From an Icelandic MS., fourteenth century
CHAPTER IX
WINELAND THE GOOD, THE FORTUNATE ISLES, AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
The oldest authorities on Wineland
Icelandic literature contains many remarkable statements about countries to the south-west or south of the Greenland settlements. They are called: “Helluland” (i.e., slate- or stone-land), “Markland” (i.e., wood-land), “Furðustrandir” (i.e., marvel-strands), and “Vínland” (also written “Vindland” or “Vinland”). Yet another, which lay to the west of Ireland, was called “Hvítramanna-land” (i.e., the white men’s land). Even if certain of these countries are legendary, as will presently be shown, it must be regarded as a fact that in any case the Greenlanders and Icelanders reached some of them, which lay on the north-eastern coast of America; and they thus discovered the continent of North America, besides Greenland, about five hundred years before Cabot (and Columbus).
While Helluland, Markland and Furðustrandir are first mentioned in authorities of the thirteenth century, “Vinland” occurs already in Adam of Bremen, about 1070 (see above, [pp. 195 ff.]). Afterwards the name occurs in Icelandic literature: first in Are Frode’s “Islendingabók,” about 1130, where we are only told that in Greenland traces were found of the same kind of people as “inhabited Wineland” (“Vínland hefer bygt”; see above, [p. 260]); it is next mentioned together with Hvítramanna-land in the “Landnámabók,” where it may have been taken from Are Frode, as the latter’s uncle, Thorkel Gellisson, is given as the authority. It has been thought that the original statement was contained in a lost work of Are’s; in any case it must belong to the period before his death in 1148. We are only told that Hvítramanna-land lay to the west in the ocean near Vin(d)land; but the passage is important, because, as will be discussed later, it clearly shows that the statements about Wineland in the oldest Icelandic authorities were derived from Ireland. The next mention of Wineland is in “Kristni-saga” (before 1245) and “Heimskringla,” where it is only said that Leif the Lucky found Wineland the Good. It should be remarked that while thus in the oldest authorities Wineland is only mentioned casually and in passing, it is not until we come to the Saga of Eric the Red, of the thirteenth century, and the Flateyjarbók’s “Grönlendinga-þáttr,” of the fourteenth, that we find any description of the country, and of voyages to it and to Helluland and Markland. But two verses, reproduced in the first of these sagas, are certainly considerably older than the saga itself; and they speak of the country where there was wine to drink instead of water, and of Furðustrandir where they boil whales’ flesh.
It may be added that in the “Eyrbyggja-saga” (of about 1250) it is said that “Snorre went with Karlsevne to Wineland the Good, and when they fought with the Skrælings there in Wineland, Snorre’s son Thorbrand fell in the fight.” In the “Grettis-saga” (about 1290), Thorhall Gamlason, one of those who took part in this expedition, is called “Vindlendingr” or “Viðlendingr” (which should doubtless be “Vinlendingr” in each case). If we add to this that in the Icelandic geography which is known from various MSS. of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but which is attributed in part (although hardly the section about Greenland, Wineland, etc.) to Abbot Nikulás Bergsson of Thverá (ob. 1159), Helluland, Markland and Vinland are mentioned as lying to the south of Greenland (see later), then we shall have given all the certain ancient authorities in which Wineland occurs [cf. G. Storm, 1887, pp. 10 ff.]; but possibly the runic stone from Ringerike is to be added (see later).
The formation of the saga
Before I recapitulate the most important features of these voyages, as they are described more particularly in the Saga of Eric the Red, I must premise that I look upon the narratives somewhat in the light of historical romances, founded upon legend and more or less uncertain traditions. Gustav Storm in his critical review of the Wineland voyages [1887] has separated the older authorities, which he regarded as altogether trustworthy, from the later narratives in the Flateyjarbók’s “Grönlendinga-þáttr,” which he thought were to be rejected. The last-named was written about 1387, while Eric the Red’s Saga, which we are to regard as trustworthy, must according to Storm have been written between 1270 and 1300.[292] The accounts of the discovery of Wineland and of the voyages thither are very conflicting in these two authorities; while the latter has only two voyages (after the discovery), the former has divided them into five; while one mentions Leif Ericson as the discoverer of the country, the other gives Bjarne Herjulfsson, and so on. We are led to ask whether it is reasonable to suppose that the traditions should have been handed down by word of mouth in such a remarkably unaltered and uncorrupted state during the first 250 or 300 years, when they have been transformed and confused to such an extent scarcely a hundred years later. This must rather prove that there was no fixed tradition, but that the tales became split up into more and more varying forms. Perhaps it will be answered that the Saga of Eric the Red was composed in the golden age of saga-writing, whereas the Flateyjarbók belongs to the period of decline.[293] But it cannot be psychologically probable that human nature in Iceland should suddenly have undergone so great a change, that while the saga-tellers of the fourteenth century were disposed to invent romances, they should not have had any tendency thereto throughout the three preceding centuries. It is particularly natural that many alterations and additions should be made when, as here, the narratives are concerned with distant waters which lay so far out of the ordinary course of voyages, and which for a long time had ceased to be known in Iceland when the sagas were put into writing. Features belonging to the description of other quarters of the globe were also inserted. Tales which in this way live in oral tradition and gradually develop into sagas, without any written word to support them, and to some extent even without any known localities to which they can be attached, are to be regarded as living organisms dependent on accidental influence, which absorb into themselves any suitable material as they may find it; a resemblance of name between persons may thus contribute, or a similarity of situations, or events which bear the same foreign stamp. The narratives of the Wineland voyages exhibit, as we shall see, sure traces of influences of this kind.