THE NORSE DISCOVERERS OF AMERICA.*
THAT the Norsemen discovered America five centuries before Columbus may be accepted as an historical fact They made no use of their discovery; they left no traces of their visit. For all that, the honour of first viewing the New World lies with them. The story is well sot forth in a new book by Mr. Gathorne- Hardy. He gives a literal translation of the relevant passages in the Icelandic sagas, especially the saga of Eric the Red and the so-called Flatey Book. Then he discusses the nature of the evidence, examines various controverted passages, and finally endeavours to trace the routes of the early voyagers. Mr. Gathome-Hardy impresses us not only with his knowledge of Icelandic and of navigation, but also with his honesty and good sense. He puts before the reader all the available evidence, and he admits the difficulties which it raises. There has been so much argument among scholars, especially in America and Scandinavia, about these Norse voyages that one might be excused for regarding them with scepticism. The author's treatment of the subject, however, removes our doubts. The sagas are not more obscure than the accounts of Cabot's first • The Norse Discoverers of America : The Wineland Sagas Translated and Discussed. By O. B. Oathorne-Hardy. Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. [its. net.]
voyage, for example, svhich has been and still is a subject of fierce controversy.
Mr. Gathorne-Htegy euggeets with some truth that "-the Morris tradition in translating sagas" into a pseudo-mediaeval English has given the English public a wrong idea of -the Ice- landic sagas. They were not romantic concoctions, but "plain unvarnished tales" about the forefathers of the people for whom they were composed and recited. Before An the Learned, born in 1067, began to write down Icelandic history, the annals and genealogies of the settlers were handed down by oral tra- dition in the saga form. As the community was very small, there is a strong presumption in favour of the accuracy of these "sagas, since one or more of the auditors would be able to correct a mistake on the part of the narrator. It is recorded, for in- stance, of Harald Haardraade that he heard a saga of his own travels, and complimented the story-teller on his accuracy ; on the other hand, in the saga of Burnt Njal, a man who told the story of Njal's death unfairly was killed by an indignant listener, with the approval of his companion's If, then, there is nothing inherently improbable in the sagas, as they have been handed down in more or less corrupt mediaeval manuscripts, they are as trustworthy historical evidence as any that we have for a small and primitive people.
Now the sagas give a fairly lucid account of at least four voyages to America. The first Norseman to sight the American coast was Bjarni, son of Herjulf, who, while on his way from Iceland to join his father who had gone with Eric the Red to found a settlement in Greenland, was driven out of his course "for many days." He came to an unknown coast, perhaps near Cape Cod ; he would not land, but sailed north, and at last came to Greenland. This was about the year 986. Soon after the year 1000 Leif, son of Eric the Red, set out to 'retrace Bjarni'e route from the unknown land. He found first a rooky land which he called Helluland ; then he came to a low-lying wooded country, which he called Markland ; and at last he reached a country where a German sailor named Tyrker found vines and grapes, for which reason Leif called the country Wineland. When Leif went home to Greenland, rescuing a shipwrecked party on the way, his brother Thorvald was moved to go ex- ploring too. But Thorvald's party were attacked by savages in skin canoes, who were repulsed only after they had fatally wounded the captain. Thorvald was buried on a headland which he had chosen. The fourth voyage was that of Karlsefni, who in the early years of the eleventh century sailed from Iceland to Greenland, married Gudrid, and then with a large company, numbering 160 men, set out for Wineland. They came to a fjord, inside an island which they called " Straumsey " or Current Island because the tide ran swiftly round it. At the head of the fjord was a river flowing through a lake into the sea, with shoals in the estuary. They called this place Hop and settled there for a time. Karleefni had a son, Snorri, born to him in the now country, -where he stayed for three winters. But the savages, after trading with the Norsemen for red cloth, made themselves so troublesome that Karlsefni thought it well to return to the more peaceful Iceland. A fifth voyage which presents more disputable details was that of Freydis, daughter of Eric the Red, who persuaded two men to go shares with her in an expedition to Wineland, and, having taken them there, caused her followers to murder them and seize their ship. If it was not true, it is hard to understand why the sagasman was allowed to libel a woman of so powerful a family ; but it does not add to the story of the exploration of America.
Mr. Gathorne-Hardy's identification of the American lands visited by Leif and Karlsefni is interesting and plausible. Hellu- land, he thinks, was Labrador or Newfoundland. Marldand was Nova Scotia. Wineland was New England, the fjord leading up to Hop was Long Island Sound, and Hop was on or near the site of New York City. Almost every writer on this subject has his own particular view, but it must be said for the author's theory that it fits the known facts very neatly. We may wonder why the Norsemen preferred Greenland or Iceland to Wineland, or why so combative a race found it irk- some to fight the savages. We may answer tentatively that one's homeland is always more attractive than a foreign land, and that in Greenland and Iceland the Norsemen had their friends and kinsmen. Furthermore, they were so few in numbers that they were guided by prudence in not attempting to colonize a country inhabited by wild savages who greatly outnumbered them. Ralegh's early settlers in Virginia had firearms and yet were unable to contend with. the Indians. The Pilgrim Fathers, a picked and resolute body of men, passed through a very critical time with the Indians, although the tribes of New Eng- land in 1620 were relatively small and decayed. It is highly probable that if the Norsemen, before tile days of gunpowder, had tried to settle on Long Island Sound, they would have been wiped out by the natives, whereas in Greenland and Iceland their race survived. On the other hand, if the Norwegian ICings had not monopolized the trade of Greenland after 1294, thus isolating the settlement from Iceland, it is conceivable that much more would have been heard in Europe of Greenland and of the lands to the west and south, and that some Northern explorer would have opened the New World to European colon- ists before Columbus sailed. Norway's monopoly ruined the Greenland colony and prevented Norwegians from resuming the work begun by men of their race in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries in the discovery of North America.
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