribes perfectly known. The "Codex Flatoiensis" is not an original work of one author, but a collection of sagas transcribed from older manuscripts, and arranged in so far chronologically that the accounts are placed under the reign in which the events they tell of happened, although not connected with it or with each other. Under the saga of Olaf Tryggvesson are comprehended the sagas of the Feroe Islands; of the Vikings of Jomsburg; of Eric Fed, and Leif his son, the discoverers of Greenland and Vinland; and the voyages of Karlsefne to Vinland, and all the circumstances, true or false, of their adventures. It is evident that the main fact is that of a discovery of a western land being recorded in writing between 1387 and 1395; and whether the minor circumstances, such as the personal adventures of the discoverers, or the exact localities in America which they visited, be or ​be not known, cannot affect this fact,—nor the very strong side-fact, that eighty years after this fact was recorded in writing, in no obscure manuscript, but in one of the most beautiful works of penmanship in Europe, Columbus came to Iceland from Bristol, in 1477, on purpose to gain nautical information, and must have heard of the written accounts of discoveries recorded in it. It is as great an error to prove too ​the purpose of establishing the priority of discovery; but when the northern antiquaries proceed to prove the details,—to establish the exact points in the state of Massachusetts at which Leif put up his wooden booths, and where Karlsefne and his wife Gudrid lived, and Freidisa committed her wholesale slaughter, and to make imaginary discoveries of Eunic inscriptions and buildings erected by Northmen in Rhode Island,— they are poets, not antiquaries. The subject is of so much interest both in Europe and America, and so much has been written in very expensive books to prove what is not susceptible of proof, and of no importance if proved, that a few pages must be bestowed on it.
From the adventurous spirit of the Northmen in the 11th century,—from their habits of living on board ship, on their ordinary viking cruises, for many more weeks and months together than are required for a voyage from Iceland to America,—from their being at home on board, and accustomed on their sea expeditions up the Mediterranean, to the White Sea, and to Iceland direct across the ocean, to a sea life,—it is not improbable that they should have undertaken a voyage of discovery to the west and south, and have renewed it when they found a land which produced building timber and skins to repay them. It was certainly not seamanship that was wanting among them in those ages, but science only. The class of vessels in which they sailed made them in a great measure independent of the science of navigation; because their vessels were of an easy draught of water, and they had a command with their oars and their numerous crews over their vessels, which made a lee shore, or other unfavourable position, of no such importance as to modern ships. In size, and as seaboats, their vessels in general were probably equal or superior to those in which Columbus made his first ​voyage. One of Columbus's vessels is understood to have been only a half-decked craft. Sebastian Cabot, and some of the earliest explorers of Baffin's Bay, sailed in vessels under thirty tons. The Anna Pink, which accompanied Lord Anson half round the world, was a vessel of eighteen tons. In their shipping, seamanship, and habits of sea life and endurance, there was certainly nothing to make it, à priori, improbable that they should undertake a voyage of discovery to the south and west of Greenland. The details of adventures on such a voyage may not be correct, and yet the fact itself true. The following is an abridgment, as short as possible, of the details, and the conclusions drawn from them as to the localities in America which they visited. The eight chapters themselves are annexed in the Appendix.
Eric Red, in spring, 986, emigrated from Iceland to Greenland with Heriulf Bardson. He fixed his abode at Brattalid, in Ericsfiord; and Heriulf at Heriulfsness. Biorne, the son of the latter, was absent in Norway at the time, and finding on his return that his father was gone, resolved to follow him, and put to sea. As winter was approaching, they had bad weather, northerly winds and fogs, and did not know where they were. When it cleared up they saw a land without mountains, but with many small hills, and covered with wood. This not answering the description of Greenland, they turned about and left it on the larboard hand; and sailing two days they came to another land, flat, and covered with wood. Then they stood out to sea with a south-west wind, and saw a third land, high, and the mountains covered with glaciers; and coasting along it they saw it was an island. Biorne did not land, but stood out to sea with the same south-west wind, and sailing with fresh gales reached, in four days more, Heriulfsness in Greenland, his father's abode.
​Some years after this, supposed to be about 994, Biorne was in Norway on a visit to Earl Eric, and was much blamed, when be told of bis discovery, for not having examined the countries more accurately. Leif, a son of Eric Red, bought his ship, when Biorne returned to Greenland, and with a crew of thirty-five men set out, about the year 1000, to look for these lands. He came first to the land which Biorne had seen last, landed, found no grass, but vast icy mountains in the interior, and between them and the shore a plain of flat slaty stones (hella), and called the country Hellaland. They put to sea, and came to another country, which was level, covered with woods, with many cliffs of white sand, and a low coast, and called the country Markland (outfield or woodland). They again stood out to sea with a north-east wind, and after two days' sailing made land, and came to an island eastward of the mainland, and entered into a channel between the island and a point projecting north-east from the mainland. They sailed eastward, saw much ground laid dry at ebb tide, and at last went on shore at a place where a river which came from a lake fell into the sea. They brought their vessel through the river into the lake, and anchored. Here they put up some log huts; but, after resolving to winter there, they constructed larger booths or houses. After lodging themselves, Leif divided his people into two companies, to be employed by turns in exploring the country and working about the houses. One of the exploring party, a German by birth, called Tyrker, was one day missing. They went out to look for him, and soon met him, talking German, rolling his eyes, and beside himself. He at last told them in Norse, as they did not understand German, that he had been up the country, and had discovered vines and grapes; adding, "that he should know what vines and grapes were, as he was born in ​a country in which they were in plenty." They now occupied themselves in hewing timber for loading the vessel, and collecting grapes with which they filled the ship's boat. Leif called the country Vinland. They sailed in spring, and returned to Greenland.
Leif's brother, Thorwald, set out, in the year 1002, to Yinland in Leif's vessel, and came to his booths or houses, and wintered there. In spring Thorwald sent a party in the boat to explore the coast to the south. They found the country beautiful, well wooded, with but little space between the woods and the sea, and long stretches of white sand, and also many islands and shoals; and on one island found a corn barn, but no other traces of people. They returned in autumn to Leif's booths. Next summer Thorwald sailed with the large vessel, first eastward, then northward, past a headland opposite to another headland, and forming a bay. They called the first headland Kialarness (Keel Ness). They then sailed into the nearest fiord, to a headland covered with wood. Thorwald went on shore, and was so pleased that he said "he should like to stay there." On going on board they observed three hillocks on the sandy shore. They went up to them, and found they were three canoes, with three Skrælingers under each. They killed eight of them, and one made his escape in his canoe. A great number afterwards came in skin-canoes and attacked them. They were repulsed; but Thorwald was wounded by an arrow and died, and according to his directions was buried at the promontory where he had expressed his wish to stay, or take up his abode, with a cross at the head and one at the foot of his grave; and the place was called Crossness. His companions returned to Leif's booths, wintered there, and in spring sailed to Greenland.
Thorstein, Eric's third son, set out in the same ship, with his wife Gudrid, and a crew of twenty-five ​men, to bring home his brother's body; but after driving about all summer they returned, without making the land, to Lysnfiord in Greenland, where Thorstein died, and his wife Gudrid returned to Ericsfiord.
Next summer, viz. 1006, two ships from Iceland came to Greenland. One was commanded by Thorfinn, called Karlsefne (of manly endowment); the other by Biorne Grimulfson. A third ship was commanded by Thorward. Karlsefne had married in the course of the winter Gudrid, the widow of Thorwald, and by her advice resolved on going to Yinland in spring. Thorward had married Freydisa, a natural daughter of Eric; and the three ships set out with 160 men, and all kinds of live stock, to establish a colony in Yinland. They sailed first to the Westerbygd (within Davis's Straits), and to Biarney (Disco Isle). From thence they sailed in a southerly direction to Hellaland, where they found many foxes. From thence, sailing two days to the south, they came to Markland, a wooded country stocked with animals. Then they sailed south-west for a long time, having the land to starboard, until they came to Kialarness, where there were great deserts, and long beaches and sands. When they had passed these, the land was indented with inlets. They had two Scots with them, Hake and Hekia, whom Leif had formerly received from King Olaf Trygl gvesson, and who were very swift of foot. They were put on shore to explore the country to the south-west, and in three days they returned with some grapes, and some ears of wheat, which grew "wild in that country. They continued their course until they came to a fiord which penetrated far into the land. Off the mouth of it was an island with strong currents round it, and also up in the fiord. They found vast numbers of eyder ducks on the island, so that they could ​scarcely walk without treading on their eggs. They called the island Strauxnay (Stream Isle), and the fiord Straumfiord. A party of eight men, commanded by Thorhall, left them here, and went north to seek for Vinland. Karlsefne proceeded with Snorro, Biorne, and the rest, in all 151 men, southwards. Those who went northwards passed Kialarness; but were driven by westerly gales off the land, and to the coast of Ireland, where, it was afterwards reported, they were made slaves. Karlsefne and his men arrived at the place where a river issuing from a lake falls into the sea. Opposite to the mouth of the river were large islands. They steered into the lake, and called the place Hop (the Hope). On the low grounds they found fields of wheat growing wild, and on the rising grounds vines. One morning a number of skin-canoes came to them. The people were sallow-coloured, ill-looking, with ugly heads of hair, large eyes, and broad cheeks; and after looking at the strangers they retired round the cape to the south-west. Karlsefne put up dwelling-houses a little above the bay, and they wintered there: no snow fell, and their cattle lived in the open field. On the shortest day the sun was above the horizon in the watch before and after mid-day watch. A number of canoes came again from the south-west, holding up a white shield as a signal of peace, and bartered grey furs for bits of cloth, and for milk soup. The bull belonging to the party happened to bellow, and the Skrælingers were terrified, and fled in their canoes. Gudrid, Karlsefne's wife, lay in here of a son, who was called Snorro. In the beginning of the following winter, the Skrælingers attacked them. They were defeated by the courage of Gudrid (who appears to have been far advanced in pregnancy at the time of this attack); but lost a man, and were so dispirited by the prospect of constant hostilities with the natives, ​that they resolved to return. They sailed east, and came to Straumiiord. Karlsefne then took one of the ships to look for Thorhall, while the rest remained behind. They proceeded northwards round Kialarness, and afterwards to the north-west, the land being to larboard of them, and covered with thick forests. They considered the hills they saw at Hope, and these, as one continuous range. They spent the third winter at Straumfiord. Karlsefne's son was now three years old. When they sailed from Vinland they had southerly winds, and came to Markland, where they met live Skrælingers, and took two boys, whom they taught Norse, and who told them their people had no houses, but lived in holes and caves: that they had kings; one called Avaldamon, and the other Valdida. Biorne Grimulfson was driven into the Irish Ocean, and came into waters so infested with worms that their ship was in a sinking state. Some of the crew were saved in the boat, which had been smeared over with seal-oil, which is a preventive against worms in wood. Karlsefne continued his voyage to Greenland, and arrived at Ericsfiord.
During the same summer, 1011, a ship from Norway came to Greenland. The vessel belonged to two brothers, Helge and Finboge, who wintered in Greenland. Freydisa (the natural daughter of Eric Bed, who had married Thorward) proposed to them to join in an expedition to Yinland, each party to have thirty men, and to divide the gain equally. They agreed, and set out, and reached Leif's booths, where they spent the winter; but Freydisa, who had taken five men more with her than the agreement allowed, quarrelled with the brothers, and murdered them and the whole of their people, and returned in spring (1013) to Greenland.
Karlsefne went to Norway with his Yinland cargo next summer, and it was considered very valuable. ​He sold even a piece of wood used for a door-bar, or a broomstick, to a Bremen merchant for half a mark of gold; for it was of massur-wood of Vinland. He returned, and purchased land in Iceland; and many people of distinction are descended from him and his son Snorro, who was born in Vinland. After his death his widow, Gudrid, went to Borne, and on her return lived in religious seclusion in Iceland.
The above is an abridgment of the eight chapters on which the whole accounts of Vinland rest, and which are given at length in. the Appendix; and so much fanciful speculation has been reared upon this foundation, that it deserves examination. The main facts—the discovery of various lands to the south and west of Greenland, the repeated voyages to them, and the reasonable motives of such voyages—bear all the internal evidences of simple truth. We may generally believe in the truth of the accounts of men's actions, when we see reasonable and sufficient motives for them so to act. Iceland, although it had wood in those days, and has some still, produced only a scrubby small brushwood of birch or hazel, not fit for ship-building, nor for the large halls which it was the fashion of the age for great people to have for entertaining and lodging their followers in; and the state of society made it necessary for safety to keep large bodies of retainers always at hand, and about them. It is told as a remarkable thing in the Landnamma Book, or History of the Original Settlers in Iceland (page 29.), that Avang found such large wood where he settled, that he built a long-ship; and in the Ivristni Saga it is mentioned that Hialte Skeggeson built a ship at home, so large that he sailed in it to Norway. In general, however, they had to buy their sea-going vessels in Norway. The drift wood found about the shores of Iceland in great abundance to a late period, and perhaps even now, would be too much shaken and ​wormeaten to be fit for ship-building, even if it were of a sufficient size. To go in quest of the wooded countries to the south-west, from whence drift wood came to their shores, was a reasonable, intelligible motive, for making a voyage in search of the lands from whence it came, and where this valuable ma¬ terial could be got for nothing. So far we see rea¬ sonable motives followed by reasonable and perfectly credible acts and results. In the account, however, of the details upon which so much has been built up by modern antiquaries, we find no such consistency, credibility, or internal evidence of truthfulness. Leif and his successors, Karlsefne and others, arrive in Yinland in spring—say in May, June, or July. In what climate, or part of the world, are grapes to be found in those months? They can hardly tread on Straum Island—settled by our modern antiquaries to be Egg Island, at the mouth of Plymouth Sound in Massachusetts—for the eggs of eyder ducks. It was consequently early in spring, before birds were hatched, and before grapes have the shape of fruit in any climate, that they found ripe grapes and ears of wheat! Do vines, or wheat, or corn of any kind, grow spontaneously in those countries? This is a question by no means satisfactorily ascertained. Tyrker the German, who knew so well grapes and vines, "because he was born in a country in which these are not scarce," comes back to his party after a short absence, rolling his eyes, making faces, talking German, and half drunk. All the grapes in Germany, and Vinland to boot, would not make a man drunk, without their juice undergoing the vinous fermentation. This is clearly the fiction of some saga-maker, who knew no more of wine than that it was the juice of the grape; and all the geographical speculations upon the sites and localities of the Yinland of the Northmen, built upon the natural products of the ​land, fall to the ground. The eyder duck, on our side of the world, is very rarely seen in lower latitudes than 60°. It maybe different on the American coast; but the Skrselingers, the sallow-complexioned people with skin-canoes with whom they bartered cloth and milk for sable and squirrel or grey skins, are, together with their articles of traffic, of northern origin. The red race of Indians could never have been called Skrælingers, and described as such,—viz. with broad cheeks, and sallow complexions,—by Northmen who knew the Skrselingers, or Esquimaux race, in Greenland. But we are told the Esquimaux race extended once much farther south, beyond Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and as far south as we please to have them. It is as easy to tell us that once the juice of the grape would intoxicate without the vinous fermentation,—that wheat would grow without being sown,—and that a barn, or more properly a kiln-barn, might be found in a land without dwelling-houses. All the geographical knowledge that can be drawn from the accounts of the natural products of Vinland in these eight chapters, points clearly to the Labrador coast, or Newfoundland, or some places north of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The terror of the Skrselingers at the bellowing of Karlsefne's bull points rather to an island people, as the natives of Prince Edward's Island, or of Newfoundland; for a continental people in that part of America could not be strangers to the much more formidable bisson, or musk ox, or buffalo. The piece of massur-wood from Yinland, which Karlsefne sold to a Bremen merchant for half a mark of gold, must have derived its value either from its intrinsic worth or beauty as wood or dye-wood, or as a stick coming from a distant unknown land. In the latter case the kind or quality of the wood, and whether it grew south or north, were circumstances of no consequence to the buyer: it was a curiosity ​from an unknown land. In the former case, Karlsefne must be supposed to have gone to Honduras to cut his broomstick. The maple, or whatever wood for furniture grows more to the north in America, is not more beautiful than birch wood or other European wood. If it had been logwood, fustic, mahogany, that was meant by massur-wood, it would be a proof that the saga-writer was drawing upon his own imagination in the details of his account of Ivarlsefne; for vines and wheat growing spontaneously, mahogany trees or dye-woods, and Esquimaux in skin-canoes trading with sable skins and grey skins, and furs described to be white or all grey— " gravara ok salvali ok allskonar skinnavara," and " algra skinn "—never met in one locality: for the former are products of a very southern latitude, and the people and animals described belong to a northern climate. The account of the time from land to land in the voyages of Biorne, Leif, or Karlsefne, leads to no satisfactory result as to the land they came to; because we neither know their rate of sailing in a day, nor whether by a day's sailing they meant sailing day and night, or that they took down and stowed their great squaresail at night, and lay-to with a little try-sail aft till daylight, as similarly rigged vessels on the fishing banks do at the present day. The lying-to all night, as they were in an unknown sea, was the better seamanship, and we may suppose it was their way of sailing. In their ordinary voyages they appear always to have put up their tent-cloths at night, brought their vessel to the land or to an anchor, and to have gone to rest, leaving only a watch on deck. It is usually mentioned in the saga when they sail night and day, as a special circumstance. It does not appear probable they would run with all sail in the night through an unknown sea; and if they look down sail at night, and lay-to in the gulf stream, all ​founded on the number of days' sailing from Hellaland to Markland, or from Markland to Yinland, is quite arbitrary, and without guide. The description of the land is equally unsatisfactory as a means of discovering the localities in Yinland they visited, without more precise data. A country of stony soil, with little vegetation among the slaty fragments that cover it, applies to all the country from Hudson's Bay to Newfoundland; and Hellaland, so called from this circumstance, is a name that would suit any part of Labrador as well as Newfoundland. Markland, so called because low or level, and covered with thick forests, as a description may be applied to any part of America as well as to Nova Scotia. An island with a sound between it and the main, or a low shore with remarkably white sand cliffs and shallow water, a fiord or inlet of the sea, a river running out of a lake, a bay between two headlands, one of them of a conspicuous figure, are good landmarks for identifying a country of which the position is known, but are good for nothing as data for fixing that po¬ sition itself; because these are features common to all sea coasts, and, on a small or great scale, to be found within every hundred miles of a run along the sea¬ board of a country. It is evident from the personal adventures ascribed by the saga-maker to the person¬ ages, that the details are imaginary, and only the ge¬ neral outline true. The revival of Thorstein Ericson's body, and its prophesying what was to befal Gudrid in her lifetime, are within the ordinary belief of those times, and therefore do not lessen the confidence in other circumstances related; nor the appearance to her alone of another Gudrid, who spoke Norse to her in Yinland, and whom nobody else saw. But the adventures of Freydisa, her murder of the two brothers, thirty men, and the women, is an improbable, not to say an impossible circumstance; as her ​thirty-five men had no motive for such a butchery of their comrades, in a country in which they needed all their strength for their safety, and for the objects of their voyage. All the details seem merely the filling up of imagination, to make a story of a main fact, the discovery of Vinland by certain personages, whose names, and the fact of their discovering unknown lands south-west of Greenland, are alone to be depended upon.
But two facts are stated by our modern antiquaries, which are held to be quite conclusive as to the locality in America discovered by the Icelanders. One is, that in the details of Leif's voyage and residence in Yinland, it is stated that on the shortest day the sun was above the horizon from half-past seven o'clock in the morning to half-past four o'clock in the afternoon, or nine hours, which gives the latitude of the place 41° 24' 10", and which brings it to between Seaconnet Point in 41° 26', and Judith Point in 41° 23', and which two points form the entrance into Mount Hope Bay; which corresponds, even to the name Hop or Hope, with the description of a river, now called the Taunton, running from a lake into the sea, and with all the other landmarks or accounts of the appearance of the coast given in the saga. The other fact, not less striking, is, that in this very neighbourhood,—viz. at Assonet Point, on the shore of the river Taunton, in latitude 41° 44', near the town of Berkley in the district of Massachusetts,—a stone covered with Runic inscriptions is still to be seen, and is known by the name of the Leighton Writing (written) Rock, and was an object of curiosity to the early English settlers as far back as 1680. These two happy coincidences are so happy—so like finding a box, and, 800 years afterwards, finding the key that of all the keys in the world can alone open it—that people almost doubt, at the first hearing of it, whether the news be not too ​good to be true. The first question that arises to the doubting reader is, how, in Leif Ericson's time,— that is, about the year 1000, when Christianity was scarcely introduced, and church festivals, church time, and the knowledge and prayers of churchmen unknown,— did the Icelanders divide time? The whole circle of the horizon appears to have been divided by them into four quarters, each subdivided into two, making eight divisions, or attir (from which our old word airths, applied to the winds, seems derived); and these eight watches, each of three of our hours, made up the day, which we divide into 24 parts. It was not until 120 years after Leif's voyage, viz. in 1123, that Bishop Thorlak established in Iceland a code of church regulations or laws, by which time was more minutely ascertained for church prayers and observances. For all secular business, among a seafaring and labouring population, the division of time into eight watches was sufficiently minute for all their practical purposes. Now the saga says, "Sol havdi thar Eyktarstad ok Dagmalastad um skamdegi;" which clearly means that, on the shortest day, they had the sun in the watches called the Dagmalastad and the Eyktarstad; that the sun rose in the former, and set in the latter, and not as in Iceland, where the rising and setting were, on the shortest day, included in one watch. The Dagmalastad was the watch immediately before the mid-day watch (Middegi), and the Eyktarstad that immediately after. Now if we reckon from noon, the middle of the mid-day watch, it would begin at half-past ten o'clock of our time, and end at half-past one o'clock; Dagmalastad would begin at half-past seven, and end at half-past ten; and Eyktarstad begin at half-past one, and end at half-past four in the afternoon. Now if the sun rose any time within the Dagmalastad, and set any time within the Eyktarstad watch,—that is to say, any time between half-past ​seven and half-past ten for its rising, and any time between half-past one and half-past four of our time for its setting,'—it would answer all the conditions of the text of the saga, which merely says they had the sun in these watches, not during the whole of these watches; and the precision of ideas and expression which characterises the Icelanders would undoubtedly have expressed, if that had been the meaning, that the sun rose at the beginning of Dagmalastad, and set at the end of Eyktarstad. Torfæus, certainly not inferior in judgment and knowledge to any antiquary of our times, and who, as a contemporary and friend, had on every doubtful point the opinion of Arne Magnaeus, the first Icelandic antiquary who has ever appeared, makes out, from the same text, that the sun may be considered to have been above the horizon from the middle of Dagmalastad to the middle of Eyktarstadt,—that is, for about six hours,—which would correspond to a latitude of 49° instead of 41°; and he, and Arne Magnaeus we may presume with him, bring Vinland to some place in Newfoundland, or in the Saint Lawrence, which certainly would agree better with the description of the people and products, excepting the ready-made wine, the spontaneous wheat, and the fine wood, than Taunton river in Massachusetts. With regard to the Deighton Written Rock, upon which so much has been built in vast and expensive publications, such as the "Antiquitates Americans" (Hafniæ, 1837), and other works, the following observations may lead to a true estimate of its historical value. The rock or stone is a boulder or transported mass, not a stone belonging to the ground rock of the country. It is about 11½ feet long by 5½ feet high, running up to an edge, and the surface, or side on which the Runic inscription is found, sloping at an angle of 60° from its base. It is one of that class of detached masses of primary rock scattered over the ​whole northern hemisphere of our globe—the evidences of some vast convulsion beyond human knowledge or conjecture. Whoever has examined this class of stones must have observed that it is almost a characteristic, distinguishing them from fixed ground rock of similar formation, that they are more interspersed with black or greenish veins or marks of a different substance from the component parts of the rock, and, in short, with lines which often assume the appearance of sea-weed or other fossil plant, enclosed in the crystallised matrix of the stone, but which are in reality small veins, or rather lines of chlorite. The Runic inscription at Runamoe, in Bleking in Sweden, which, from the days of Saxo Grammaticus to the present times, was considered to be an inscription of real but unintelligible letters on the ground rock, and which antiquaries but a few years ago supposed they had deciphered, and actually published their explanation of it, is now discovered, and admitted, to be nothing but veins of one substance interspersed in another. Chemistry settled the historical value of this Runic inscription. The Deighton Written Rock would perhaps be the better of a certificate from the mineralogist, as well as the antiquary. Supposing it beyond all doubt a stone with artificial characters, letters, or
No. 2.—A copy of the inscription on the Deighton Stone, as given by Baylie and Goodwin in 1790. No. 3.—A copy of the same, as given by the American antiquaries in 1830.
The northern antiquaries are misled in their speculations about Yinland by the singular case of the ancient Greenland colony. By the rarest coincidence of new and old colonisation, a kind of double evidence has come out to prove the veracity of the saga accounts of that old Icelandic colony. First is the documentary evidence of the saga, bearing no inconsistency or internal evidence of deviation from truth, and supported by collateral documentary evidence, from Adam of Bremen and other writers of the 11th and 12th centuries incidentally mentioning Greenland and its bishops, and which is evidence precisely similar in kind to the documentary evidence relative to Yinland. But a second mass and kind of evidence substantiating the first has come out in our times, by the discovery in Greenland of remains of buildings, churches, and of inscriptions and other material proofs, corroborating the documentary proofs of the existence and state of this ancient colony in Greenland given in the sagas. Our modern antiquaries want to substantiate the documentary evidence of the saga relative to Vinland ​by a similar kind of material evidence to be discovered in America, without considering that the cases are totally distinct and different. Greenland was a colony with communications, trade, civil and ecclesiastical establishments, and a considerable population, for 300 years at least before it was lost sight of. Vinland was only visited by flying parties of wood-cutters, remaining at the utmost two or three winters, but never settling there permanently as colonists, nor as far as can be seen from the sagas, with any intention of settling. No division and occupation of the land, no agricultural preparations are mentioned. Cattle they would have taken for milk, or food probably, at any rate, as salt to preserve meat must have been scarce in Greenland, where it could only be obtained by evaporating sea-water. Cattle taken with them, if the circumstance be true, are the only indication of any intention to settle; and a settlement or colony was not established. Three winters are the longest period any of these wood-cutting parties staid in Vinland. To expect here, as in Greenland, material proofs to corroborate the documentary proofs, is weakening the latter by linking them to a sort of evidence which, from the very nature of the case, —the temporary visits of a ship's crew,—cannot exist in Vinland, and, as in the case of Greenland, come in to support them. It would be quite as judicious and consistent with sound principle of investigation to go to New Zealand, or the Sandwich Isles, to search for material proofs (old shoes, cocked hats, or pen-knives) of Captain Cook's having visited those places, and to link the documentary proofs of his discoveries to the authenticity of the material proofs—of the old shoes, cocked hats, and pen-knives—left by him on those shores. This is precisely the kind of investigation and reasoning, with regard to the discovery of Vinland by the Northmen, which antiquaries are pursuing; and to be sure it ​does lead them into laughable discoveries—quite as ridiculous as that of the Runic inscription on the Deighton Writing Stone, or as Oldbuck's Roman Prsetorium on the Kaim of Kinprunes. Here is another specimen of the development of the imaginative faculty among antiquaries.
In the town of Newport, near to the south end of Rhode Island, stands the circular stone-work of an old windmill, of about 18 feet in diameter within walls, and raised upon eight pillars of about 7 feet high and 5 to 6 feet apart, arched over so as to admit carts to come under the floor of the mill, and the corn-sacks to be hoisted up or lowered down through a hatch in the wooden floor above. This is the ordinary plan in large well-arranged windmills, as it takes the horses and carts out of the way of the wings of the mill, and of the lever on the ground by which the moveable wooden superstructure or head of the mill was formerly turned to the wind. The pillars supported the beams of the floor; and windows and a fireplace, corresponding to the floor or platform of the mill, are in the wall, which is about 24 feet high, built of rough stone very substantially, and with lime-mortar, and has been harled or roughcast with lime. The situation is at the summit, or nearly so, of the principal eminence in the neighbourhood, open to the sea breezes, and with no out-walls or any thing near it to intercept the wind. It is universally called by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood "the old stone mill." These are pretty good proofs that the building has been a mill; but there is also documentary proof of it. Rhode Island was first settled by the English in 1636, and two years afterwards (1638) Newport and the south end were occupied. In 1678, that is forty years afterwards, Benedict Arnold, who appears to have been governor of the settlement at one time, in his last will and testament calls this very building his ​stone mill. This is not all. One of the first settlers, a Mr. Peter Easton, had the laudable custom of marking in his pocket-book whatever notable event oc curred in his township; and under the year 1663 he makes the memorandum, "This year we built the first windmill." Now we have here, first, the documentary evidence of Governor Arnold's will, calling it, in 1678, his stone mill, and bequeathing it as such; and of Mr. Peter Easton's pocket-book, giving posterity the information that "the first windmill in the township was built in 1663;" and as they could scarcely have required two mills at once if they had none before, we may fairly presume that the mill built in 1663 was that bequeathed in 1678. And, secondly, we have the material proof of the building, with its modern walls, built with mortar of lime and sand, and harled, and with a chimney-place, windows, and beam supports for a mill platform or floor, being altogether fit for and on the plan of a mill, and of nothing else, and its situation also being adapted for that purpose; and the only name given to it by the neighbouring inhabitants being u the old stone mill." Don Quixote himself could not have resisted such evidence of this having been a windmill. But those sly rogues of Americans dearly love a quiet hoax. With all gravity they address a solemn communication to the Poyal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen, respecting these interesting remains of "a structure bearing an antique appearance"—"a building possibly of the ante-Columbian times"—"a relic, it may be, of the Northmen, the first discoverers of Vinland! " After describing the situation of the mill, they go on to say, that this "dilapidated structure" has long attracted the attention of the numerous strangers who come in the fine season, from all parts of the Union, to enjoy the sea-bathing and pure air of Newport, and they often question the inhabitants concerning its ​origin; but the only answer they receive is, that it has always been known by the name of "The old stone mill." It has excited the most lively interest among the learned in those parts, and many conjectures have been hazarded about its origin and object; but these, say the wags, with great solemnity of phrase, "are shrouded with mystery and all that can be learned from the inhabitants is, that as long as people can remember it has been called "the old stone mill." But whether this structure could have been built for a mill, although no doubt it is so well adapted for a mill that it may have been used for such purpose at some period, is matter of grave doubt to many; because no similar building, of old or new date, for any purpose, exists in the neighbourhood, or in all the country. They send, along with their communication concerning this interesting structure of the original Scandinavian discoverers of Vinland in the 11th century, drawings of the exterior and interior, a ground plan and an elevation of the old stone mill; all which they submit to the consideration of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen. It must be allowed that these Rhode Island wags have played off their joke with admirable dexterity. They conceal nothing that fixes the building to have been beyond all doubt a mill; neither the name it has always gone by,—nor its windmill plan and site,—nor its modern walls built with lime and sand, and roughcast,—nor General Arnold's will calling it his stone mill,—nor Air. Peter Easton's memorandum of the year in which it was built; but they cunningly keep all these circumstances in the background, and bring to the front "the dilapidated structure,"—"the wonder of strangers from all parts of the United States,"—"the structure bearing an antique appearance,"—its origin and use " shrouded with mystery,"—"but possibly ante-Columbian,"—"a remain, possibly, of the ​Scandinavian discoverers of Vinland in the 11th century." The bait took; and no doubt these comical fellows at Newport are chuckling in their club-room at seeing their "old stone mill" figuring in the Annals of the Northern Antiquarian Society, with arches and pillars like a Grecian temple. It is only when one comes, compass in hand, to a scale of feet and inches, that one finds this magnificent structure, with pillars and arches, and of which an exterior and interior view is given in the Annals of the Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, is in reality the bottom of a mill of the very ordinary size of 18 feet within walls, standing on pillars 6 or 7 feet high and 5 or 6 feet apart, and arched over,—like to and on the scale of the pillars and arches of a cart-shed, or a horse-course of a thrashing-mill, instead of a structure, as the plates, of which no less than three are given, would lead you to believe, on the plan of the Coliseum, and of the size of the Temple of Vesta. This is very amusing; but it is not quite so amusing to have to pay heavy prices for magnificent books, got up in two or three languages, superb in size, paper, and type, decorated with fac-simile specimens of the writing of illuminated beautifully executed saga manuscripts, illustrated with splendid copper-plates, and published in the name and under the auspices of a great and learned antiquarian society; and to find you have been paying gold for such oldwifery as this Deighton writing rock and Newport old stone mill. It would, in fact, be difficult to point out any fact or observation of value relative to the discovery of Vinland which has not been brought to light and weighed by Torfieus, in 1707, in his little tract on Vinland. Torfæus was an antiquary of great judgment. He came first into the field, and seized upon the only fact with respect to the discovery of Vinland that there was to seize upon—the docu mentary proof, from a manuscript of fixed date, of a ​discovery of Vinland, recorded in writing a hundred years before Columbus's first voyage; and that record known to Columbus, or Columbus in a situation to know of it, a few years before be undertook that voyage. Torfæus left nothing behind to glean with respect to Vinland of any value in the question of the discovery of America by the Northmen.
The legend of Gunleif Gunlaugsson, like this saga of Karlsefne, gives a discovery not unlikely to have taken place, and much more to the south; but with adventures which border on the incredible. It is contained in the Eyrbiggia Saga. Towards the end of King Olaf the Saint's time, about 1030, Gunleif, on his voyage westward from Iceland to Ireland, was overtaken by a heavy storm from east and north-east, which drove him far out to sea to the south-west, so that none of them knew where they were. After driving about the greater part of the summer they came to land; but were seized by the natives, who came in crowds to the vessel, and spoke a language they did not understand, but it appeared to them like Irish. They observed that the natives were disputing whether to make slaves of them or put them to death. In the meantime an old grand-looking man, with white hair, came riding along, and all the natives received him with the greatest respect. He accosted the Icelanders in the Norse tongue, and asked them if Snorro the Godar (one of the most important personages in Iceland) was alive still, and his sister Thuride. He would not tell his name, and forbade his countrymen to come there again, as the people were fierce, and attacked strangers, and the country had no good harbours. He gave them a gold ring to deliver to Thuride, whom, he said, he liked better than her brother Snorro, and a sword for Thuride's son. Gunleif brought these things home, and people concluded that the man must have been Biorn ​Breidvikingkappe, a scald, who was much respected, and who had fallen in love with Thuride, on which account her husband and her brother had persecuted him, and he had left Iceland in a vessel about the year 998, and had never afterwards been heard of: "and this is the only truth known concerning Biorn." This saga is supposed to have been written or composed in the beginning of the 13th century; as it mentions one Gudney telling him the saga-writer, of taking up and interring in a church the bones of some of Snorro the Godar's predecessors, and this Gudney is known to have died about 1220. The legend has a value independent of the truth or falsity of the details. These are at least improbable. The man could have no object in concealing his name, which the tokens he was sending to Iceland would at once reveal, and no intelligible motive for not returning with his countrymen. But it is valuable, because, whatever may be the truth of the filling up, or even of the main event of a vessel being driven to an unknown land, it shows an existing rumour or idea among seafaring men, long before Columbus's discoveries, that a north-east wind would bring a vessel sailing from Iceland to Ireland to a new land on the south-west, if she ran before it; and not into an uninhabitable region of fire, as the Romans appear to have conceived of the world. Some obscure knowledge of a western land must have been circulating as a foundation for this legend. The White Man's Land, the Great Ireland, a country in the west peopled by Christians originally of Ireland, has the same kind of value of showing that men, either from the reason in the supposition, which is the most likely, or from some actual chance discovery, had come to the conclusion that there was land in the west opposite the shores of Europe; and it also has the same kind of worthlessness as the other two legends—that the details are evidently fictitious and improbable.
* ↑ Hvarf appears a name given to extreme capes from which the coast turns or bends in a different direction. Cape Wrath, the extreme westerly point of the coast of Scotland, has originally been called Hvarf, and in time changed to Wrath.
* ↑ The Esquimaux appear, by the narrative of his discoveries on the north coast of America by the late Mr. Thomas Simpson (1843), to be by no means the poor physically weak people met with at present in Davis's Straits, and described by Captain Parry.
* ↑ Thattr does not exactly mean deeds, but excerpts or short accounts of deeds. We use in Scotland the expression, "a tait o' woo"—a little wool pulled out of a fleece; which corresponds to the Icelandic thattr,an excerpt.
* ↑ much as to prove too little. Enough is proved for The English trade with Iceland appears to have been very considerable. Annals in manuscript of 1411 and 1413, quoted by Finn Magnuson, in his Treatise on the English Trade to Iceland in the "Nordisk Tidsskrift for Oldkyndighed," mention, besides plundering and piracy committed by the English, proclamations of Eric of Pomerania against trading with them. In 1413 there were thirty English vessels on the Iceland coast. In 1415, in the harbour of Havnefiord there were six English vessels at one time. The trade had been made a monopoly, and the English appear to have forcibly broken through its regulations, in spite of the proclamations of their own and the Norwegian sovereign. The Icelandic bishops at that time—viz. John Johnson, bishop of Holum,and his successor in 142& John Williamson—were Englishmen; and also the bishop of Skalholt in 1430, John Garrickson, appears to have come from England. Bristol and Hull appear, in 1474, to have had a great share of the trade to Iceland. It appears, from the Memoir of Columbus by his son Fernando, that in February, 1477> his father visited Tyle (Thule) or Friesland, "an island as large as England, with which the English, especially those of Bristol, drive a great trade." It is a curious coincidence that he mentions he came to the island without meeting any ice, and the sea was not frozen; and in an authentic document of March in the same year, 1477' it is mentioned as a kind of testimony of the act of which the document is the protocol, that there was no snow whatever upon the ground at the date it was executed,— a rare circumstance, by which it would be held in remembrance. In the year 1477' Magnus Eyolfson was bishop of Skalholt: he had been abbot of the monastery at Helgafel, where the old accounts concerning Vinland and Greenland were, it is supposed, originally written and preserved, and the discoverers were people originally from that neighbourhood. Columbus came in spring to the south end of Iceland, where Whalefiord was the usual harbour; and it is known that Bishop Magnus, exactly in the spring of that year, was on a visitation in that part of his see, and it is to be presumed Columbus must have met and conversed with him. These are curious coincidences of small circumstances, which have their weight.—See Captain Zahrtmann on the Voyage of Zeno, and F. Magnuson on the English Trade to Iceland, 2d vol. of Nordisk Tidsskrift, 1833.
* ↑ "The Deighton stone is a fine-grained greywakke, and the rock of the neighbourhood a large conglomerate. It is situated 6½ miles south of Taunton, on the Taunton river, a few feet from the shore, and is covered with water at flood tide, on the west side of Assonet Point, in the town of Berkley, county of Bristol, and state of Massachusetts, and in a parish or district called Deighton. The marks are described as 'showing no method in the arrangement of them.' The lines are from half an inch to an inch in width, and in depth sometimes one-third of an inch, though in general very superficial. They were, inferring from the rounded elevations and intervening depressions, pecked in upon the rock, and not chiselled or smoothly cutout"—(Communication of the Rhode Island Historical Society to the Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen, 1830.) Other rocks, similarly marked with rude hieroglyphics, or figures of animals, are found in various parts of the interior of America, far from the coast,—as on the Alleghany river, the Connecticut river, about Lake Erie, on Cumberland river, about Rock-castle Creek,—and similar, as sculptured work, to the Deighton stone. Are these too memorials of Thorfinn Karlsefne, left in Vinland by his party of woodcutters? or are they the rude memorials of the wandering Indians, left, if they have a meaning, to show those of their own tribe who may follow that they have been on the spot some time before?