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Page 5
The next year, which seems to have been A.D. 985, he started on his
return with 35 ships, but only fourteen of them reached the land.
Whenever there was a habitable fiord, a settlement grew up, and the
stream of immigrants was for a while constant and considerable. Just
at the end of the century (A.D. 999) Lief, a son of Eric, sailed back
to Norway, and found the country in the early fervor of a new
religion; for King Olaf Tryggvesson had embraced Christianity, and was
imposing it on his people. Leif accepted the new faith, and a priest
was assigned to him to take back to Greenland; and thus Christianity
was introduced into arctic America. So they began to build churches in
Greenland, the considerable ruins of one of which stands to this day.
The winning of Iceland to the Church was accomplished at the same
time....
In the next year after the second voyage of Eric the Red, one of the
ships which were sailing from Iceland to the new settlement, was
driven far off her course, according to the sagas, and Bjarni
Herjulfson, who commanded the vessel, reported that he had come upon a
land, away to the southwest, where the coast country was level; and he
added that when he turned north it took him nine days to reach
Greenland. Fourteen years later than this voyage of Bjarni, which was
said to have been in A.D. 986--that is, in the year 1000 or
thereabouts--Lief, the same who had brought the Christian priest to
Greenland, taking with him 35 companions, sailed from Greenland in
quest of the land seen by Bjarni, which Lief first found, where a
barren shore stretched back to ice-covered mountains, and, because of
the stones there, he called the region Helluland. Proceeding farther
south, he found a sandy shore, with a level forest country back of it,
and because of the woods it was named Markland. Two days later they
came upon other land, and tasting the dew upon the grass they found it
sweet. Farther south and westerly they went, and going up a river,
came into an expanse of water, where on the shores they built huts to
lodge in for the winter, and sent out exploring parties. In one of
these Tyrker, a native of a part of Europe where grapes grew, found
vines hung with their fruit, which induced Lief to call the country
Vinland.
Attempts have been made to identify these various regions by the
inexact accounts of the direction of their sailing, by the very
general descriptions of the country, by the number of days occupied in
going from one point to another, with the uncertainty if the ship
sailed at night, and by the length of the shortest day in Vinland--the
last a statement that might help us, if it could be interpreted with a
reasonable concurrence of opinion, and if it were not confused with
other inexplicable statements. The next year Lief's brother, Thorwald,
went to Vinland with a single ship, and passed three winters there,
making explorations meanwhile, south and north. Thorfinn Karlsefne,
arriving in Greenland in A.D. 1006, married a courageous widow named
Gudrid, who induced him to sail with his ships to Vinland and make
there a permanent settlement, taking with him livestock and other
necessaries for colonization. Their first winter in the place was a
severe one; but Gudrid gave birth to a son, Snorre, from whom it is
claimed Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor, was descended. The next
season they removed to the spot where Leif had wintered, and called
the bay Hop. Having spent a third winter in the country, Karlsefne,
with a part of the colony, returned to Greenland.
The saga then goes on to say that trading voyages to the settlement
which had been formed by Karlsefne now became frequent, and that the
chief lading of the return voyages was timber, which was much needed
in Greenland. A bishop of Greenland, Eric Upsi, is also said to have
gone to Vinland in A.D. 1121. In 1347 the last ship of which we have
any record in these sagas went to Vinland after timber. After this all
is oblivion.
There are in all these narratives many details beyond this outline,
and those who have sought to identify localities have made the most
they could of the mention of a rock here or a bluff there, of an
island where they killed a bear, of others where they found eggs, of a
headland where they buried a leader who had been killed, of a cape
shaped like a keel, of broadfaced natives who offered furs for red
cloths, of beaches where they hauled up their ships, and of tides that
were strong; but the more these details are scanned in the different
sagas, the more they confuse the investigator, and the more successive
relators try to enlighten us the more our doubts are strengthened,
till we end with the conviction that all attempts at consistent
unravelment leave nothing but a vague sense of something somewhere
done.
[1] From an article by Mr. Winsor in "The Narrative and Critical
History of America," of which he was editor. By arrangement with
the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co., Copyright 1889. For a long
period Mr. Winsor was librarian of Harvard University. He wrote
"From Cartier to Frontenac," "Christopher Columbus," "The Mississippi
Basin," and made other important contributions to American history.
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