NOTE

Special acknowledgments and thanks are due to the representatives of the late Arthur Middleton Reeves, who have kindly permitted the use of his translations of the Vinland sagas, originally printed in his Finding of Wineland the Good, published in London by the Clarendon Press in 1890; to the President and Council of the Hakluyt Society, for permission to use Sir Clements Markham’s translation of the Journal of Columbus’s first voyage, printed in Vol. LXXXVI. of the publications of that Society (London, 1893), and that of Dr. Chanca’s letter and of the letter of Columbus respecting his fourth voyage, by the late Mr. R. H. Major, in their second and forty-third volumes, Select Letters of Columbus (London, 1847, 1870); to the Honorable John Boyd Thacher, of Albany, for permission to use his version of Las Casas’s narrative of the third voyage, as printed by him in his Christopher Columbus (New York, 1904), published by Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons; to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company for permission to use, out of the third volume of Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History of America, the late Dr. Charles Deane’s translation, revised by Professor Bennet H. Nash, of the second letter of Raimondo de Soncino respecting John Cabot’s expedition; and to George Philip and Son, Limited, of London, for permission to use the map in Markham’s Life of Christopher Columbus as the basis for the map in the present volume, showing the routes of Columbus’s four voyages.


CONTENTS

[ORIGINAL NARRATIVES OF THE VOYAGES OF THE NORTHMEN]

Edited by Professor Julius E. Olson

PAGE
[Introduction][3]
[The Saga of Eric the Red][14]
[The Ancestry of Gudrid][14]
[The Colonization of Greenland][15]
[Gudrid’s Father emigrates to Greenland][20]
[The Sibyl and the Famine in Greenland][21]
[Leif the Lucky and the Discovery of Vinland][23]
[Thorstein’s Attempt to find Vinland][26]
[The Marriage of Gudrid to Thorstein][27]
[The Ancestry of Thorfinn Karlsefni; his Marriage with Gudrid][30]
[Karlsefni’s Voyage to Vinland][31]
[The First Winter in Vinland][34]
[Description of Vinland and the Natives][36]
[The Uniped; Snorri; the Captured Natives][40]
[Biarni Grimolfson’s Self-sacrifice][42]
[Karlsefni and Gudrid’s Issue][43]
[The Vinland History of the Flat Island Book][45]
[Eric the Red and the Colonization of Greenland][45]
[Leif Ericson’s Baptism in Norway][47]
[Biarni Herjulfson sights New Land][48]
[Biarni’s visit to Norway][50]
[Leif’s Voyage of Exploration][50]
[The Discovery of Grapes][52]
[Thorvald’s Expedition to Vinland][54]
[Thorfinn Karlsefni’s Expedition to Vinland][59]
[The Expedition of Freydis and her Companions][62]
[Karlsefni and Gudrid return to Iceland][65]
[From Adam of Bremen’s Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis][67]
[From the Icelandic Annals][69]
[Annales Regii][69]
[From the Elder Skálholt Annals][69]
[Papal Letters Concerning the Bishopric of Gardar in Greenland During the Fifteenth Century][70]
[Letter of Nicholas V.][70]
[Letter of Alexander VI.][73]

[ORIGINAL NARRATIVES OF THE VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS]