The circumstance of Hvítramanna-land being, according to the Eyrbyggja Saga, a forbidden land may correspond to that of men being prohibited from setting foot on the priestesses’ island, or again to the way to the Cassiterides being kept secret and to the precautions taken to prevent people from reaching them (cf. vol. i. p. 27). Something similar, it may be added, is told of the rich, fertile island which the Carthaginians discovered in the west of the ocean, and which, under pain of death, they forbade others to visit [Aristotle, Mir. Auscult., c. 85; cf. also Diodorus, v. 20]. That in late classical times there was a confusion between the Cassiterides and the mythical isles in the west appears further from Pliny’s saying [Hist. Nat., iv. 36] that the Cassiterides were also called “Fortunatæ,” and from Dionysius Periegetes making tin, the product of the Cassiterides, come from the Hesperides.

It was mentioned above (vol. i. p. 357) that the name of the promised land, “the Land of Marvels,” was also called in Irish legend the “Great Strand” (“Trág Mór”), or the “Great Land” (“Tír Mór”); “two or three times as large as Ireland” (vol. i. p. 355). It does not seem unlikely that the Icelanders, hearing from Ireland of this great land, should come to call it “Irland hit Mikla” (Ireland the Great); and this seems to be a more natural explanation than Storm’s [1887, p. 65] interpretation of the name as meaning “the Irish colony,” like “Magna Græcia” (the Greek colony in Italy) and “Svíþjód it Mikla” (the Swedish colony in Russia, the name of which may however have been derived from the name of the latter: “Scythia Magna”); on the other hand, he gives an obvious parallel in “Great Han,” the mythical land in the Great Ocean beyond China (Han).

In the Eyrbyggja Saga we read of Björn Asbrandsson, called Breidvikinge-kjæmpe, and his exploits. He bore illicit love to Snorre Gode’s sister, Thurid of Fróðá, the wife of Thorodd, and had by her an illegitimate son, Kjartan. Finally he had to leave Iceland on account of this love; but his ship was not ready till late in the autumn. They put to sea with a north-east wind, which held for a long time that autumn. Afterwards the ship was not heard of for many a day.

It is clear that Björn Breidvikinge-kjæmpe here is the same as Are Mársson in the Landnáma, who was also driven by storms to Hvítramanna-land, had to stay there all his life, and according to the report of Thorfinn earl of Orkney (ob. circa 1064) had been recognised (by travellers like Gudleif ?), and was much honoured there. This incident of the travellers coming to an unknown island and there finding a man who has been absent a long while has parallels in many Irish legends. Thus it may be mentioned that Brandan, in the Navigatio, comes to the convent-island of Alibius, with the twenty-four Irish monks of old days, and meets there the old white-haired man who was prior of the convent and had been there for eighty years, but who does not tell his name. Brandan asks leave to sail on, but this is not permitted until they have celebrated Christmas there [Schröder, 1871, pp. 15, ff].[42]

The resemblance between the two names “Guð-Leifr” (Gudleif == God-Leif) and “Leifr hinn Heppni” (Leif the Lucky) also deserves notice, as perhaps it is not merely accidental. One sails during the last years of St. Olaf from Ireland to Iceland and is carried south-westwards to Hvítramanna-land; the other sails during the last years of Olaf Tryggvason from Norway to Greenland and is carried south-westwards to Wineland the Good.

The following tale in Edrisi, the Arabic geographer, whose work dates from 1154, bears considerable resemblance to the remarkable story of Gudleif’s voyage.[43]

As points of similarity to Gudleif’s voyage it may be pointed out that the Portuguese sail for thirty-five days altogether, to the west and afterwards to the south, and arrive at a country which thus lies south-south-west. Gudleif is carried before a north-east wind towards the south-west and reaches land after a long time. Both the Portuguese and the Icelanders are taken prisoners shortly after arrival; the former are surrounded by boats, the latter by hundreds of men. The Portuguese saw red-complexioned men of tall stature with long hair, the Icelanders saw a tall, stately man with white hair coming on horseback. They had to wait awhile before they were addressed in a language they could understand; the Portuguese being first spoken to by an interpreter in Arabic[45] who gave them good hopes, and afterwards brought them before the king, who assured them of his benevolent intentions; while the Icelanders were sent for by the great chief, who, when they came before him, spoke to them in Norse and was friendly towards them, and after long deliberations spoke to them again, and gave them leave to depart. The Portuguese had to wait in prison for a west wind before they could get away; the Icelanders had to wait for a favourable wind, which was again a west wind. The Portuguese were led away blindfold, obviously in order that they should not find their way back; when the Icelanders left it was enjoined upon them never to return. The Portuguese came to the west coast of Africa, from whence they afterwards had to sail northward to Lisbon; the Icelanders arrived in Ireland, and sailed thence the next summer northward to Iceland. It seems reasonable to suppose that there is some connection between the two tales; the same myth may in part form the foundation of both, and this again may be allied to the myth alluded to above of the Carthaginians’ discovery of a fertile island out in the ocean to the west of Africa. But there are also striking resemblances between Edrisi’s tale and the description in the Odyssey of Odysseus’s visit to the Phæacians in the western isle of Scheria. On his arrival there Athene warns Odysseus to be careful, as this people is not inclined to tolerate foreigners, and no other men come to them. Odysseus is brought before the king, Alcinous, who receives him in friendly fashion, and tells him that no Phæacian shall “hold him back by force,” and Odysseus relates his many adventures. Finally the Phæacians convey him while asleep across the sea in a boat, carry him ashore at dawn, and go away before he awakes [Od. xiii. 79, ff.]; this corresponds to the Portuguese being taken blindfold across the sea and left bound on the shore, until they are released at sunrise. The promise of the Phæacians, after Poseidon’s revenge for their helping Odysseus, never again to assist any seafarer that might come to them, may bear some resemblance to the incident of Björn Breidvikinge-kjæmpe trying to prevent Icelanders from seeking a land which “would show little mercy to foreigners.”

Moreover, the tales, both of Gudleif’s voyage and of Edrisi’s Portuguese adventurers, resemble ancient Irish myths.

The similarity to the meeting of Gudleif and the Icelanders with the likewise exiled great man and chief, who did not give his name but hinted at his identity, is evident. If we suppose that the island Gudleif reached was originally the white men’s, or the holy (baptized) men’s land, then it may be possible that the great man’s words to Gudleif about there being men on the island who were greater (“ríkari”) than he is connected with the mention of Elijah and Enoch.

Thus we see a connection between Gudleif’s voyage (and the exiled Breidvikinge-kjæmpe on the unknown island) and Irish myths and legends, the Arabic tale, and finally the Odyssey. What the mutual relationship may be between Edrisi’s tale and the Irish legends is to us of minor importance. As the Norse Vikings had much communication with the Spanish peninsula[47] it might be supposed that the Norse tale, derived from Irish myths, had reached Portugal; but as the Arabic tale has several similarities to the voyages of Brandan and Maelduin, and to Dicuil’s account of the Faroes (with their sheep and birds), which are not found in the Norse narrative, it is more probable that the incidents in the experiences of the Portuguese adventurers are derived directly from Ireland, which also had close connection with the Spanish Peninsula, chiefly through Norse ships and merchants. We must in any case suppose that the Icelandic tale of Gudleif’s voyage came from Ireland; but it may have acquired additional colour from northern legends.

Here we have undeniable parallels to the storm-driven Icelanders’ meeting with the exiled Breidvikinge-kjæmpe, who asks after his native place and his woman, Thurid,[48] and who also sends two gifts home, though with very different feelings and objects. It may be supposed that the Swedish-Norwegian tale is derived from ancient myths, and the Icelandic narrative may have borrowed features, not, of course, from this very tale, but from myths of the same type.

Remarkable points of resemblance both to the voyages of the Irish (Bran’s voyage) to the Fortunate Isles in the west, and to those of Gudleif and of the eight Portuguese (in Edrisi), are found in a Japanese tale of the fortunate isles of “Horaisan,” to which Moltke Moe has called my attention.[49]

A connection between the intellectual world of China and Japan and that of Europe in the Middle Ages may well be supposed to have been brought about by the Arabs, who penetrated as far as China on their trading voyages, and who, on the other hand, had close communication with Western Europe. Furthermore, it must be remembered how many of our mythical conceptions and tales are more or less connected with India, just as many of the Arabian tales evidently had their birthplace there [cf. E. Rohde, 1900, pp. 191, ff.]; while on the other side there was, of course, a close connection between India and the intellectual world of China and Japan, as shown by the spread of Buddhism. A transference of the same myths both eastward to Japan and westward to Europe is thus highly probable, whether these myths originated in Europe or in India and the East. It is striking, too, that even a secondary feature such as the curdled, dead sea (cf. “Morimarusa,” see vol. i. p. 99; the stinking sea in Edrisi, vol. ii. p. 51) is met with again here as the “muddy sea” without fish (cf. resemblances to Arab ideas, chapter xiii.).

If we now look back upon all the problems it has been sought to solve in this chapter, the impression may be a somewhat heterogeneous and negative one; the majority will doubtless be struck at the outset by the multiplicity of the paths, and by the intercrossing due to this multiplicity. But if we force our way through the network of by-paths and follow up the essential leading lines, it appears to me that there is established a firm and powerful series of conclusions, which it will not be easy to shake. The most important steps in this series are:

(1) The oldest authority,[51] Adam of Bremen’s work, in which Wineland is mentioned, is untrustworthy, and, with the exception of the name and of the fable of wine being produced there, contains nothing beyond what is found in Isidore.

(2) The oldest Icelandic authorities that mention the name of “Vinland,” or in the Landnáma “Vindland hit Góða,” say nothing about its discovery or about the wine there; on the other hand, Are Frode mentions the Skrælings (who must originally have been regarded as a fairy people). The name of Leif Ericson is mentioned, unconnected with Wineland or its discovery.

(3) It is not till well on in the thirteenth century that Leif’s surname of Heppni, his discovery of Wineland (“Vinland” or “Vindland”), and his Christianising of Greenland are mentioned (in the Kristni-saga and Heimskringla), but still there is nothing about wine.

(4) It is not till the close of the thirteenth century that any information occurs as to what and where Wineland was, with statements as to the wine and wheat there, and a description of voyages thither (in the Saga of Eric the Red). But still the accounts omit to inform us who gave the name and why.

(5) The second and later principal narrative of voyages to Wineland (the Flateyjarbók’s Grönlendinga-þáttr) gives a very different account of the discovery, by another, and likewise of the later voyages thither.

(6) The first of the two sagas, and the one which is regarded as more to be relied on, contains scarcely a single feature that is not wholly or in part mythical or borrowed from elsewhere; both sagas have an air of romance.

(7) Even among the Greeks of antiquity we find myths of fortunate isles far in the western ocean, with the two characteristic features of Wineland, the wine and the wheat.

(8) The most significant features in the description of these Fortunate Isles or Isles of the Blest in late classical times and in Isidore are the self-grown or wild-growing vine (on the heights) and the wild-growing (uncultivated, self-sown or unsown) corn or wheat or even cornfields (Isidore). In addition there were lofty trees (Pliny) and mild winters. Thus a complete correspondence with the saga’s description of Wineland.

(9) The various attempts that have been made to bring the natural conditions of the North American coast into agreement with the saga’s description of Wineland are more or less artificial, and no natural explanation has been offered of how the two ideas of wine and wheat, both foreign to the Northerners, could have become the distinguishing marks of the country.

(10) In Ireland long before the eleventh century there were many myths and legends of happy lands far out in the ocean to the west; and in the description of these wine and the vine form conspicuous features.

(11) From the eleventh century onward, in Ireland and in the North, we meet with a Grape-island or a Wineland, which it seems most reasonable to suppose the same.

(12) From the Landnámabók it may be naturally concluded that in the eleventh century the Icelanders had heard of Wineland, together with Hvítramanna-land, in Ireland.

(13) Thorkel Gellisson, from whom this information is derived, probably also furnished Are Frode with his statement in the Islendingabók about Wineland; this is therefore probably the same Irish land.

(14) The Irish happy lands peopled by the síd correspond to the Norwegian huldrelands out in the sea to the west, and the Icelandic elf-lands.

(15) Since the huldre- and síd-people and the elves are originally the dead, and since the Isles of the Blest or the Fortunate Isles of antiquity were the habitations of the happy dead, these islands also correspond to the Irish síd-people’s happy lands, and to the Norwegian huldrelands and the Icelandic elf-lands.

(16) The additional name of “hit Góða” for the happy Wineland and the name “Landit Góða” for huldrelands in Norway correspond directly to the name of “Insulæ Fortunatæ,” which in itself could not very well take any other Norse form. And as in addition the huldrelands were imagined as specially good and fertile, and the underground, huldre- and síd-people or elves are called the “good people,” and are everywhere in different countries associated with the idea of “good,” this gives a natural explanation of both the Norse names.

(17) The name “Vinland hit Góða” has a foreign effect in Norse nomenclature; it must be a hybrid of Norse and foreign nomenclature, through “Vinland” being combined with “Landit Góða,” which probably originated in a translation of “Insulæ Fortunatæ.”

(18) The probability of the name of Skrælings for the inhabitants of Wineland having originally meant brownies or trolls—that is, small huldre-folk, elves or pygmies—entirely agrees with the view that Wineland was originally the fairy country, the Fortunate Isles in the west of the ocean.

(19) The statement of the Icelandic geography, that in the opinion of some Wineland the Good was connected with Africa, and the fact that the Norwegian work, Historia Norwegiæ, calls Wineland (with Markland and Helluland) the African Islands, are direct evidence that the Norse Wineland was the Insulæ Fortunatæ, which together with the Gorgades and the Hesperides were precisely the African Islands.

(20) Even though the Saga of Eric the Red and the Grönlendinga-þáttr contain nothing which we can regard as certain information as to the discovery of America by the Greenlanders, we yet find there and elsewhere many features which show that they must have reached the coast of America, the most decisive amongst them being the chance mention of the voyagers from Markland in 1347. To this may be added Hertzberg’s demonstration of the adoption of the Icelandic game of “knattleikr” by the Indians. The name of the mythical land may then have been transferred to the country that was discovered.

(21) Hvítramanna-land is a mythical land similar to the wine-island of the Irish, modified in accordance with Christian ideas, especially perhaps those of the white garments of the baptized—as in the Navigatio Brandani in reference to the Isle of Anchorites or the “Strong Men’s Isle” (== Starkra-manna-land)—and of the white hermits.

(22) Finally, among the most different people on earth, from the ancient Greeks to the Icelanders, Chinese and Japanese, we meet with similar myths about countries out in the ocean and voyages to them, which, whether they be connected with one another or not, show the common tendency of humanity to adopt ideas and tales of this kind.

But even if we are obliged to abandon the Saga of Eric the Red[52] and the other descriptions of these voyages as historical documents, this is compensated by the increase in our admiration for the extraordinary powers of realistic description in Icelandic literature. In reading Eric’s Saga one cannot help being struck by the way in which many of the events are so described, often in a few words, that the whole thing is before one’s eyes and it is difficult to believe that it has not actually occurred. This is just the same quality that characterises our Norwegian fairy-tales: all that is supernatural is made so natural and realistic that it is brought straight before one. The Icelanders created the realistic novel; and at a time when the prose style of Europe was still in its infancy their prose narrative often reaches the summit of clear simplicity. In part this may doubtless be explained by their not being merely authors, but men of action; their presentment acquired the stamp of real life and the brevity that belongs to the narrator of things seen. And to this, of course, must be added the fact that as a rule the tales were sifted and abridged by generations of oral transmission. In later times this style became corrupted by European influence.

After I had given, on October 7, 1910, the outlines of this examination of the sagas of the Wineland voyages before the Scientific Society of Christiania, attention was called in Sweden, by Professor F. Läffler, to the fact that the Swedish philologist, Professor Sven Söderberg, whose early death in 1901 is much to be regretted, had announced views about Wineland similar to those at which I have arrived. The manuscript of a lecture that he delivered on the subject at Lund in May 1898, but which was never printed, was then found, and has been published in the “Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten” for October 30, 1910. As I have thus become acquainted with this interesting inquiry too late to be able to include it in my examination, I think it right to mention it here.

Professor Söderberg thinks, as I do, that there can be no doubt about the Norsemen having discovered a part of North America; but he looks upon the tales of the wine and everything connected therewith as later inventions. He maintains that the name of “Vinland” originally meant grass-land or pasture-land (from the old Norse word “vin” == pasture), therefore something similar to the meaning of Greenland, and that it may have been the name of a country discovered in the west. Curiously enough, I took at first the same view, and thought too that Adam of Bremen might have misunderstood such a word, just as Söderberg thinks; but I allowed myself to be convinced by the linguistic objection that the word “vin” (pasture) seems to have gone out of use before the eleventh century (cf. vol. i. p. 367). However, Söderberg’s reasons for supposing that the word was still in use appear to have weight; and he also makes it probable that the name formed thereby might be Vinland and not Vinjarland. (In support of this Mr. A. Kiær gave me as an example the Norwegian name Vinås.) Professor Söderberg then thinks that Adam of Bremen heard this name in Denmark, and, misinterpreting it as a foreigner to mean the land of wine, himself invented the explanation of the country’s being so called. Söderberg gives several striking examples to show how this kind of “etymologising” was just in Adam’s spirit (e.g., Sconia or Skåne is derived from Old German “sconi” or “schön”; Greenland comes from the inhabitants being bluish-green in the face, etc.). An example from a country lying near Denmark, which appears to me even more striking than those given by Söderberg, is Adam’s explanation of Kvænland as the Land of Women (cf. vol. i. pp. 186, f., 383), the Wizzi as white people, or Albanians, the Huns as dogs, etc. Söderberg has difficulty in explaining the statement about the unsown corn in Wineland; but if he had noticed Isidore’s description of the Insulæ Fortunatæ with the self-grown vine and the wild-growing corn, he would have found a perfectly natural explanation of this also. If Adam had misunderstood a “Vinland” (== grass-land), and then perhaps Finland (Finmark, cf. vol i. p. 382), as meaning the land of wine, it would be just in his spirit to transfer thither Isidore’s description of the Insulæ Fortunatæ; a parallel case is that in interpreting Kvænland as Womanland he transfers thither the myth of the Amazons and its fables, and this in spite of its being a country on the Baltic about which it must have been comparatively easy for him to obtain information. In the same way he transfers to the “island” of Halagland, mentioned immediately before Wineland, an erroneous account of the midnight sun and the winter night taken from older writers (cf. vol. i. p. 194, note 2). But one reason for thinking that “Vinland” really meant the land of wine as early as that time is the circumstance put forward above (vol. i. p. 365), that at about the same time there occurs a Grape-island in the Navigatio Brandani.

Professor Söderberg then goes through the Icelandic accounts of Wineland, and points out, in the same way as has been done in this chapter, that the oldest authorities have nothing remarkable to report about the country, and do not mention wine there, and he rightly lays stress on this being particularly significant in the case of Snorre Sturlason,

Later, Söderberg thinks, Adam of Bremen’s fourth book became known in Iceland, and on the foundation of that the tale of Leif’s discovery of the country with the wine and corn arose, and the later sagas developed, especially that of Thorfinn Karlsevne’s voyage, which he thinks in the main “rests on a truthful foundation,” though he points out that a particular feature like that of the two Scottish runners must be “pure invention, or rather ... borrowed from another saga.” If Professor Söderberg had remarked how most of the incidents in this saga are spurious, he would have found even stronger support for his views in this fact.

CHAPTER X

The north coast of America and the islands to the north of it, from Bering Strait to the east coast of Greenland, is the territory of the Eskimo. The map (below) shows his present distribution and the districts where older traces of him have been found. Within these limits the Eskimo must have developed into what they now are. In their anthropological race-characteristics, in their sealing- and whaling-culture, and in their language they are very different from all other known peoples, both in America and Asia, and we must suppose that for long ages, ever since they began to fit themselves for their life along the frozen shores, they have lived apart, separated from others, perhaps for a long time as a small tribe. They all belong to the same race; the cerebral formation, for instance, of all real Eskimo from Alaska to Greenland is remarkably homogeneous; but in the far west they may have been mixed with Indians and others, and in Greenland they are now mixed with Europeans. They are pronouncedly dolichocephalic; but have short, broad faces, and by their features and appearance are easily distinguished from other neighbouring peoples. Small, slanting eyes; the nose small and flat, narrow between the eyes and broad below; cheeks broad, prominent and round; the forehead narrowing comparatively above; the lower part of the face broad and powerful; black, straight hair. The colour of the skin is a pale brown. The Eskimo are not, as is often supposed, a small people on an average; they are rather of middle height, often powerful, and sometimes quite tall, although they are a good deal shorter, and weaker in appearance, than average Scandinavians. In appearance, and perhaps also in language, they come nearest to some of the North American Indian tribes.

From whence they originally came, and where they developed into Eskimo, is uncertain. The central point of the Eskimo culture is their seal-hunting, especially with the harpoon, sometimes from the kayak in open water and sometimes from the ice. We cannot believe that this sealing, especially with the kayak, was first developed in the central part of the regions they now inhabit; there the conditions of life would have been too severe, and they would not have been able to support themselves until their sealing-culture had attained a certain development. Just as in Europe we met with the “Finnish” sea-fishing on a coast that was connected with milder coasts farther south, where seamanship was able first to develop, so we must expect that the Eskimo culture began on coasts with similar conditions, and these must be looked for either in Labrador or on Bering Strait.

As the coasts of Labrador and Hudson Bay are ice-bound for a great part of the year, it is not likely that traffic by sea began there at any very early time; and consequently no particularly favourable conditions existed there for an early development of seamanship. Nor is this the case to any great extent on the east coast of North America farther south, which, with the exception of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, has little protection from the sea, and offers few facilities for coastal traffic.[53] Nor has it produced any other maritime people or any similar fishing-culture. Again, if the Eskimo culture had arisen there, it would be impossible to understand how they learned to use dogs as draught-animals. It is otherwise on the northern west coast of North America, which is indented by fjords and has many outlying islands, with protected channels between them and the land. Here seamanship might be naturally developed and form the necessary basis for a higher sealing-culture like that of the Eskimo. In addition there is abundance of marine animals which afforded excellent conditions for hunting. Here too we have many different peoples with maritime habits: on the one side the Eskimo northwards along the coast of Alaska; on the other side the Aleutians on the islands extending out to sea, besides Indian tribes along the coast of southern Alaska and British Columbia. Until, therefore, research has produced sufficient evidence for a different view, it must seem most natural that in these favourable regions with a rich supply of marine animals of all kinds we must look for the cradle of the culture that was to render the Eskimo capable of distributing themselves over the whole Arctic world of America. To this must be added that in these regions, by intercourse with people on the Asiatic side of Bering Strait, the seafaring Eskimo may have learnt the use of the dog as a draught-animal, which is an Asiatic, and not an American invention, and which is also of great importance to the whole life and distribution of the Eskimo in the ice-bound regions. We cannot here pursue further the inquiry into the still open question of the origin of the Eskimo and the development of their culture.[54]

Kayak-fishers and a women’s boat (“umiak”).
Woodcut from Greenland, drawn and engraved by a native