Chapter IX: Part II: Discussion (3)

Of perhaps greater importance is the resemblance to fairy-tale which Dr. Nansen seeks to establish from the frequent occurrence of the number three.[78] This feature is not conspicuous in the Flatey Book version, which gives us no fewer than six voyages—Bjarni, Leif, Thorvald, Thorstein, Karlsefni, and Freydis—while the distances between the lands are not given as equal in all cases. In the companion version it is true that the figure three plays or can be made to play a considerable part, yet it is doubtful if so much use can fairly be made of the point as Dr. Nansen argues. There are three voyages—Leif’s, Thorstein’s, Karlsefni’s; but the fact that the second alone is unsuccessful robs the number of the significance which we should expect in fairy-tale. Karlsefni’s expedition consists of three ships, but this is explained by the circumstance that two of these belonged to the visitors to Greenland, while one was manned by the local contingent. Each ship had two leaders—not one or three—and the crews totalled 160 men, so that the figure three is here only to be found by selection from other quite arbitrary numbers. That three countries are visited is only true if we take the nomenclature of the Flatey Book; in the companion account we may rather say that five places are mentioned—Helluland, Markland, Furdustrands, Straumsfjord, and Hóp. With regard to the number of days’ voyage between the different places visited, no emphasis is laid on the number three; the figure recorded is two, and in some cases a long while. If it is said that two days’ voyage involves an arrival on the third day, then no use can fairly be made of the three days’ search for Thorhall on the island, who was found on the fourth day. Dr. Nansen draws attention to the fact that three meetings with skrælings are recorded, but this is only true of the skrælings at Hóp; it omits the five skrælings found sleeping by the sea, and those whose boys were captured in Markland. If the episode at Hóp is to be treated by itself, it is not a fair argument to say that there were three casualties, for only two men were killed at this time, with four of the savages. If Thorvald’s death at the hands of the uniped is to be included, it would be reasonable to take the total loss to the expedition from all causes, which would comprise Thorhall the Hunter and his eight or nine companions, and Bjarni Grimolfson with about half his crew. Altogether the uniformity of fairy-tale seems conspicuously absent, and the mystic figure, appearing as it does with other numbers which Dr. Nansen ignores, is explicable on quite rational hypotheses.

_The Wild Grapes._

Turning now to the broader issues of Dr. Nansen’s argument, they may be summarized as follows. The wild grapes and corn are rejected altogether, and traced to legends of the Insulae Fortunatae in Isidore Hispalensis and classical sources. Most of the other salient features of the narrative, the whale, the bird-island, and above all the skrælings, are treated as derived in the main from Irish legend.

The alleged classical and Celtic influences it will be convenient to consider separately.

I may state at the outset that I believe there is something in Dr. Nansen’s argument from the unusual form of the name Vínland hit Goða, which however in its complete form is hardly to be found in the text of the sagas.

I think it quite possible that this is an Icelandic form of the classical Insulae Fortunatae, but I differ from the author under consideration in concluding, for my part, that the Norsemen, or those who recorded their achievements, identified the newly discovered country with these legendary islands, or considered that the name was appropriate, because of the commodities actually found in America.

It seems to me that herein may have lain the great importance attached to the discovery of the grapes, &c., things of which Scandinavians had little knowledge and could make but little use.

That wild grapes, at all events, were discovered I regard as indisputable. Before the introduction of Christian learning into Iceland and Greenland, which could hardly have been far advanced at the time of the actual voyages, it cannot be said that any knowledge of Isidore or the Insulae Fortunatae is likely to have existed in these countries.

Now the verses of Thorhall the Hunter are admitted by all authorities to bear the marks of contemporary composition. And it cannot be disputed that the first of these verses contains an allusion to the discovery of the grape and is very strong evidence that information of this discovery had penetrated to Greenland at a date earlier than that of the voyage in which the author took part. It is hardly possible, in my opinion, to exaggerate the significance of a contemporary composition which says in effect ‘I had been told before I started that I should find vines, but I have not done so’. The latter part of the verse is immaterial, for it may well have been the case, as indeed is stated in the saga, that the vine region had not at this stage been reached by the expedition; the point is that such a region appears to have been discovered by some predecessor of Thorhall, who composed his verse at a period when knowledge of the Fortunate Islands can hardly have penetrated to the Icelandic or Greenland Colonies. It is moreover not without importance that the briefest accounts of Leif’s voyage contain allusions to the discovery of a ‘Wineland’, showing that this was in fact the salient feature of the discovery in the minds of those who heard of it, even if the name was not conferred by the explorers themselves.

Then too we have the evidence of Adam of Bremen, to which allusion has been made in the chapter on sources. Adam, indeed, is likely to have been well acquainted with the classical allusions to the Fortunate Isles, but the same can hardly be predicated of his informant King Svein of Denmark, and the Danes whose ‘_certa relatio_’ is contrasted by this author, and as I think purposely contrasted, with the ‘_fabulosa opinio_’ on which the existence of such a country had hitherto rested. Adam’s testimony, dating from about 1070, may therefore be regarded as very strong and practically contemporary corroboration of the discovery of the vines alluded to in these sagas.

Again, it is clear that by the time of Ari the Learned, who was born in 1067, the name Wineland had become definitely attached to a country discovered in the west by the Norse explorers, whose existence and position were well enough known to be understood in a casual allusion. It seems to me in the last degree improbable that, by the time Ari wrote, so large an accretion of legend should have collected round the story of the discovery as to account for the name containing an allusion to wine if grapes had not in fact been discovered there. The style of Ari’s writings, as indeed of all the earlier sagas, is the most independent and natural to be found in the whole of literature; this is due to the absence in these times of almost all external influence. It is clear too that Ari was well qualified for the duties of an historian by a most discriminating judgement as to the merits of his sources of information; he is constantly giving us the names and qualifications of the persons from whom his statements are derived, and their knowledge not infrequently goes back to the period now under consideration; hence it is impossible to ignore the value of a mention of a land of vines or wine in the work of this early and conscientious authority.

But it is further to be observed that if the Norsemen discovered America—and it is generally agreed that they did—the commodities of which the sagas speak were in fact there, waiting to be discovered. Precisely the same two things—wild grapes and cereals—struck almost every one of the rediscoverers and later explorers of this continent. The coincidence of a mention of wild vines and corn in the mythical lands of classical writers is just as strong an argument against the truthfulness of these later explorers as of the Norsemen, yet no one doubts their word, corroborated as it is by the facts known to us at the present day. The whole force of Dr. Nansen’s argument under this head rests upon this coincidence; in fact, he summarizes it in these words: ‘The resemblance between this description (Isidore’s of the Fortunate Isles) and that of Wineland is so close that it cannot be explained away as fortuitous.’[79] Yet the resemblance is just as close between the passage cited and many in the reports of later explorers, where it is quite certainly fortuitous.

A few examples of such passages may here be given:

_Cartier._—(Brion Island.) ‘We found it full of goodly trees, meadows, fields of wild corn.’

(North Point, Prince Edward Island.) ‘We landed there this day in four places to see the trees, which are wonderfully fair, &c.,—many others to us unknown.—The lands where there are no woods are very fair, and all so full of wild corn, like rye, that it seems to have been sown and cultivated there.’

(Baye de Chaleur.) ‘Their land is more temperate in heat than the land of Spain—and there is not here any little spot void of woods and made up of sand, which may not be full of wild grain, which has an ear like rye, and the kernel like oats.’

(St. Lawrence River.) ‘On both sides of it we found the fairest and best lands to look at that it may be possible to behold—full of the goodliest trees in the world, and so many vines loaded with grapes along the said river that it seems that they may rather have been planted there by the hand of man than otherwise: but because they are not cultivated nor pruned, the grapes are not so big and sweet as ours.’

Again, ‘Finest trees in the world: to wit, oaks, elms, &c., and, what are better, a great many vines, which had so great abundance of grapes that the crew came aboard all loaded down with them.’

_Champlain._—(Richmond Island.) ‘Many vineyards bearing beautiful grapes in their season.’

(Cape Anne.) ‘We found in this place a great many vines, the green grapes on which were a little larger than peas.’

(Gloucester Bay.) ‘We saw some very fine grapes just ripe.’

_Charles Leigh._—‘Concerning the nature and fruitfulnesse of Brion’s Island, Isle Blanche, and of Ramea, they do by nature yeeld exceeding plenty of wood, great store of wild corne like barley, &c.’

_Hudson._—(Near Cape Cod.) ‘They went on land, and found goodly grapes and rose-trees, and brought them aboard with them.’

_Denys._—(St. John’s River.) ‘There is found here also a great quantity of wild grapes.’

It may further be noticed that both Champlain and Cartier conferred on different places the name Île de Bacchus, from the circumstance that grapes were found there. This name, particularly as it is used of different localities, seems quite as much open to Dr. Nansen’s attack as the Norsemen’s Vínland hit Goða. One can imagine the force with which the eminent explorer could point out the manifest connexion with classical sources, and the close resemblance between this nomenclature and that of the legendary islands from which he thinks the Norsemen drew their vines. If then the resemblance in these cases is fortuitous, as it clearly is, what becomes of Dr. Nansen’s argument?

_The Corn._

It will be noticed that in the passages above cited not only the vine but the wild corn also makes its appearance. It is clear, therefore, that any argument based on analogy or resemblance to these features of the Fortunate Islands is quite inconclusive. Nevertheless the case for the vines is, it must be admitted, considerably stronger than that for the corn. In the first place, no mention of the latter commodity occurs in the Flatey version, if the reference to ‘a wooden corn-barn’ be explicable on another hypothesis, as I have endeavoured to indicate in treating of Thorvald’s voyage.

In the second place, most of the later explorers seem to have meant by ‘wild corn’ something in the nature of lyme-grass (_Arundo arenaria_). But there is a difficulty in accepting this plant as the ‘wild wheat’ of the Icelanders, since lyme-grass, under the name of ‘melur’, was well known to this people; a reference to the method employed in comparatively recent times in preparing flour from it will be found in Troil’s _Letters on Iceland_ at page 105. It is true that Professor Fernald of Boston, in his paper on the plants of Wineland, identifies not only the corn, but the vines and the mösur wood, with commodities known to the Norsemen in their own countries, but this has always seemed to me to add to the already insuperable difficulties in the way of accepting his theories, to which I shall have occasion to revert later on.

All the same, I am inclined to think that something in the nature of lyme-grass may be indicated by the wild corn, and if so perhaps we may here trace to some extent the influence of the classical legends on which Dr. Nansen lays stress. One may imagine, without much straining of probability, that on hearing of the vines learned people would ask leading questions as to the existence of corn, and so the lyme-grass, hitherto considered, as we see from the Flatey Book, to be comparatively unimportant, might have reappeared under a new name. One can certainly imagine the schoolmaster, Adam of Bremen, in his cross-examination of the Danes from whom his information was derived, on hearing of the vines, making some inquiry as to the existence of some sort of wild corn, and being quite truthfully told that it did exist.

However this may be, the identification of the wild corn will always be an insoluble problem. The older commentators on these sagas used to consider that maize was indicated, but this is not, properly speaking, a wild plant, and moreover bears singularly little resemblance to any European cereal. The later school mostly identifies the corn of the sagas with wild rice, but this is open to the objection that it is an aquatic plant. On the whole, therefore, while I think the discovery of the vine is indisputable, and was the cause rather than the effect of any trace of the influence of the legends of the Insulae Fortunatae to be met with in the sagas, I confess, in spite of the coincidence of the reports of later explorers, to regarding the corn as a more difficult problem.

In any case it seems to me that the absence of all mention of wild corn in the Flatey Book version has a most significant bearing on Dr. Nansen’s argument. For in practically all references to the Fortunate Islands the corn and the vines are so closely connected that a borrower from such sources could hardly take the one without the other.

E.g. Horace, _Epodes_, xvi. 41:

‘Beata
petamus arva, divites et insulas;
reddit ubi _Cererem_ tellus inarata quotannis,
et imputata floret usque _vinea_’;

and Isidore, _Etymologiarum_ xiv. 6:

‘Fortuitis _vitibus_ iuga collium vestiuntur; ad herbarum vicem _messis_.’

The existence, therefore, of a circumstantial account of Wineland, which contains no mention of wild corn, makes any derivative connexion between the descriptions of this country and the Insulae Fortunatae, apart from all other difficulties, exceedingly improbable.

_Celtic Legends._

When we turn to the other features of the saga, we find Dr. Nansen displaying even greater resource and ingenuity in finding parallels in the folk-lore of other lands. The argument from analogy is proverbially untrustworthy, but it is at the same time rather difficult to combat effectively where, as in the present case, it is impossible to set out the full number of alleged resemblances with which Dr. Nansen’s industry in research has provided him. Samples are open to the charge of unfair selection. I should doubt, for example, whether even Dr. Nansen himself, though he emphasizes the parallel with a marginal heading, can attach any real importance to such an instance as the following:

‘The great river that Brandan found in the Terra Repromissionis,
and that ran through the middle of the island, may be compared to
the stream that Karlsefni found at Hóp in Wineland, which fell
into a lake and thence into the sea.... But the river which
divided the Terra Repromissionis ... was evidently originally the
river of death, Styx or Acheron in Greek mythology (Gjöll in Norse
mythology). One might be tempted to suppose that, in the same way
as the whole description of Wineland has been dechristianized
from the Terra Repromissionis, the realistic, and therefore often
rationalizing, Icelanders have transformed the river in the
promised land, the ancient river of death, into the stream at
Hóp.’[80]

A striking parallel to this parallel leaps at once to the mind of the irreverent. ‘There is a river in Macedon, and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth: it is called Wye at Monmouth; but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but ’tis all one, ’tis so like as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both’ (_Henry V_, Act IV, sc. vii).

In so far as there were ‘salmons in both’, it must I think be conceded by the impartial reader that Fluellen’s analogy is more striking than Dr. Nansen’s.

Before considering further examples of the resemblances which Dr. Nansen has sought to establish, a few words may be said which are of general application to the whole. As in the instance above cited, Dr. Nansen’s analogies are practically all drawn from the mythical ‘imramha’ or voyages which form a definite class in early Irish literature. This class merges gradually at a later period into vision literature, where a vision of Paradise takes the place of a voyage into the wonderlands of the unseen world. But in its earlier form, with which Dr. Nansen is mainly concerned, the imramh took the form of a kind of Odyssey, in course of which the voyagers discovered many new and wonderful countries. It is manifest therefore that many elements must necessarily be present from which analogies with any voyage of discovery, however genuine, can be deduced. Unless, then, the similarities to be found are more striking than anything which can be explained from these necessary coincidences, we should, I submit, attach but little importance to them. We should remember also that the Icelander, however realistic or rational, is not likely to have been a discriminating borrower or to have rejected fabulous elements quite credible in a superstitious age. Thus we should expect, if extensive loans were taken from a literature exceptionally rich in the monstrous and marvellous, to find at any rate a good many definite instances where these characteristics have been retained without much alteration.

I have said that Irish literature was exceptionally rich in the monstrous and marvellous. This indeed is a characteristic insisted upon by Mr. W. B. Yeats in his admirable introduction to Lady Gregory’s _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_ as the great distinction between Celtic and Scandinavian writings. ‘The Irish story-teller’, he says, ‘could not interest himself with an unbroken interest in the way men like himself burned a house or won wives no more wonderful than themselves. His mind constantly escaped out of daily circumstance, as a bough that has been held down by a weak hand suddenly straightens itself out. His imagination was always running off to Tir-nan-Oge, to the land of Promise, which is as near to the country-people of to-day as it was to Cuchulain and his companions.’ ‘Just so,’ says Dr. Nansen, ‘and therefore when the Icelander borrowed he rationalized.’ But had he the necessary critical discrimination to enable him to reject the fabulous? Was he so free from superstitious beliefs as to be able to discredit the mythical? By no means. Nothing is clearer than that he was highly superstitious, believing intensely in ghosts, and portents of all kinds: in fact, he believed in them so thoroughly that they almost ceased to be portentous from the matter-of-fact way in which he thought of them. For all he knew, the wildest flights of the Celtic imagination might be sober truth, and as truth he would have set them down if they had concerned him. But if they were no part of the story he was telling, they could be left out of it.

Now if we examine one of these Irish stories, we shall find the marvellous elements to be the very bones and sinews of the tale. Eliminate these and nothing is left which it would not be easy to parallel from the records of any voyage of discovery. There is nothing characteristic to which any resemblance can be traced, except these clearly mythical features. Take as an example the summary of Maelduin’s voyage given on p. 336 of the first volume of Dr. Nansen’s work. First we hear how ‘swarms of ants, as large as foals, came down to the beach and showed a desire to eat’ the crew and the boat.

‘This land’, says Dr. Nansen, ‘is the parallel to Helluland, where there were a number of Arctic foxes.’ Now there seems to me no reason why an Icelandic writer of the thirteenth century should have discredited the possibility of these Brobdingnagian ants. Yet he describes merely Arctic foxes, animals differing in every way about as widely from these ants as could well be imagined. They are not insects, they are not large, they are not dangerous or formidable. They are animals actually to be found in the northern parts of the American continent, and the locality where they are found is correctly described as a land of rocks, and not a beach at all. Is it credible that the one story, accurate in every particular, could have been derived by the exercise of any amount of imagination from the other? Set your children to rationalize Maelduin’s story, and see if you will get the ants turned to foxes in any single case.

Next we hear of ‘a great lofty island with terraces around it and rows of trees on which there were many large birds’. ‘This island’, says Dr. Nansen, ‘might correspond to the wooded Markland, with its many animals, where Karlsefni and his people killed a bear.’ Then where is the island, or where are the terraces, or the loftiness, or the birds, none of them features, one would have thought, which the most rationalistic need have hesitated to retain? We have, on the contrary, a low-lying land, apparently mainland, wooded indeed, but otherwise unlike in every single particular. Next we read of a sandy island, inhabited by a beast like a horse with dog’s paws and claws. Next a flat island with marks of horses’ hoofs as large as a ship’s sail, nutshells of marvellous size, and traces of human occupation. Next comes a lofty island with a great house sumptuously furnished, into which the waves of the sea threw salmon. Here Dr. Nansen might claim, with Fluellen, ‘salmons in both’, but this has not usually been regarded as a convincing analogy. Lastly we are told of an island encompassed by a great cliff with a single tree growing on it. A branch of this Maelduin caught, and held for three days while sailing by the island, at the end of which time there were three apples at the end of the branch. Not even grapes! I am not sure, in spite of some ambiguous phrases, that in quoting this long passage Dr. Nansen wishes to emphasize many similarities beyond the recurrence of a certain number of periods of three days. But the description is convenient for my purposes as affording a characteristic example of the type of legend from which it is suggested that most of the features of the saga were derived. And I ask myself in vain where is the slightest trace to be found of one story in the other, except that both are voyages of discovery?

_Correspondence with actual Facts._

Or the case may be put thus: If the fauna and natural products described are merely the monstrosities of Celtic fiction taken with a grain of Icelandic salt, how comes it that they invariably correspond with the actual facts of the countries to which the earliest discoverers of America would most probably have come?

Indisputably this is the case until we come to Straumsfjord, though not much stress can be laid on the circumstance that descriptions so brief and general as those of Helluland and Markland happen to be accurate. The episode of the Irish runners appears indeed to have been inserted out of its proper order, and while not impossible may embody a distinct and less reliable tradition, and in the case of the whale incident the details given by Hauk may be rejected in favour of the simpler account given in the Flatey Book.

But there seems no good reason to doubt that a stranded whale did actually provide food for the explorers, or to regard, as Dr. Nansen does, this incident as borrowed from St. Brendan. The second song of Thorhall the Hunter, generally admitted to be a contemporary production, and anyhow the oldest part of the existing story, makes a plain reference to such an episode when it speaks of ‘boiling whales’. Whales moreover figure extensively in the legends collected from the Algonquins and Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia and New England by C. G. Leland, while Douglas, in his Summary of the planting of the British North American Settlements (1760), refers to whales setting in along shore by Cape Cod, and records that the back of Long Island, where small whales affect the flats, was the first place of the English whale-fishery. To eat whale-meat, even without the pressure of hunger, was quite natural for an Icelander, for Troil writes in his _Letters on Iceland_ (1780), with special reference to the ‘reydur’, the name applied to the whale in question in the Flatey Book, ‘they are all considered very dainty food; and the Icelanders say that the flesh has the taste of beef.’ With regard to the whale incident, therefore—at any rate as recorded in the simpler version—it may be said, first, that it appears to be corroborated by contemporary allusion, secondly that it was perfectly consistent with the local natural history, and lastly that there was at any rate no need for an Icelander to go to Ireland for stories of whales being used as food. Dr. Nansen’s case accordingly breaks down in regard to the whale. The other salient feature mentioned in connexion with Straumsfjord is the bird-island. This Dr. Nansen dismisses as ‘evidently an entirely Northern feature, brought in to decorate the tale, and brought in so infelicitously that they are made to find all this mass of eggs in the autumn’. He further denies the existence of any breeding-grounds of importance even so far south as Nova Scotia. Now, in the first place, the statement that the eggs were gathered in the autumn is not the saga-writer’s but Dr. Nansen’s. The expedition left Greenland—according to Hauk—in spring, according to the companion text in summer. We may suppose therefore that the start was made not later than the beginning of May. No prolonged stay was made anywhere until Straumsfjord was reached.

Even therefore if we reject all the distances recorded, and assume a rate of sailing as low as one tylft a day, (75 miles, or little over three knots), it is manifest that wherever we place Straumsfjord the explorers would have arrived there before the end of the nesting-season. And though they stayed in this place for the winter, when they suffered from great scarcity, no mention is made of egg-collecting till the following spring, after the first record of the discovery, immediately upon their arrival in Straumsfjord.

Next, although the statement ‘a man’s feet could hardly come down between the eggs’ is at first sight startling, it is an easy task to find parallel passages among the later records of exploration in or about these latitudes.

For example, Charles Leigh (in _Hakluyt’s Voyages_) says of the Islands of Birds in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that they ‘are sandy red, but with the multitude of birds upon them they looke white. The birds sit there as thicke as stones lie in a paved street.’

The same locality is described in language almost equally striking by Jacques Cartier: ‘These Islands are as full of birds as a field is of grass, which nest within these islands.’

If Dr. Nansen objects that the islands here alluded to are not quite so far south as Nova Scotia, where he denies the existence of large breeding-places, we may refer him to Nicholas Denys, who writes of an island off this coast which has been identified with Sambro Island, near Halifax:

‘I was once there with a boat, at the time when the birds make
their nests. We found so great an abundance of all the kinds I have
named that all my crew and myself, having cut clubs for ourselves,
killed so great a number, as well of young as of their fathers and
mothers, which were very sluggish in rising from their nests, that
we were unable to carry them all away. And aside from these the
number of those which were spared and which rose into the air made
a cloud so thick that the rays of the sun could scarcely penetrate
through it.’

Or again take Champlain (islands near Cape Sable, Nova Scotia):

‘Thence we went to Cormorant island, a league distant, so called
from the infinite number of cormorants found there, of whose eggs
we collected a cask full.... At the two other islands there is
such an abundance of birds of different sorts, that one could not
imagine it, if he had not seen them.’

Lastly we may turn to more modern times and still more southerly latitudes, and refer to the ‘hundreds of thousands’ of breeding sea-birds observed on and about Muskegat Island as lately as 1870.[81] This after centuries of indiscriminate plunder by the hand of man may well lead us to accept as practically literal fact the birds’ nests of Straumsey, wherever we may feel disposed to locate this island. In any case it would appear rash to dismiss this detail as a purely northern feature, and still more far-fetched to trace, as Dr. Nansen does, a possible connexion between these eggs and the red and white ‘_scaltae_’ which covered the anchorite’s island in the legend of St. Brendan.[82]

Among the remaining descriptions of the fauna of Wineland there does not appear to be much calling for any comment. As to the halibut—or ‘holy fish’—taken in pits dug at the tide-mark, it seems to me most likely that the fish here alluded to was the American plaice or chicken halibut. Of these it is said in Goode’s _American Fishes_ (p. 316): ‘Very shoal water seems to be particularly attractive, and they are often found at the water’s edge, embedded in the sand, with only their eyes in view.’ Cf. the tract _New English Canaan_:[83] ‘There are excellent plaice and easily taken. They (at flowing water) do almost come ashore, so that one may step but half a foot deep, and prick them up on the sands.’

In any case, all Dr. Nansen’s researches have failed to provide him with a mythical source for this feature.

We find, in short, wherever we look, in place of the wild absurdities of Irish legend, sober descriptions of places with their fauna and flora which are perfectly natural. What is more important, we do not find in these descriptions the sort of thing likely to occur to an Icelander or Greenlander, who was rationalizing a legend to make it fit the circumstances to which he was accustomed. Apart from the wine and corn, we have a temperate climate with woods and large trees, low shores and sandy beaches; except for the introduction of glaciers into Helluland in the Flatey Book, which may be an embroidery from local sources to emphasize the desolate character of the landscape, we trace a manifest attempt throughout to describe conditions, natural enough to us, but quite unlike anything characteristic of Iceland or Greenland. With regard to the vines in particular, one can see that the nature of these things was imperfectly understood by the saga-writers, so unlike were they to anything with which they were acquainted at home. The most conspicuous example of the description of something utterly foreign to Icelandic conceptions is, however, the account of the ‘Skrælings’ or savages. These, however, are so important an item in the consideration of the question that they must be allotted a chapter to themselves.

IV. SKRÆLINGS

There remains to be considered what is probably the most important feature of all, the information given in the sagas on the subject of the aborigines. In this connexion it is important to observe that at the time of the voyages themselves in all probability a savage tribe was a complete novelty to the Norsemen. The only possible exceptions were the Eskimo of Greenland, of whom probably something was known by the time that the Wineland sagas were reduced to writing. In so far, then, as the descriptions of the Skrælings of Wineland are realistic, and differ materially from anything which can have been derived from Eskimo sources, these descriptions form probably the most convincing proof of the historical accuracy of these stories. The inquiry at this point falls therefore under three heads: possible or probable Eskimo influences, any traces which may be found of legendary or mythical influences, and characteristics indisputably Indian.

_Testimony of the Íslendíngabók._

Now first of all it must be stated that we have no evidence of any meeting between the Norsemen and the Eskimo of Greenland until after the time of Ari the Learned. And indeed we have some evidence that no such meeting had up to this time taken place, while it is clear that the existence of Skrælings in Wineland had at this date been reported. In a previous chapter (p. 95) I have drawn attention to Ari’s testimony on the point, but in view of Dr. Nansen’s comments upon it some further reference must now be made to these matters.

In Ari’s Íslendíngabók, in the passage relating to the colonization of Greenland (see Appendix and cf. p. 95), it is stated that dwellings and fragments of canoes had been discovered. And the writer goes on explicitly: ‘and stone smith-work (weapons) _such_ that from _it_ (steinsmíði þat, es af því) one may understand that there that kind of folk had passed (farit) who have settled in (bygt) Wineland, and the Greenlanders call Skrælings.’ One could hardly have a clearer statement that the deduction as to the former presence of this people in Greenland was based on such traces as are here mentioned, and on nothing else. It seems _prima facie_ most improbable that such guarded terms should be used if the Greenlanders had at this time actually met the Eskimo, and thus provided themselves with a much more conclusive proof of their existence. Moreover we have, besides the express terms used by Ari, the apparently intentional contrast to which I have alluded elsewhere between the transitory and past movement of the Eskimo through the one country (farit) and the permanent residence of the savages in Wineland (bygt). And it would seem a legitimate and almost irresistible inference to draw from this passage that accounts of savages with canoes and stone weapons (cf. the ‘hellustein’ which slew Thorbrand Snorrison in Wineland) were forthcoming at a time when the Norsemen had no other source but America from which the existence of such things could be known to them. Dr. Nansen however concludes that Ari’s silence as to the Eskimo themselves was due to the fact that ‘they were supernatural beings of whom it was best to say nothing’.[84] It is rather difficult to see, if this were so, why Ari should have felt himself at liberty to mention the existence of these people in Wineland any more than in Greenland, or why he should have thought it any better to speak of the inferred existence of the Eskimo than to record their actual occurrence. Further, we may fairly demand where it is that Dr. Nansen finds in Icelandic literature any reluctance to mention supernatural beings, where these are believed to have existed. Altogether it appears to me an understatement of the case to say that no meeting between the Norsemen and the Eskimo prior to the date of the Íslendíngabók seems at all probable.

Dr. Nansen, however, writes (vol. ii, p. 77): ‘I am unable to read Ari’s meaning in this way. He uses the present tense: “calla”, and what one “calls Skrælings” must presumably be a people one knows, and not one that one’s ancestors had met with more than a hundred years ago.’ On this line of reasoning, if I speak of ‘the man whom Carlyle _calls_ the Sea-Green Incorruptible’, I mean to imply that Robespierre and Carlyle were contemporaries. Dr. Nansen further refers (loc. cit.) to the parallel passage in Ari, mentioning the Irish monks in Iceland ‘whom the Norwegians call (calla) Papar’.[85] ‘From these words’, he says, ‘it might be concluded, with as much justification as from the statement about the traces of Skrælings, that the newcomers did not come in contact with the earlier people; but in the latter case this is incredible, and moreover conflicts with Ari’s own words.’ Let us examine this statement. In the first place it is clear from Ari’s statement, ‘they went away afterwards’, that none were left at the time of writing, yet he still says, in conformity with normal grammatical usage, that the Norsemen ‘call’, i.e. speak of, them as Papar. It is obvious, therefore, from the very passage to which Dr. Nansen appeals, that the use of the present tense does not denote the contemporary presence of the Irish monks, and it need not therefore indicate in the other passage the presence of any Skrælings in Ari’s time in the Greenland colony.

In the second place, whereas in the Skræling passage Ari only mentions traces from which their former presence could be inferred, he begins his reference to the ‘Papar’ with the words, ‘_There were then Christians here_, those whom the Norsemen call “Papar”, but they went away afterwards ... and left behind’, &c. This passage therefore cannot be taken as affording any support to Dr. Nansen’s construction of the statement about the Skrælings.

In another place (vol. ii, p. 16) Dr. Nansen suggests that the mention of traces of Skræling occupation without recording a meeting with the men themselves has an uncanny significance, suggesting that the Skrælings are treated as trolls. It seems more natural on the whole to construe the passage as meaning what it says—that the traces were there but not the men.

While on this subject I may as well refer to an inaccuracy which appears in the note on page 77 of Dr. Nansen’s second volume. He says there, ‘If it was the tradition of Karlsevne’s encounter with the Skrælings that was referred to, then of course neither he nor the greater part of his men were Greenlanders, but Icelanders, so that it might equally well have been said that the Icelanders called them Skrælings.’ This is in direct conflict with the statement in the Saga of Eric the Red, ‘ok váru þar flestir Grœnlendskir menn á’—‘and the majority of those there on (the expedition) were Greenlanders.’ Of course the real reason why Ari says ‘the Greenlanders call them Skrælings’ is that he is here citing, as he tells us, a Greenland source, viz. the information obtained by his uncle, Thorkel Gellison, in Greenland. The argument, therefore, in Dr. Nansen’s note, like that of the text, falls to the ground.

_The Skræling Canoes._

Conceding, however, that some knowledge of the Eskimo may have prevailed at the time when our sagas assumed their present form, though the ‘King’s Mirror’, composed about the middle of the thirteenth century, says nothing of these people in its detailed description of Greenland, the question next arises as to how far the writers can have been indebted to such knowledge for their realistic descriptions of the Wineland savages. These Skrælings, as they are called, make their first appearance in the story during the exploration of Thorvald, as narrated in the Flatey Book. We are told how three canoes of skin (húðkeipar) were observed, with three men sleeping beneath each. These canoes appear to have been so portable that one man, the only survivor of the ensuing slaughter, was enabled to escape with one. Now here at first sight we have an Eskimo characteristic, in the fact that the canoes are said to have been of skin. And indeed it may well be that the word used is simply the Greenlanders name for a kayak. This, however, is not certain, for it would need a close inspection of an Indian canoe, with its sewn ‘skin’ of birch-bark, to enable a people unfamiliar with the use of this material in boat-building to distinguish between such a covering and a hide. I prefer not to lay stress, as some have done, on the fact that some Indian tribes used skin coverings for their canoes, for the natives of the latitudes with which we are concerned are represented in the earliest authorities as using birch-bark. Turning, however, from the name used to the thing described, it is quite clear that we here have neither kayaks nor umiaks, but Indian canoes. Three men could not possibly sleep under a kayak, which is a narrow craft covered in at all points but one, like a Rob Roy canoe or a racing outrigger. Nor could one man carry off an umiak, which is a large and clumsy boat, usually manned (if this is not a bull) by women. Both these forms of Eskimo boat were observed and accurately described in the contemporary account of Frobisher’s second voyage (1577), given in Hakluyt,—‘The greater sort—wherein sixteen or twenty men may sit:—the other boat is but for one man to sit and row in with one oar;’ and doubtless at a much earlier time the Eskimo constructed their kayaks and umiaks in practically the same manner as at the present day. But an Indian canoe exactly and completely fulfils the conditions required in both respects. It is exceedingly light and portable, yet it may be, and frequently is, used as a shelter for its occupants. On this last point one may compare the observation of Jacques Cartier with regard to a tribe of Indians met with in the course of his explorations. ‘They have no other dwelling but their boats, which they turn upside down, and under them they lay themselves all along upon the bare ground.’ (Hakluyt’s translation.) Here, then, we have a feature which, with the possible exception of the word used for canoe, can only have been drawn from an actual meeting with the North American Indians, and of which the historical accuracy is indisputable.

_The Skræling Food._

Another small point accurately observed and almost certainly pointing to direct contact with the American Indians is to be found in the passage relating to the sleeping Skrælings discovered and slain by Karlsefni’s expedition. They had, we are told, cases containing animal marrow mixed with blood, a description which seems to refer to something in the nature of pemmican, or the ‘moose-butter’ of which Denys speaks in his work on Nova Scotia, and Father Leclercq in his _Relation of Gaspesia_. This was a cake of hard grease extracted from the bones of the moose, and Denys tells us that ‘it was this which they (the Indians) used as their entire provision for living when they went hunting’.

_Personal Appearance._

In the description of the personal appearance of the Skrælings there is little that is decisive, but much that is circumstantial. One of the two companion texts describes them as ‘swarthy’, the other as ‘small’. ‘Small’ sounds more like Eskimo than Indian, and may be a corruption of the original text based on knowledge derived from Greenland. Ugliness, unkempt hair, and broad cheeks would apply to many Indian tribes, e.g. Micmacs, as well as to Eskimo. Large eyes would seem at first sight to apply to neither, and Dr. Nansen therefore considers it to be a trait showing the introduction of troll ideas. Yet the eyes of Indians have struck many genuine observers as large; for example, Lescarbot tells us that these features ‘neantmoins ne sont petits, comme ceux des anciens Scythes, mais d’une grandeur bien agréable’. Carver, again (1779), says of the Indians, ‘their eyes are large and black.’ Verezzano likewise speaks of ‘large black eyes and a fixed expression’. Another characteristic claimed by Nansen as evidence of the influence of the troll-idea is the beard which we are told was possessed by one of the Skrælings discovered in Markland: but this strikes me as telling rather the other way, for all trolls are bearded, and the Norsemen were so commonly so as to be known to the Greenland Eskimo as ‘Long-beards’. The point therefore appears to have been recorded precisely because of its rarity among the Skrælings, and, while Indians for the most part take care to remove all hair from the face and body, the possibility of beards among this people is recognized by almost all writers on the subject (cf. Lescarbot, Schoolcraft, Carter, Catlin, &c.). It may be admitted, however, that the personal appearance of the Skrælings is not a point from which any very clear inference can be drawn either one way or the other.

_The Waving Staves._

The savages whose appearance is described in these ambiguous terms made their appearance in canoes on board of which—we are told—certain objects were waved with a noise like threshing. The word used of these objects is variously written ‘trjánum’, ‘trjom’, and ‘trjónum’. It has been usually translated ‘staves’ or ‘poles’, but if ‘trjónum’ be the correct reading it would seem doubtful whether something more in the nature of a totem-mask or movable figure-head is not indicated. For ‘trjóna’ means primarily a snout, and then a detachable figure-head; cf. the interesting passage in Landnáma (IV. 7) referring to an old law whereby men were enjoined to remove their figure-heads before approaching Iceland, ‘and not to sail to land with gaping heads or open-mouthed snouts (trjónum) which might disturb the local spirits’. It might on the one hand be argued that figure-heads are things more intimately connected with the idea of boats than staves are, but for that very reason a copyist would be more likely to convert ‘trjánum’ into ‘trjónum’ in the passage under consideration than to err in the opposite direction.

Accepting the meaning ‘staves’ or ‘poles’, a recent writer[86] regards this as proof that the description is drawn from Eskimo, and Dr. Nansen makes a similar suggestion. To Mr. Gosling it is ‘evident that this is an attempt to describe the motion of the double-bladed paddle used by the Eskimos, and it will be seen that an Eskimo, sitting in his kayak, facing the direction towards which he is paddling, when going east or north, will appear to wave his paddle contrary to the motion of the sun in the heavens, but with it when travelling west or south’. I must confess that this attempt at an explanation is very far from satisfying me. In the first place it seems to me most unlikely, that the Norsemen could observe a large number of kayaks on three separate occasions without understanding that the waving paddle was merely the means of propulsion. In the next place, though nothing explicit is stated as to the direction from which the first visitors arrived, the second and third visits, one peaceable and the other hostile—one therefore in which the staves moved with the sun and the other in which they moved against it—both came ‘from the south’, so that the movement of the paddles would be the same in both cases. Again, a kayak paddle, having a blade at each end, does not move continuously in one direction, but from side to side, while, viewed broadside, the motion is that of a stave rotated forward.

Finally, though perhaps of less importance, it may be pointed out that on one occasion the language used seems to imply more than one ‘trjóna’ to each boat (var veift á hverju skipi trjánum). Having regard to the prevalence in America, as in most other countries, of the ceremonial use of solar and contra-solar motion (cf. Brinton’s _Myths of the New World_), it seems to me a more probable explanation that we have here a genuine and interesting use of a sign correctly interpreted by the Norsemen, which further research into Indian customs and superstitions might succeed in elucidating. For my part, I am inclined to think that the ‘trjóna’ was a rattle-stick, such as is used by many Indian tribes. No other explanation hitherto suggested takes into account the ‘noise like threshing’ which is a circumstantial part of the description. Rattles, being normally an accompaniment to dancing, would be likely to be swung with or against the sun according to the significance of the ceremony of which they were a part.

With regard to the white and red shields used as answering signals by the Norsemen, of course there is no need to suppose that the Skrælings understood them, as Dr. Nansen does, observing that these features ‘have an altogether European effect’. Yet by a curious coincidence such signs would in fact have probably been intelligible to American Indians, for it is stated in Wood’s _Natural History of Man_ that, ‘As among us, white and red are the signs of peace and war, and each leader carries with him two small flags, one of white bison’s hide and the other of reddened leather.’ But we may be content to observe that the Norsemen would be likely to make their customary attempts at signalling regardless of the fact that their efforts might be unintelligible.[87]

_Trading and Fighting._

The fur-trading of the savages will recall to any student of the history of exploration numerous parallels in the writing of Jacques Cartier and others. In particular one may claim as a genuine Indian characteristic the eager acquisition of red cloth to bind round the head. Numerous parallels to this may be found in the records of later explorers; in particular one may cite, from Juet’s description of Hudson’s third voyage (ed. Hakluyt Society, p. 60), what reads almost like a free translation of the saga: ‘They brought many beaver skinnes and other fine furres, which they would have changed for redde gownes.’

It does not appear likely that the seal-clad Eskimo of Greenland, who seem to have kept out of the way of the Norsemen as much as possible, could have contributed such a feature to the story. Even more certainly authentic is the account of the fights with the natives. Eskimo, as Dr. Nansen points out, were unused to war in Greenland, where indeed they had no other nation to fight, while of course warfare has always been a normal part of the Indian’s existence. (It must be conceded, however, that Frobisher found the American Eskimo distinctly warlike and pugnacious.) It is clear that the Skrælings were formidable antagonists, since it was the fear of them which ultimately drove Karlsefni to withdraw from the country. Of their weapons only one seems to call for comment, the large ball, resembling a sheep’s paunch and dark in colour, which was slung from a pole towards Karlsefni’s force, making a terrible noise where it came down. Dr. Nansen has sought to parallel this incident from a number of disconnected sources, ranging from the use of catapults and even gunpowder in European warfare to the fiery mass thrown with tongs at St. Brendan’s ship by the inhabitants of the Smith’s Island, and a similar incident in Mælduin’s voyage, and through these last to the Cyclops in the _Odyssey_.[88] In all these suggested sources, however, the differences seem quite as striking as the resemblances. The pole is absent, the resemblance to a sheep’s paunch seems remote, the missile in the case under consideration appears to have been neither fiery nor explosive, and altogether it is difficult to see that the incidents cited have more in common than the presence of a large and in some cases noisy missile. Bearing this in mind, let us see whether a resemblance far more striking is not to be found in a passage which Dr. Nansen passes by with a half-contemptuous footnote. The passage in question, which is to be found in Schoolcraft’s _Indian Tribes of the United States_, vol. i, p. 85, appears to me of sufficient importance to be quoted in full.