[146] Yule was a pagan festival, held originally in honor of Thor, the god of War, at the beginning of February, which was the opening of the Northman's year. But as Christianity had been established in Greenland for five years, the festival was now probably changed to December, and held in honor of Christ.
[147] Widow of Thorstein Ericson. Rafn thinks, as she is mentioned in this Saga by two names, Gudrid and Thurid, that one was her name in childhood, and the other in her maturer years, when Christianity came to have a practical bearing. Her father's name was Thorbiorn, derived from Thor. It was supposed that those who bore the names of gods would find in these names a charm or special protection from danger.
[148] This is a mistake, Eric's son was dead. It must have been another Thorvald.
[149] The Northmen had two ways of reckoning a hundred, the short and the long. The long hundred was a hundred and twenty. We read in Tegner's Frithiof's Saga:
"But a house for itself was the banquet hall, fashioned in fir wood;
Not five hundred, though told ten dozen to every hundred,
Filled that chamber so vast, when they gathered for Yule-tide carousing."
American ed., chap. iii, p. 13.
Professor Rafn infers that the long hundred was here meant, because he thinks that the inscription on Dighton Rock indicates CLI., the number of men Karlsefne had with him, after losing nine.
[150] The present island of Disco, also called by the Northmen, Biarney, or Bear island.
[151] The northern coast of America was called Helluland the Great, and Newfoundland, Helluland, or Little Helluland.—Antiquitates Americanæ, p. 419.
[152] Supposed from the distance to be the Isle of Sable.