“But Karlsevne wished to go south along the coast and eastward. He thought the land became broader the farther south it bore;[305] but it seemed to him most expedient to try both ways” [i.e., both south and north].
Thorhall then parted from them; but there were no more than nine men in his company. Perhaps they were desirous of going home; for from an old lay, which the saga attributes to Thorhall, it appears that he was discontented with the whole stay there: he abuses the country, where the warriors had promised him the best of drinks, but where wine never touched his lips, and he had to take a bucket himself and fetch water to drink. And before they hoisted sail Thorhall quoth this lay:
“Let us go homeward,
where we shall find fellow-countrymen:
let us with our ship seek
the broad ways of the sea,
while the hopeful
warriors (those who praise
the land) on Furðustrandir
stay and boil whales’ flesh.”
“Then they parted [from Karlsevne, who had accompanied them out] and sailed north of Furðustrandir and Kjalarnes, and then tried to beat westward. Then the westerly storm caught them and they drifted to Ireland, and there they were made slaves and ill-treated. There Thorhall lost his life, as merchants have reported.”
The last statement shows that according to Icelandic geographical ideas the country round Kjalarnes lay directly opposite Ireland and in the same latitude.
Karlsevne, with Snorre, Bjarne, and the rest, left Straumsfjord and sailed southward along the coast [1004].
“They sailed a long time and until they came to a river, which flowed down from the interior into a lake and thence into the sea. There were great sandbanks before the mouth of the river, and it could only be entered at high water. Karlsevne and his people then sailed to the mouth of the river and called the country ‘Hóp’ [i.e., a small closed bay]. There they found self-sown wheat-fields, where the land was low, but vines wherever they saw heights (‘en vínviðr allt þar sem holta kendi’). Every beck (‘lökr’) was full of fish. They dug trenches on the shore below high-water mark, and when the tide went out there were halibuts in the trenches. In the forest there was a great quantity of beasts of all kinds. They were there half a month amusing themselves, and suspecting nothing. They had their cattle with them. But early one morning, when they looked about them, they saw nine hide-boats (‘huðkeipa’), and wooden poles were being waved on the ships [i.e., the hide-boats], and they made a noise like threshing-flails and went the way of the sun. Karlsevne’s men took this to be a token of peace and bore a white shield towards them. Then the strangers rowed towards them, and wondered, and came ashore. They were small [or black ?][306] men, and ugly, and they had ugly hair on their heads; their eyes were big, and they were broad across the cheeks. And they stayed there awhile, and wondered, then rowed away and went south of the headland.”
This then would be the description of the first meeting in history between Europeans and the natives of America. With all its brevity it gives an excellent picture; but whether we can accept it is doubtful. As we shall see later, the Norsemen probably did meet with Indians; but the description of the latter’s appearance must necessarily have been coloured more and more by greater familiarity with the Skrælings of Greenland when the sagas were put into writing. The big eyes will not suit either of them, and are rather to be regarded as an attribute of trolls and underground beings; gnomes and old fairy men have big, watery eyes. The ugly hair is also an attribute of the underground beings.
“Karlsevne and his men had built their houses above the lake, some nearer, some farther off. Now they stayed there that winter. No snow fell at all, and all the cattle were out at pasture. But when spring came they saw early one morning a number of hide-boats rowing from the south past the headland, so many that it seemed as if the sea had been sown with coal in front of the bay, and they waved wooden poles on every boat. Then they set up shields and held a market, and the people wanted most to buy red cloth; they also wanted to buy swords and spears, but this was forbidden by Karlsevne and Snorre.” The Skrælings[307] gave them untanned skins in exchange for the cloth, and trade was proceeding briskly, until “an ox, which Karlsevne had, ran out of the wood and began to bellow. The Skrælings were scared and ran to their boats (keipana) and rowed south along the shore. After that they did not see them for three weeks. But when that time was past, they saw a great multitude of Skræling boats coming from the south, as though driven on by a stream. Then all the wooden poles were waved against the sun (‘rangsölis,’ wither-shins), and all the Skrælings howled loudly. Then Karlsevne and his men took red shields and bore them towards them. The Skrælings leapt from their boats and then they made towards each other and fought; there was a hot exchange of missiles. The Skrælings also had catapults (‘valslongur’). Karlsevne and his men saw that the Skrælings hoisted up on a pole a great ball (‘knottr’) about as large as a sheep’s paunch, and seeming blue[308] in colour, and slung it from the pole up on to the land over Karlsevne’s people, and it made an ugly noise when it came down. At this great terror smote Karlsevne and his people, so that they had no thought but of getting away and up the river, for it seemed to them that the Skrælings were assailing them on all sides; and they did not halt until they had reached certain crags. There they made a stout resistance. Freydis came out and saw that they were giving way. She cried out: ‘Wherefore do ye run away from such wretches, ye gallant men? I thought it likely that ye could slaughter them like cattle, and had I but arms I believe I should fight better than any of you.’ None heeded what she said. Freydis tried to go with them, but she fell behind, for she was with child. She nevertheless followed them into the wood, but the Skrælings came after her. She found before her a dead man, Thorbrand Snorrason, and a flat stone (‘hellustein’) was fixed in the head of him. His sword lay unsheathed by him, and she took it up to defend herself with it. Then the Skrælings came at her. She takes her breasts out of her sark and whets the sword on them. At that the Skrælings are afraid and run away back to their boats, and go off. Karlsevne and his men meet her and praise her happy device. Two men of Karlsevne’s fell, and four of the Skrælings; but nevertheless Karlsevne had suffered defeat. They now go to their houses, bind up their wounds, and consider what swarm of people it was that came against them from the land. It seemed to them now that there could have been no more than those who came from the boats, and that the other people must have been glamour. The Skrælings also found a dead man, and an axe lay beside him; one of them took up the axe and struck at a tree, and so one after another, and it seemed to delight them that it bit so well. Then one took and smote a stone with it; but when the axe broke, he thought it was of no use, if it did not stand against stone, and he cast it from him.”
“Karlsevne and his men now thought they could see that although the land was fertile, they would always have trouble and disquiet with the people who dwelt there before. Then they prepared to set out, and intended to go to their own country. They sailed northward and found five Skrælings sleeping in fur jerkins (‘skinnhjúpum’), and they had with them kegs with deer’s marrow mixed with blood. They thought they could understand that they were outlaws; they killed them. Then they found a headland and a multitude of deer, and the headland looked like a crust of dried dung, from the deer lying there at night. Now they came back to Straumsfjord, and there was abundance of everything. It is reported by some that Bjarne and Gudrid remained behind there, and a hundred men with them, and did not go farther; but they say that Karlsevne and Snorre went southward with forty men and were no longer at Hóp than barely two months, and came back the same summer.”