This may apply, as Storm points out, to the eastern side of Cape Breton Island; but in that case they must have steered west-south-west from the south-eastern promontory of Markland (Newfoundland). Kjalarnes must then be Cape Breton itself. That they should have found a ship’s keel there sounds strange; if this is not an invention we must suppose that it was driven ashore from a wreck; no doubt it happened often enough that vessels were lost on the voyage to Greenland. When Eric, according to the Landnámabók, sailed with twenty-five ships, many of them were lost. Wreckage would be carried by the currents from Greenland into the Labrador current, and by this southward past Markland. But it is more probable that the origin of the name was entirely different; that, for example, the promontory had the shape of a ship’s keel, and that the account of the keel found has been developed much later.[304] This is confirmed by the fact that the “Grönlendinga-þáttr” gives a wholly different explanation of the name from that in Eric’s Saga.

They then sailed on until they came to a fjord, into which they steered the ships.

This description gives a good insight both into the Norsemen’s manner of equipping themselves for voyages to unknown countries, and into their superstition.

It looks as if a dissension now arose between the wayward Thorhall the Hunter and the rest, since he wanted to look for Wineland to the north of Furðustrandir, beyond Kjalarnes.

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:

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].

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.

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.

The fourth summer [1006] they sailed from Wineland with a south wind and came to Markland.

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.

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.

The personal names in the Saga of Eric the Red are also striking. With the exception of Eric himself, his wife Tjodhild and his son Leif, and a few other names in the first part, which is taken almost in its entirety from the Landnámabók, almost all the names belonging to this saga are connected with those of heathen gods, especially Thor. Eric has got a third son, Thorvald, who is not mentioned in Landnáma, besides his daughter Freydis, and his son-in-law Thorvard. The name Freydis is only known from this one woman in the whole of Icelandic literature, and several names in Norse literature compounded of Frey- seem, according to Lind,[311] to belong to myths (e.g., Freygarðr, Freysteinn and Freybjǫrn). Other names connected with the Wineland voyages in this saga are: Thor-björn Vivilsson (his brother was named Thor-geir and his daughter’s foster-father Orm Thor-geirsson) came to Thor-kjell of Herjolfsnes, where the prophetess was called Thor-björg. Leif’s woman in the Hebrides was called Thor-gunna, and their illegitimate son Thor-gils. Thor-stein Ericson had a property together with another Thor-stein in Lysefjord.[312] We have further Thor-finn Karlsevne (son of Thord and Thor-unn), Snorre Thor-brandsson, Thor-hall Gamlason, Thor-hall Veidemand (who also had dealings with the red-bearded Thor), and Thor-brand Snorrason who was killed. An exception, besides Bjarne Grimolfsson (and the runners Haki and Hekja; see below), is Thorfinn Karlsevne’s wife Guðriðr,[313] daughter of Thorbjörn Vivilsson, and mother of Snorre. But perhaps one can guess why she is given this name if one reads through the description of the remarkable scene of soothsaying—at Thorkjell’s house on Herjolfsnes—between the fair Gudrid, who sang with such a beautiful voice, and the heathen sorceress Thorbjörg, where the former as a Christian woman refuses to sing the heathen charms “Varðlokur,” as the sorceress asks her to do. These numerous Thor-names—with the two women’s names, the powerful Freydis and the fair Gudrid—which are attributed to a time when heathendom and Christianity were struggling for the mastery (cf. the tale of Thorhall the Hunter and the whale), have in themselves an air of myth and invention. To this must be added mythical descriptions like those of the prophetess of Herjolfsnes, the ghosts at Lysefjord the winter Thorstein Ericson died, and others.

The Saga of Eric the Red tells of two voyages in search of Wineland, after Leif’s accidental discovery of the country. The first is Thorstein Ericson’s unfortunate expedition, when they did not find the favoured Wineland, but were driven eastward into the ocean towards Iceland and Ireland. In the Irish tale of Brandan (“Imram Brenaind,” of the eleventh century), Brandan first makes an unsuccessful voyage to find the promised land, and arrives, it seems, most probably in the east of the ocean, somewhere about Brittany (cf. Vita S. Brandani; and Machutus’s voyage); but he then makes a fresh voyage in which he finally reaches the land he is in search of [cf. Zimmer, 1889, pp. 135 ff.]. This similarity with the Irish legend is doubtless not very great, but perhaps it deserves to be included with many others to be mentioned later.

The relative distances between the countries. The scale gives “dœgr’s”
sailing (== 2 degrees of latitude), according to the “Rymbegla.”
A white cross marks the valley of the St. John

If we now pass to the tale itself of Karlsevne’s voyage, we have already seen (p. 321) that its beginning with the journey to the Western Settlement is doubtful; next, the feature of his sailing to three different countries in turn (Helluland, Markland and Furðustrandir), with the same number of days’ sail between each, must be taken directly from the fairy tales.[314] Such a voyage is in itself improbable; in the saga the countries are evidently imagined as islands or peninsulas, but nothing corresponding to this is to be found on the coast of America. It is inconceivable that a discoverer of Labrador and of the coast to the south of it should have divided this into several countries; it was not till long after the rediscovery of Newfoundland and Labrador that the sound between them was found. If we suppose that Karlsevne was making southward and came first to Labrador (== Helluland ?), with a coast extending south-eastward, it is against common sense that he should voluntarily have lost sight of this coast and put to sea again in an easterly direction, and then sight fresh land to the south of him two days later; on the other hand, this is the usual mode of presentment in fairy tales and myth. But let us suppose now that he did nevertheless arrive in this way at Newfoundland (== Markland ?), and then again put to sea instead of following the coast, how could he know that this time instead of sailing eastward he was to take a westward course? But this he must have done, for otherwise he could not have reached Cape Breton or Nova Scotia; and he must have got there, if we are to make anything out of the story. The distances given, of two “dœgr’s” sail to each of the countries, as remarked on p. 322, are also foreign to reality.[315] This part of the description has therefore an altogether artificial look. It reminds one forcibly of many of the old Irish legendary tales of wonderful voyages; in particular the commencement of one of the oldest and most important may be mentioned: “Imram Maelduin” (the tale of Maelduin’s voyage), which is known in MSS. of the end of the eleventh century and later, but which was probably to a great extent first written down in the seventh, or at the latest in the eighth century [cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 289].

It is striking that in the voyage of Maelduin, the distance is only given as three days’ and three nights’ sail in the case of the three first passages to the three successive islands, after the first two small islands, while between the later islands we are told that they sailed “a long way,” “for a week,” “for a long time,” etc.; just as in the Saga of Eric the Red, where, after Bjarneyjar, they sail for two “dœgr” to each of the three lands in turn, and then they had “a long way” to sail along Furðustrandir, to a bay, after which “they went on their way” to Straumsfjord, and thence they went “for a long time” to Wineland, etc. I do not venture to assert that there was a direct connection between the two productions, for that there are perhaps too many dissimilarities; but they seem in any case to have their roots in one and the same cycle of ideas, and the original legend certainly reached Iceland in the shape of oral narrative.

In Leif’s voyage in the “Grönlendinga-þáttr” (which voyage partly corresponds to Karlsevne’s), when they came to a country south-west of Markland, they landed on an island, to the north of the country,

This reminds one forcibly of Moses’ manna in the wilderness, which appeared like dew [Exodus xvi. 14]. In the Old Norwegian free rendering of the Old Testament, called “Stjórn,”[317] of about 1300, therefore much earlier than the “Grönlendinga-þáttr,” the account of this says that dew came from heaven round the whole camp, “it stuck like slime on the hands as soon as they touched it” ... “they found that it was sweet as honey in taste....” But here again we come in contact with Irish legendary ideas. In the tale of the Navigation of the Sons of Ua Corra (of the twelfth century) the voyagers come to an island with a beautiful and wonderful plain covered with trees, full of honey, and a grass-green glade in the middle with a glorious lake of agreeable taste. Later on they come to another marvellous island, with splendid green grass, and honeydew lay on the grass [cf. Zimmer, 1889, pp. 194, 195].

The name “Furðustrandir” (marvel-strands), as we shall see later (p. 357), may come from the “Tírib Ingnad” (lands of marvel) and “Trág Mór” (great strand) of Irish legend, far in the western ocean.

When Karlsevne arrived off Furðustrandir he sent out his two Scottish runners, the man “Haki” and the woman “Hekja,” and told them to run southwards and examine the condition of the country and come back in three days. This is evidently another legendary trait; and equally so the circumstance that King Olaf had given these runners to Leif and told him “to make use of them if he had need of speed, for they were swifter than deer.” We know of many such features in fairy tale and myth. Then, after the traditional three days, the man and woman come running from the interior of the country, one with grapes, the other with self-sown wheat in their hands. We are tempted to think of the spies Moses sent into Canaan, with orders to spy out the land, whether it was fat or lean, and who came back with a vine-branch and a cluster of grapes, which they had cut in the vale of Eshcol (i.e., the vale of grapes).[318]

But there are other remarkable points about this legend. Professor Moltke Moe has called my attention to a striking resemblance between it and the legends of the two runners or spies who accompanied Sinclair’s march through Norway in 1612. They are called “wind-runners” or “bloodhounds,” or again “weather-calves” or “wind-calves”; others called them “Wild Turks.”

The trait that the wind-runners “did not look like folk” is expressed in another form in H. P. S. Krag’s notes; he thinks that they

Something similar also occurs about the runners in Wineland in a late form of the legend of Karlsevne’s voyage, where we read that

It may be mentioned in addition that in the Flateyjarbók’s saga of the Wineland voyages no runners appear, but on the other hand, in the tale of Leif’s voyage, which has features in common with Karlsevne’s, there is a “Southman” (“suðrmaðr,” most frequently used of Germans)[321] of the name of “Tyrker,” who was the first to find the wild vine in the woods (like Karlsevne’s runners) and intoxicated himself by eating the grapes.[322] As Moltke Moe observes, there is a remarkable resemblance between the rare name Tyrker and the fact that Sinclair’s runners were called Wild Turks.

Both in the legend of Karlsevne and in that of Sinclair the two runners are connected with Scots or Scotland. One is therefore inclined to suppose that some piece of Celtic folklore is the common source of both. Now there is a Scottish mythical creature called a “water-calf”; and the unintelligible Norwegian name “weather-calf” or “wind-calf” (“veirkalv”) may well be thought a corruption of this. It is true that this creature inhabits lakes, but it also goes upon dry land, and has fabulous speed and the power of scenting things far off. It can also transform itself into different shapes, but always preserves something of its animal form.

That the runners in Eric’s Saga have become a man and woman may be due to a natural connection with Thor’s swift-footed companions, Tjalve and Röskva. But there seems here to be another possible connection, which Moltke Moe has suggested to me. The strange garment they wore is called in one MS. “kiafal” and in another “biafal.” No word completely corresponding to this is known in Celtic; but there is a modern Irish word “cabhail” (pronounced “caval” == “a body of a shirt”), which shows so much similarity both in meaning and sound that there seems undoubtedly to be a connection here. That “caval,” corrupted to “kiafal” (through the influence of similar-sounding names ?), has been transformed into “biafal” may be due to the influence of the Norse “bjalfi” or “bjalbi” (== a fur garment without sleeves). As their costume plays such an important part in the description of the runners, and special stress is laid upon the Celtic word for it, it is probable that this word was originally used as a name for the runners themselves—in legend and epic poetry there are many examples of people being named from their dress. But gradually the Celtic word used as a name has been replaced by the corresponding Old Norse “hakull” (or “hokull” == sleeveless cloak open at the sides; cf. “messe-hagel,” chasuble) and its feminine derivative “hekla” (== sleeveless cloak, with or without a hood). The use of these two words of masculine and feminine gender may be due to conceptions of them as man and woman, derived from Tjalve and Röskva. In course of time it was natural that a personal name formed from the costume, like Hakull, should easily be replaced by a real man’s name of similar sound, like “Haki,” specially known in legend and epic poetry as a name of sea-kings, berserkers and troll-children. Then “Hekja” was derived from “Haki,” in the same way as “Hekla” from “Hakull.” Hekja as a name is not met with elsewhere.[323]

That the whole of this story of the runners in the Saga of Eric the Red has been borrowed from elsewhere appears also from its being badly fitted in; for the narrative of the saga continues without taking any notice of the finding of the sure tokens of Wineland: the self-sown wheat and the vine; and in the following spring there is even a dispute as to the direction in which the country is to be sought. Furthermore, after the discoveries of the runners Karlsevne continues to sail southward, at first, the same autumn, to Straumsfjord, and then still farther south the following summer, before he arrives at the country of the wheat and grapes that the runners had reached in a day and a half in a roadless land.

The description of the stay in Straumsfjord also contains purely mythical features, such as Thorhall the Hunter’s being absent for the stereotyped three days (“dœgr”), and having, when they find him, practised magic arts with the Red-Beard (Thor), as the result of which a whale is driven ashore (see p. 325). There is further a striking resemblance between the description of Thorhall’s state when found and that of Tyrker after he had eaten the grapes. When, in Eric’s Saga, they sought and found Thorhall on a steep mountain crag,

In the Flateyjarbók’s “Grönlendinga-þáttr” Tyrker was lost in the woods, and when Leif and his men went in search and found him again, he too behaved strangely.