There is in the Nicholaysen volume a detailed account of the naval architecture of the Viking period, and other references may be made to Otto Jorell’s Les navires des peuples du Nord, in the Congrès internat. des sciences géog., compte rendu, 1875 (1878, i. 318); Mémoires de la Soc. royal des Antiquaires du Nord (1887, p. 280); Preble, in United Service (May, 1883, p. 463), and in his Amer. Flag, p. 159; De Costa’s Pre-Columbian Discovery of America, p. xxxvii; Fox’s Landfall of Columbus, p. 3; Pop. Science Monthly, xix. 80; Van Nostrand’s Eclectic Engineering Mag., xxiii. 320; Good Words, xxii. 759; Higginson’s Larger History U. S. for cuts; and J. J. A. Worsaae’s Prehistory of the North (Eng. transl., London,1886) for the burial in ships.
There is a paper on the daring of the Norsemen as navigators by G. Brynjalfson (Compte Rendu , Congrès des Américanistes, Copenhagen, p. 140), entitled “Jusqu’où les anciens Scandinaves ont-ils pénétré vers le pôle arctique dans leurs expéditions à la mer glaciale?”
It was in a.d. 875 that Ingolf, a jarl[517] of Norway, came to Iceland with Norse settlers. They built their habitation at first where a pleasant headland seemed attractive, the present Ingolfshofdi, and later founded Reikjavik, where the signs had directed them; for certain carved posts, which they had thrown overboard as they approached the island, were found to have drifted to that spot. The Christian Irish preferred to leave their asylum rather than consort with the new-comers, and so the island was left to be occupied by successive immigrations of the Norse, which their king could not prevent. In the end, and within half a century, a hardy little republic—as for a while it was—of near seventy thousand inhabitants was established almost under the arctic circle. The very next year (a.d. 876) after Ingolf had come to Iceland, a sea-rover, Gunnbiorn, driven in his ship westerly, sighted a strange land, and the report that he made was not forgotten.[518] Fifty years later, more or less, for we must treat the dates of the Icelandic sagas with some reservation, we learn that a wind-tossed vessel was thrown upon a coast far away, which was called Ireland the Great. Then again we read of a young Norwegian, Eric the Red, not apparently averse to a brawl, who killed his man in Norway and fled to Iceland, where he kept his dubious character; and again outraging the laws, he was sent into temporary banishment,—this time in a ship which he fitted out for discovery; and so he sailed away in the direction of Gunnbiorn’s land, and found it. He whiled away three years on its coast, and as soon as he was allowed ventured back with the tidings, while, to propitiate intending settlers, he said he had been to Greenland, and so the land got a sunny name. The next year, which seems to have been a.d. 985, he started on his return with thirty-five ships, but only fourteen of them reached the land. Wherever there was a habitable fiord, a settlement grew up, and the stream of immigrants was for a while constant and considerable. Just at the end of the century (a.d. 999), Leif, a son of Eric, sailed back to Norway, and found the country in the early fervor of a new religion; for King Olaf Tryggvesson had embraced Christianity and was imposing it on his people. Leif accepted the new faith, and a priest was assigned to him to take back to Greenland; and thus Christianity was introduced into arctic America. So they began to build churches[519] in Greenland, the considerable ruins of one of which stand to this day.[520] The winning of Iceland to the Church was accomplished at the same time.
PLAN OF VIKING SHIP.
There were two centres of settlement on the Greenland coast, not where they were long suspected to be, on the coast opposite Iceland, nor as supposed after the explorations of Baffin’s Bay, on both the east and west side of the country; but the settlers seem to have reached and doubled Cape Farewell, and so formed what was called their eastern settlement (Eystribygd), near the cape, while farther to the north they formed their western colony (Westribygd).[521] Their relative positions are still involved in doubt.
ROWLOCK OF THE VIKING SHIP.
In the next year after the second voyage of Eric the Red, one of the ships which were sailing from Iceland to the new settlement, was driven far off her course, according to the sagas, and Bjarni Herjulfson, who commanded the vessel, reported that he had come upon a land, away to the southwest, where the coast country was level; and he added that when he turned north it took him nine days to reach Greenland.[522] Fourteen years later than this voyage of Bjarni, which is said to have been in a.d. 986,—that is, in the year 1000 or thereabouts,—Leif, the same who had brought the Christian priest to Greenland, taking with him thirty-five companions, sailed from Greenland in quest of the land seen by Bjarni, which Leif first found, where a barren shore stretched back to ice-covered mountains, and because of the stones there he called the region Hellu land. Proceeding farther south, he found a sandy shore, with a level forest-country back of it, and because of the woods it was named Markland. Two days later they came upon other land, and tasting the dew upon the grass they found it sweet. Farther south and westerly they went, and going up a river came into an expanse of water, where on the shores they built huts to lodge in for the winter, and sent out exploring parties. In one of these, Tyrker, a native of a part of Europe where grapes grew, found vines hung with their fruit, which induced Leif to call the country Vinland.