From an Icelandic MS. (Jónsbók), fourteenth century
Karlsevne went with one ship to search for Thorhall the Hunter. He sailed to the north of Kjalarnes, westwards, and south along the shore (Storm thought on the eastern side of Cape Breton Island to the northern side of Nova Scotia), and they found a river running from east to west into the sea.
Here Thorvald Ericson was shot one morning from the shore with an arrow which they thought came from a Uniped [legendary creature with one foot] whom they pursued but did not catch. The arrow struck Thorvald in the small intestines. He drew it out, saying: “There is fat in the bowels; a good land have we found, but it is doubtful whether we shall enjoy it.” Thorvald died of this wound a little later. “They then sailed away northward again and thought they sighted ‘Einfötinga-land’ [the Land of Unipeds]. They would no longer risk the lives of their men,” and “they went back and stayed in Straumsfjord the third winter. Then the men became very weary [so that they fell into disagreement]; those who were wifeless quarrelled with those who had wives.”[309]
The fourth summer [1006] they sailed from Wineland with a south wind and came to Markland.
There they found five Skrælings, and caught of them two boys, while the grown-up ones, a bearded man and two women, “escaped and sank into the earth. The boys they took with them and taught them their language, and they were baptized. They called their mother ‘Vætilldi’ and their father ‘Vægi.’ They said that kings governed in Skrælinga-land; one of them was called ‘Avalldamon,’ the other ‘Valldidida.’ They said that there were no houses, and the people lay in rock-shelters or caves. They said there was another great country over against their country, and men went about there in white clothing and cried aloud, and carried poles before them, to which strips were fastened. This is thought to be ‘Hvitramanna-land’ [i.e., the white men’s land] or Great-Ireland.” Then Karlsevne and his men came to Greenland and stayed the winter with Eric the Red [1006-1007].
“But Bjarne Grimolfsson [on the other ship] was carried out into the Irish Ocean [the Atlantic between Markland and Ireland] and they came into the maggot-sea (‘maðk-sjá’); they did not know of it until the ship was worm-eaten under them,” and ready to sink. “They had a long-boat (‘eptirbát’) that was coated with seal-tar, and men say that the sea-maggot will not eat wood that is coated with seal-tar.” “But when they tried it, the boat would not hold more than half the ship’s company.” They all wanted to go in it; but Bjarne then proposed that they should decide who should go in the boat by casting lots and not by precedence, and this was agreed to. The lots fell so that Bjarne was amongst those who were to go in the boat. “When they were in it, a young Icelander, who had accompanied Bjarne from home, said: ‘Dost thou think, Bjarne, to part from me here?’ Bjarne answers: ‘So it must be.’ He says: ‘This was not thy promise when I came with thee from Iceland....’ Bjarne answers: ‘Nor shall it be so; go thou in the boat, but I must go in the ship, since I see that thy life is so dear to thee.’ Bjarne then went on board the ship, and this man in the boat, and they kept on their course until they came to Dyflinar [Dublin] in Ireland, and there told this tale. But most men believe that Bjarne and his companions lost their lives in the maggot-sea, since they were not heard of again.”
Thorfinn Karlsevne returned in the following summer (1007) to Iceland with Gudrid and their son Snorre, who was born at Straumsfjord in Wineland the first winter they were there. Karlsevne afterwards lived in Iceland.
The composite and legendary character of the whole saga
If we now review critically the Saga of Eric the Red and the whole of this tale of Karlsevne’s voyage, together with the other accounts of Wineland voyages, we shall find one feature after another that is legendary or that must have been borrowed from elsewhere. If we examine first of all the relation of the various authorities to the events they narrate, we must be struck by the fact that in the oldest authorities, such as the Landnáma, Eric the Red has only two sons, Leif and Thorstein, whereas in Eric’s Saga and in the “Grönlendinga-þáttr,” for the sake of the trilogy of legend, he has begotten three sons, besides an illegitimate daughter. In the oldest MS., Hauk’s Landnámabók, Leif is only mentioned in one place, and nothing more is said of him than that he was Eric’s son and inherited Brattalid from his father; he is not given the nickname “heppni” (the lucky), and it is not mentioned that he had discovered Wineland, nor that he had introduced Christianity. In the Sturlubók he is again mentioned in one place as the son of Tjodhild and Eric, and there has the nickname “en hepni”; but neither is there here any mention of the discovery of Wineland or the introduction of Christianity [cf. Landnámabók, ed. F. Jónsson, 1900, pp. 35, 156, 165]. As this passage is not found in Hauk’s Landnáma, it may be an addition in the later MS., which was wanting in the original Landnámabók. In the great saga of St. Olaf[310] (chapter 70)—where King Olaf asks the Icelander Thorarinn Nevjolfsson to take the blind king Rörek to Greenland to “Leif Ericson”—the latter again is not called the Lucky, nor is Wineland or its discovery mentioned. This saga was written, according to the editors, about 1230. As neither this nickname nor the tales of Leif’s discovery of Wineland are found earlier than in the Kristni-saga and Heimskringla, it looks as if these features did not appear till later. There is a similar state of things with regard to the mention of Thorfinn Karlsevne; only in one passage in Hauk’s Landnáma is it mentioned that he found “Vin(d)land hit Góða”; but as this does not occur in the Sturlubók, it may be an addition due to Hauk Erlendsson, who regarded Thorfinn as his ancestor. The silence of the oldest authorities on the voyages to Wineland becomes still more striking when we compare with it the fact that the Landnámabók contains statements (with careful citation of authorities, showing that they are derived from Are Frode himself) about Are Mársson, his voyage to Hvítramanna-land, and his stay there, which have generally been regarded as far less authentic than the tales of the Wineland voyages. If Are Mársson’s voyage is a myth, then one would be still more inclined to regard the latter as such. The objection that it would have been beside the plan of the brief and concise earlier works (Íslendingabók and Landnámabók) to include these things, scarcely holds good. If Are has room in the Íslendingabók for a comparatively detailed account of the discovery, naming and natives of Greenland, and further for a description of the introduction of Christianity into Iceland; if the Landnámabók also gives details, derived, as we have said, from him, of Are Mársson’s voyage to Hvítramanna-land, then it is difficult to understand why neither Are Frode nor the authors of the Landnámabók, when mentioning Eric the Red and Leif, should have found room for a line about Leif’s having discovered Wineland and Christianised Greenland—two not unimportant pieces of information—if they had known of it. At any rate, the Christianising of Greenland must have been of interest to the priest Are and to the priest-taught authors of Landnámabók. This silence is therefore suspicious.