The Discovery of America by the Northmen, 985-1015

by Edmund F. Slafter

"But so much did they desire to land, that they did not give themselves time to wait until the water again rose under their ship, but ran at once on shore, at a place where a river flows out of a lake; but so soon as the waters rose up under the ship, then took they boats, and rowed to the ship, and floated it up to the river, and thence into the lake, and there cast anchor, and brought up from the ship their skin cots, and made there booths. After this they took council, and formed the resolution of remaining there for the winter, and built there large houses."

In this brief extract are all the data which we have relating to the land-fall of Leif, and to the place where he erected his houses, which were occupied by himself, and by other explorers in subsequent years.

We shall observe that we have in this description an island at the mouth of a river. Whether the island was large or small, whether it was round, square, cuneiform, broad, narrow, high or low, we are not told. It was simply an island, and of it we have no further description or knowledge whatever.

Their ship was anchored in what they call a sound, between the island and a promontory or tongue of land which ran out to the eastward. The breadth or extent of the sound at high water, or at low water, is not given. It may have been broad, covering a vast expanse, or it may have been very small, embraced within a few square rods. It was simply a sound, a shallow piece of water, where their ship was stranded at low tide. Of its character we know nothing more whatever.

Then we have a river. Whether it was a large river or a small one, long or short, wide or narrow, deep or shallow, a fresh water or tidal stream, we are not informed. All we know of the river is that their ship could be floated up its current at least at high tide.

The river flowed out of a lake. No further description of the lake is given. It may have been a large body of water, or it may have been a very small one. It may have been only an enlargement or expansion of the river, or it may have been a bay receiving its waters from the ocean, rising and falling with the tides, and the river only the channel of its incoming and receding waters.

On the borders of this lake, or bay, or enlargement of the river, as the case may have been, they built their houses; whether on the right or left shore, whether near the outlet, or miles away, we know not.

It is easy to see how difficult, how impossible, it is to identify the landing-place and temporary abode of the Northmen on our coast from this loose and indefinite description of the sagas.

In the nearly nine hundred years which have passed since the discovery of this continent by these northern explorers, it would be unreasonable not to suppose that very great changes have taken place at the mouth of the rivers and tidal bays along our Atlantic coast. There is probably not a river's mouth or a tidal inlet on our whole eastern frontier, which has not been transformed in many and important features during this long lapse of time. Islands have been formed, and islands have ceased to exist. Sands have been drifting, shores have been crumbling, new inlets have been formed, and old ones have been closed up. Nothing is more unfixed and changeable than the shores of estuaries, and of rivers where they flow into the ocean.

But even if we suppose that no changes have taken place in this long lapse of time, there are, doubtless, between Long Island Sound and the eastern limit of Nova Scotia, a great number of rivers with all the characteristics of that described by the sagas. Precisely the same characteristics belong to the Taunton, the Charles, the Merrimack, the Piscataqua, the Kennebec, the Penobscot, the Saint Croix, and the St. John. All these rivers have one or more islands at their mouth, and there are abundant places near by where a ship might be stranded at low tide, and in each of these rivers there are expansions or bays from which they flow into the ocean.[6] And there are, probably, twenty other less important rivers on our coast, where the same conditions may likewise be found. What sagacious student of history, what experienced navigator, or what learned geographer has the audacity to say that he is able to tell us near which of these rivers the Northmen constructed their habitations, and made their temporary abode! The identification is plainly impossible. Nothing is more certain than the uncertainty that enters into all the local descriptions contained in the Icelandic sagas. In the numerous explorations of those early navigators, there is not a bay, a cape, a promontory, or a river, so clearly described, or so distinctly defined, that it can be identified with any bay, cape, promontory, or river on our coast. The verdict of history on this point is plain, and must stand. Imagination and fancy have their appropriate sphere, but their domain is fiction, and not fact; romance, and not history; and it is the duty of the historical student to hold them within the limits of their proper field.