There remains to be considered what is probably the most important feature of all, the information given in the sagas on the subject of the aborigines. In this connexion it is important to observe that at the time of the voyages themselves in all probability a savage tribe was a complete novelty to the Norsemen. The only possible exceptions were the Eskimo of Greenland, of whom probably something was known by the time that the Wineland sagas were reduced to writing. In so far, then, as the descriptions of the Skrælings of Wineland are realistic, and differ materially from anything which can have been derived from Eskimo sources, these descriptions form probably the most convincing proof of the historical accuracy of these stories. The inquiry at this point falls therefore under three heads: possible or probable Eskimo influences, any traces which may be found of legendary or mythical influences, and characteristics indisputably Indian.
Now first of all it must be stated that we have no evidence of any meeting between the Norsemen and the Eskimo of Greenland until after the time of Ari the Learned. And indeed we have some evidence that no such meeting had up to this time taken place, while it is clear that the existence of Skrælings in Wineland had at this date been reported. In a previous chapter (p. 95) I have drawn attention to Ari’s testimony on the point, but in view of Dr. Nansen’s comments upon it some further reference must now be made to these matters.
In Ari’s Íslendíngabók, in the passage relating to the colonization of Greenland (see Appendix and cf. p. 95), it is stated that dwellings and fragments of canoes had been discovered. And the writer goes on explicitly: ‘and stone smith-work (weapons) such that from it (steinsmíði þat, es af því) one may understand that there that kind of folk had passed (farit) who have settled in (bygt) Wineland, and the Greenlanders call Skrælings.’ One could hardly have a clearer statement that the deduction as to the former presence of this people in Greenland was based on such traces as are here mentioned, and on nothing else. It seems prima facie most improbable that such guarded terms should be used if the Greenlanders had at this time actually met the Eskimo, and thus provided themselves with a much more conclusive proof of their existence. Moreover we have, besides the express terms used by Ari, the apparently intentional contrast to which I have alluded elsewhere between the transitory and past movement of the Eskimo through the one country (farit) and the permanent residence of the savages in Wineland (bygt). And it would seem a legitimate and almost irresistible inference to draw from this passage that accounts of savages with canoes and stone weapons (cf. the ‘hellustein’ which slew Thorbrand Snorrison in Wineland) were forthcoming at a time when the Norsemen had no other source but America from which the existence of such things could be known to them. Dr. Nansen however concludes that Ari’s silence as to the Eskimo themselves was due to the fact that ‘they were supernatural beings of whom it was best to say nothing’.[84] It is rather difficult to see, if this were so, why Ari should have felt himself at liberty to mention the existence of these people in Wineland any more than in Greenland, or why he should have thought it any better to speak of the inferred existence of the Eskimo than to record their actual occurrence. Further, we may fairly demand where it is that Dr. Nansen finds in Icelandic literature any reluctance to mention supernatural beings, where these are believed to have existed. Altogether it appears to me an understatement of the case to say that no meeting between the Norsemen and the Eskimo prior to the date of the Íslendíngabók seems at all probable.
Dr. Nansen, however, writes (vol. ii, p. 77): ‘I am unable to read Ari’s meaning in this way. He uses the present tense: “calla”, and what one “calls Skrælings” must presumably be a people one knows, and not one that one’s ancestors had met with more than a hundred years ago.’ On this line of reasoning, if I speak of ‘the man whom Carlyle calls the Sea-Green Incorruptible’, I mean to imply that Robespierre and Carlyle were contemporaries. Dr. Nansen further refers (loc. cit.) to the parallel passage in Ari, mentioning the Irish monks in Iceland ‘whom the Norwegians call (calla) Papar’.[85] ‘From these words’, he says, ‘it might be concluded, with as much justification as from the statement about the traces of Skrælings, that the newcomers did not come in contact with the earlier people; but in the latter case this is incredible, and moreover conflicts with Ari’s own words.’ Let us examine this statement. In the first place it is clear from Ari’s statement, ‘they went away afterwards’, that none were left at the time of writing, yet he still says, in conformity with normal grammatical usage, that the Norsemen ‘call’, i.e. speak of, them as Papar. It is obvious, therefore, from the very passage to which Dr. Nansen appeals, that the use of the present tense does not denote the contemporary presence of the Irish monks, and it need not therefore indicate in the other passage the presence of any Skrælings in Ari’s time in the Greenland colony.
In the second place, whereas in the Skræling passage Ari only mentions traces from which their former presence could be inferred, he begins his reference to the ‘Papar’ with the words, ‘There were then Christians here, those whom the Norsemen call “Papar”, but they went away afterwards ... and left behind’, &c. This passage therefore cannot be taken as affording any support to Dr. Nansen’s construction of the statement about the Skrælings.
In another place (vol. ii, p. 16) Dr. Nansen suggests that the mention of traces of Skræling occupation without recording a meeting with the men themselves has an uncanny significance, suggesting that the Skrælings are treated as trolls. It seems more natural on the whole to construe the passage as meaning what it says—that the traces were there but not the men.
While on this subject I may as well refer to an inaccuracy which appears in the note on page 77 of Dr. Nansen’s second volume. He says there, ‘If it was the tradition of Karlsevne’s encounter with the Skrælings that was referred to, then of course neither he nor the greater part of his men were Greenlanders, but Icelanders, so that it might equally well have been said that the Icelanders called them Skrælings.’ This is in direct conflict with the statement in the Saga of Eric the Red, ‘ok váru þar flestir Grœnlendskir menn á’—‘and the majority of those there on (the expedition) were Greenlanders.’ Of course the real reason why Ari says ‘the Greenlanders call them Skrælings’ is that he is here citing, as he tells us, a Greenland source, viz. the information obtained by his uncle, Thorkel Gellison, in Greenland. The argument, therefore, in Dr. Nansen’s note, like that of the text, falls to the ground.
Conceding, however, that some knowledge of the Eskimo may have prevailed at the time when our sagas assumed their present form, though the ‘King’s Mirror’, composed about the middle of the thirteenth century, says nothing of these people in its detailed description of Greenland, the question next arises as to how far the writers can have been indebted to such knowledge for their realistic descriptions of the Wineland savages. These Skrælings, as they are called, make their first appearance in the story during the exploration of Thorvald, as narrated in the Flatey Book. We are told how three canoes of skin (húðkeipar) were observed, with three men sleeping beneath each. These canoes appear to have been so portable that one man, the only survivor of the ensuing slaughter, was enabled to escape with one. Now here at first sight we have an Eskimo characteristic, in the fact that the canoes are said to have been of skin. And indeed it may well be that the word used is simply the Greenlanders name for a kayak. This, however, is not certain, for it would need a close inspection of an Indian canoe, with its sewn ‘skin’ of birch-bark, to enable a people unfamiliar with the use of this material in boat-building to distinguish between such a covering and a hide. I prefer not to lay stress, as some have done, on the fact that some Indian tribes used skin coverings for their canoes, for the natives of the latitudes with which we are concerned are represented in the earliest authorities as using birch-bark. Turning, however, from the name used to the thing described, it is quite clear that we here have neither kayaks nor umiaks, but Indian canoes. Three men could not possibly sleep under a kayak, which is a narrow craft covered in at all points but one, like a Rob Roy canoe or a racing outrigger. Nor could one man carry off an umiak, which is a large and clumsy boat, usually manned (if this is not a bull) by women. Both these forms of Eskimo boat were observed and accurately described in the contemporary account of Frobisher’s second voyage (1577), given in Hakluyt,—‘The greater sort—wherein sixteen or twenty men may sit:—the other boat is but for one man to sit and row in with one oar;’ and doubtless at a much earlier time the Eskimo constructed their kayaks and umiaks in practically the same manner as at the present day. But an Indian canoe exactly and completely fulfils the conditions required in both respects. It is exceedingly light and portable, yet it may be, and frequently is, used as a shelter for its occupants. On this last point one may compare the observation of Jacques Cartier with regard to a tribe of Indians met with in the course of his explorations. ‘They have no other dwelling but their boats, which they turn upside down, and under them they lay themselves all along upon the bare ground.’ (Hakluyt’s translation.) Here, then, we have a feature which, with the possible exception of the word used for canoe, can only have been drawn from an actual meeting with the North American Indians, and of which the historical accuracy is indisputable.
Another small point accurately observed and almost certainly pointing to direct contact with the American Indians is to be found in the passage relating to the sleeping Skrælings discovered and slain by Karlsefni’s expedition. They had, we are told, cases containing animal marrow mixed with blood, a description which seems to refer to something in the nature of pemmican, or the ‘moose-butter’ of which Denys speaks in his work on Nova Scotia, and Father Leclercq in his Relation of Gaspesia. This was a cake of hard grease extracted from the bones of the moose, and Denys tells us that ‘it was this which they (the Indians) used as their entire provision for living when they went hunting’.
In the description of the personal appearance of the Skrælings there is little that is decisive, but much that is circumstantial. One of the two companion texts describes them as ‘swarthy’, the other as ‘small’. ‘Small’ sounds more like Eskimo than Indian, and may be a corruption of the original text based on knowledge derived from Greenland. Ugliness, unkempt hair, and broad cheeks would apply to many Indian tribes, e.g. Micmacs, as well as to Eskimo. Large eyes would seem at first sight to apply to neither, and Dr. Nansen therefore considers it to be a trait showing the introduction of troll ideas. Yet the eyes of Indians have struck many genuine observers as large; for example, Lescarbot tells us that these features ‘neantmoins ne sont petits, comme ceux des anciens Scythes, mais d’une grandeur bien agréable’. Carver, again (1779), says of the Indians, ‘their eyes are large and black.’ Verezzano likewise speaks of ‘large black eyes and a fixed expression’. Another characteristic claimed by Nansen as evidence of the influence of the troll-idea is the beard which we are told was possessed by one of the Skrælings discovered in Markland: but this strikes me as telling rather the other way, for all trolls are bearded, and the Norsemen were so commonly so as to be known to the Greenland Eskimo as ‘Long-beards’. The point therefore appears to have been recorded precisely because of its rarity among the Skrælings, and, while Indians for the most part take care to remove all hair from the face and body, the possibility of beards among this people is recognized by almost all writers on the subject (cf. Lescarbot, Schoolcraft, Carter, Catlin, &c.). It may be admitted, however, that the personal appearance of the Skrælings is not a point from which any very clear inference can be drawn either one way or the other.
The savages whose appearance is described in these ambiguous terms made their appearance in canoes on board of which—we are told—certain objects were waved with a noise like threshing. The word used of these objects is variously written ‘trjánum’, ‘trjom’, and ‘trjónum’. It has been usually translated ‘staves’ or ‘poles’, but if ‘trjónum’ be the correct reading it would seem doubtful whether something more in the nature of a totem-mask or movable figure-head is not indicated. For ‘trjóna’ means primarily a snout, and then a detachable figure-head; cf. the interesting passage in Landnáma (IV. 7) referring to an old law whereby men were enjoined to remove their figure-heads before approaching Iceland, ‘and not to sail to land with gaping heads or open-mouthed snouts (trjónum) which might disturb the local spirits’. It might on the one hand be argued that figure-heads are things more intimately connected with the idea of boats than staves are, but for that very reason a copyist would be more likely to convert ‘trjánum’ into ‘trjónum’ in the passage under consideration than to err in the opposite direction.
Accepting the meaning ‘staves’ or ‘poles’, a recent writer[86] regards this as proof that the description is drawn from Eskimo, and Dr. Nansen makes a similar suggestion. To Mr. Gosling it is ‘evident that this is an attempt to describe the motion of the double-bladed paddle used by the Eskimos, and it will be seen that an Eskimo, sitting in his kayak, facing the direction towards which he is paddling, when going east or north, will appear to wave his paddle contrary to the motion of the sun in the heavens, but with it when travelling west or south’. I must confess that this attempt at an explanation is very far from satisfying me. In the first place it seems to me most unlikely, that the Norsemen could observe a large number of kayaks on three separate occasions without understanding that the waving paddle was merely the means of propulsion. In the next place, though nothing explicit is stated as to the direction from which the first visitors arrived, the second and third visits, one peaceable and the other hostile—one therefore in which the staves moved with the sun and the other in which they moved against it—both came ‘from the south’, so that the movement of the paddles would be the same in both cases. Again, a kayak paddle, having a blade at each end, does not move continuously in one direction, but from side to side, while, viewed broadside, the motion is that of a stave rotated forward.
Finally, though perhaps of less importance, it may be pointed out that on one occasion the language used seems to imply more than one ‘trjóna’ to each boat (var veift á hverju skipi trjánum). Having regard to the prevalence in America, as in most other countries, of the ceremonial use of solar and contra-solar motion (cf. Brinton’s Myths of the New World), it seems to me a more probable explanation that we have here a genuine and interesting use of a sign correctly interpreted by the Norsemen, which further research into Indian customs and superstitions might succeed in elucidating. For my part, I am inclined to think that the ‘trjóna’ was a rattle-stick, such as is used by many Indian tribes. No other explanation hitherto suggested takes into account the ‘noise like threshing’ which is a circumstantial part of the description. Rattles, being normally an accompaniment to dancing, would be likely to be swung with or against the sun according to the significance of the ceremony of which they were a part.
With regard to the white and red shields used as answering signals by the Norsemen, of course there is no need to suppose that the Skrælings understood them, as Dr. Nansen does, observing that these features ‘have an altogether European effect’. Yet by a curious coincidence such signs would in fact have probably been intelligible to American Indians, for it is stated in Wood’s Natural History of Man that, ‘As among us, white and red are the signs of peace and war, and each leader carries with him two small flags, one of white bison’s hide and the other of reddened leather.’ But we may be content to observe that the Norsemen would be likely to make their customary attempts at signalling regardless of the fact that their efforts might be unintelligible.[87]
The fur-trading of the savages will recall to any student of the history of exploration numerous parallels in the writing of Jacques Cartier and others. In particular one may claim as a genuine Indian characteristic the eager acquisition of red cloth to bind round the head. Numerous parallels to this may be found in the records of later explorers; in particular one may cite, from Juet’s description of Hudson’s third voyage (ed. Hakluyt Society, p. 60), what reads almost like a free translation of the saga: ‘They brought many beaver skinnes and other fine furres, which they would have changed for redde gownes.’
It does not appear likely that the seal-clad Eskimo of Greenland, who seem to have kept out of the way of the Norsemen as much as possible, could have contributed such a feature to the story. Even more certainly authentic is the account of the fights with the natives. Eskimo, as Dr. Nansen points out, were unused to war in Greenland, where indeed they had no other nation to fight, while of course warfare has always been a normal part of the Indian’s existence. (It must be conceded, however, that Frobisher found the American Eskimo distinctly warlike and pugnacious.) It is clear that the Skrælings were formidable antagonists, since it was the fear of them which ultimately drove Karlsefni to withdraw from the country. Of their weapons only one seems to call for comment, the large ball, resembling a sheep’s paunch and dark in colour, which was slung from a pole towards Karlsefni’s force, making a terrible noise where it came down. Dr. Nansen has sought to parallel this incident from a number of disconnected sources, ranging from the use of catapults and even gunpowder in European warfare to the fiery mass thrown with tongs at St. Brendan’s ship by the inhabitants of the Smith’s Island, and a similar incident in Mælduin’s voyage, and through these last to the Cyclops in the Odyssey.[88] In all these suggested sources, however, the differences seem quite as striking as the resemblances. The pole is absent, the resemblance to a sheep’s paunch seems remote, the missile in the case under consideration appears to have been neither fiery nor explosive, and altogether it is difficult to see that the incidents cited have more in common than the presence of a large and in some cases noisy missile. Bearing this in mind, let us see whether a resemblance far more striking is not to be found in a passage which Dr. Nansen passes by with a half-contemptuous footnote. The passage in question, which is to be found in Schoolcraft’s Indian Tribes of the United States, vol. i, p. 85, appears to me of sufficient importance to be quoted in full.
‘Algonquin tradition affirms that in ancient times, during the fierce wars which the Indians carried on, they constructed a very formidable instrument of attack, by sewing up a large boulder in a new skin. To this a long handle was tied. When the skin dried it became very tight round the stone, and after being painted with devices assumed the appearance and character of a solid globe upon a pole. This formidable instrument, to which the name of ‘balista’ may be applied, is figured (Plate 15, fig. 2) from the description of an Algonquin chief. It was borne by several warriors who acted as balisteers. Plunged upon a boat or canoe it was capable of sinking it. Brought down among a group of men on a sudden it produced consternation and death.’
With all deference to Dr. Nansen, who regards the resemblance as ‘distant’, it seems to me that here we have the very thing described. We have first of all a weapon which Schoolcraft thinks of as a ‘balista’, and one which therefore could easily give rise to the statement that the Skrælings had ‘valslöngur’, i.e. war-slings or catapults. We have the pole on which it was raised, we have several men to sling it, we have in particular the resemblance to a sheep’s paunch accounted for by the fact that it was covered with a stretched skin. In fact, to reject an explanation of this passage, which fits every single fact recorded, in favour of a suggested resemblance to an explosive because it made a noise when falling, or to fiery masses hurled at a ship because these, too, are large missiles, seems to me to border on perversity. But the reader will judge for himself whether it is necessary to impute to the saga writer here any borrowing from mythical sources, or whether the description of this weapon is not in itself a very strong instance of the substantial historical accuracy of the story.
Mr. Babcock, indeed,[89] seems to me to have been unnecessarily puzzled by this weapon. He seems to regard the thing described by Schoolcraft as a ‘club’, whereas that author, by conferring on the implement the name ‘balista’, distinctly suggests that the stone was discharged as a missile. He also searches, not very conclusively, for evidence that the Indians in these latitudes used slings; but it is pretty clear that the remark about ‘valslöngur’ (war-slings) has reference exclusively to this weapon, the description of which immediately follows. So at any rate I read the passage (q. v., page 62).
Of the Skrælings, then, who are said to have been seen in Wineland, we may say that the description contains practically no statement which might not be truly made of American Indians. It contains, moreover, points, such as the canoes under which three men slept and the balista above referred to, which can hardly be due to any other source but direct observation of the American natives. Possibly derived from a knowledge of the Greenland Eskimo comes the word ‘húðkeipur’, used for a canoe, and, as some have thought, the incident of the waving poles on the boats, though the latter strikes me as a quite unjustifiable inference. The description of the personal appearance of the natives will suit either Eskimo or Indian. On the whole, however, we may say with confidence that we have here a description of savages so realistic as to point to direct and careful observation. In support of Dr. Nansen’s claim that the tale is mainly a potpourri of borrowed folklore we have really nothing but the double who appeared to Gudrid in the Flatey Book version, the belated warning of the Skræling attack which came to Thorvald, and the uniped which in one version is said to have caused the death of this son of Eric the Red. Of these three incidents two are typically Scandinavian and no more than we must expect in the reports of an unscientific age. Did not even Hudson have his mermaid? The uniped incident shows traces of importation from some separate and later legend, e.g. the dying speech of Thorvald is clearly plagiarized from that of Thormod Kolbrunarskald at Stiklestad. And the story, as I have endeavoured to show, can quite well do without it. When these fabulous elements are admitted we may still ask in vain for a single clear instance of the adoption or adaptation of Celtic legend with its continuous insistence on the supernatural; of the source, that is, which Dr. Nansen claims as the chief contributor to the saga as we have it.
There remains to be considered the episode of the savages captured in Markland on the return voyage. With the circumstance that one of the Skrælings captured on this occasion is said to have been bearded I have dealt already. The statement that those who escaped disappeared into the ground appears to me to mean no more than that, like good stalkers, they contrived to take cover and creep away unseen. There is therefore no clearer evidence of legendary influence in this case than in the rest of the story. The rest of what is reported is hearsay derived from the captives themselves, after they had—possibly not very effectually—been taught to speak Icelandic. I therefore agree with Dr. Nansen that it is hopeless to attempt, as some have done (notably Mr. Thalbitzer, 1905 and 1913), to trace the nationality of these savages from the words preserved, Vætilldi, Uvægi, Avalldamon, Valldidida.[90] The explorers of a later age were not very happy in their transliteration of native words, and we cannot imagine that these names were handed down through a period of oral transmission without a fatal amount of transformation. That the rest of what is reported is inaccurate in most particulars is no more than we should expect under the circumstances.
One statement, however, in this passage, to which most commentators have devoted an abnormal amount of attention, merely purports to be a conjecture on the part of those who heard the story, and does not involve any necessary inaccuracy in the reported utterance of the captives. I refer to the allusion to Hvítramannaland (White Man’s Country) or Ireland the Great. The existence or non-existence of such a place as this, while it has exercised the ingenuity of almost all writers on the present subject, has really nothing to do with the authenticity of the Wineland stories. All that appears from the passage is that certain persons, on hearing an account of an adjacent land supposed to have been described by these Skræling children, jumped to the conclusion that Hvítramannaland was the place described, and the non-existence of such a country would merely prove that these persons were wrong in their conjecture, not that the story itself was unworthy of credence. What the savages may have been struggling to explain I will suggest later. Here, the point having been made that it is quite irrelevant, it may be interesting to follow the allusion a little farther.
What was apparently in the minds of those who made the conjecture referred to was a passage in Landnáma (i. 22) which tells how one Ari Marsson was driven by storms to ‘Hvítramannaland, which some call Ireland the Great; it lies westward in the ocean near Wineland the Good: it is called six days’ (dægra) sail west from Ireland: Ari did not succeed in getting away from thence, and he was baptized there. This story was first told by Rafn the Limerick-farer, who had been long at Limerick in Ireland. Thorkel Gellison (uncle of Ari the Learned) stated that Icelanders say, who had heard it from (Earl) Thorfin in the Orkneys, that Ari had been recognized in Hvítramannaland, and did not succeed in getting away from it, but was held in great honour there.’
In the Eyrbyggja Saga a similar story is told, though the name of the strange country is omitted, of one Björn Asbrandsson, who was cast in the same way upon a land to the south-west of Ireland, where he was subsequently recognized by an Icelander named Gudleif Gudlaugson. This story does not appear to me sufficiently relevant to the subject in hand to warrant more detailed notice, though the curious will find ample mention of it in other works on the Wineland question.
Apart from the irrelevance of these stories, those familiar with the laws of evidence will doubtless agree that lands where a hero is said to have made his final disappearance, reported as they must necessarily be on hearsay testimony, are on a very different footing from countries whose explorers returned to describe them in person. The only value—either one way or the other—of this passage from Landnáma lies in the mention of Wineland the Good as a place known and acknowledged to exist at a period long antecedent to the date of any extant manuscript of these voyages. The proximity of Hvítramannaland to Wineland is presumably a conjecture by the authors of Landnáma, who would naturally tend to connect with one another any unknown lands reported in a westerly direction. It seems to me highly improbable that Wineland found any mention in the original story told by Rafn from Limerick. At any rate, no one can be justified in basing an argument on the assumption that it did, as does Dr. Nansen,[91] when he says, in support of his argument that the Celtic imagination has played a large part in corrupting the traditions of Wineland, ‘Ravn must have heard of both Hvítramannaland and Wineland in Ireland, since otherwise he could not have known that one lay near the other.’
Anyhow, if Hvítramannaland was but six ‘dægra’ sail from Ireland it cannot really have been anywhere near Wineland, assuming the latter to be in America. If we follow the Eyrbyggja Saga in placing it to the south-west rather than the west of Ireland the distance is more suggestive of the Azores. Storm, however, is of opinion that the stories of Ari Marsson and Björn Asbrandsson are a perversion of Irish legends of the Christian occupation of Iceland, which a knowledge of the position and characteristics of that island had shifted to a different locality, retaining the distance (six ‘dægra’ sail) which, in the form ‘sex dierum navigatione’, is recorded by Pliny and adopted by Bede and Dicuil with reference to Thule. There seems much to be said for such a view, particularly as ‘Ireland the Great’ seems intended to convey the idea of an Irish colony (cf. Magna Græcia, &c.), and, if so, Hvítramannaland must be regarded as a mythical region.
It by no means follows, however, that the statements attributed to the captive Skrælings must be placed in the same category. Whatever these statements may have conveyed to a Scandinavian audience, either contemporary or subsequent, there seems no reason for us to read into the description a procession of Christian priests, as so many commentators seem to have agreed in doing.
Of course such statements as these, even when the captives had been ‘taught speech’, would be very liable to misinterpretation. It is not difficult, among the well-authenticated voyages of a later period, to find instances of native reports which were understood to convey notions the possibility of which must have originated in the mind of the questioner. Thus we find in the explorations of Jacques Cartier such passages as the following: ‘Donnacona had told us that he had been in the country of Saguenay, in which are infinite Rubies, Gold, and other riches, and that there are white men, who clothe themselves with woollen cloth, even as we do in France.’ Misunderstanding of answers to questions based on preconceived ideas may thus account for much, but, farther than this, accounts in themselves accurate may easily become coloured by a false association of ideas as the tradition passes from mouth to mouth. Thus in the present case it may well be that those who gave us the saga in its present form understood the statements of the Skrælings to imply the existence of some such Christian community as later commentators have imagined. But the statements themselves are capable of an explanation more consonant with fact. The dressed deerskin of the Indians, before being treated with smoke, is as white as a kid glove, and robes of this unsmoked material are not uncommon, particularly if intended for ceremonial use. I have myself seen coats of the Indians of Labrador decorated with a few unimportant lines and patterns in red paint which would have led me to say with perfect truthfulness of the wearer that he ‘wore white clothes’. As for the ‘uttering of loud cries’, this is a trait far more easily reconciled with the idea of an Indian than a Christian ceremony. What is described as an ‘Indian Flag’, adorned it is true with feathers in place of bunting, is figured in Schoolcraft’s book at Plate 13 of vol. iii, and it is difficult to think how else any one could describe it, while other instances of poles and flags will occur to the reader of almost any work on the North American Indians.
On the whole there seems no very violent improbability in thinking that some Indian ceremony on the mainland might be referred to in some such language as is here attributed to the Skræling prisoners.
It will be convenient, before closing this chapter, to sum up the conclusions at which we have arrived.
1. At the time when savages, using stone implements and canoes, had been described and reported in Iceland, no meeting with the Greenland Eskimo had taken place.
2. There was at the time no other source from which descriptions of savages could be realistically drawn, unless the Norsemen had found them in America.
3. The description of the personal appearance of the Skrælings is neutral—it will suit either Indian or Eskimo very well; it is manifestly an accurate picture of some sort of savage.
4. The canoes described resemble Indian canoes, except for the name (húdkeipar), ‘skin-canoes’. This point, however, can be explained, either by supposing a natural misconception as to the material used, or by taking the word employed to be that which the kayaks of Eskimo in Greenland, by the time the sagas were written, had brought into use as the natural word for any form of canoe.
5. The trading with furs for red cloth, the beast’s marrow mixed with blood, the sleeping under canoes, the yelling and fighting, are markedly Indian characteristics.
6. An Indian weapon in use in former times has been independently described by Schoolcraft, which exactly resembles something described in the saga.
7. The people described display terror at unfamiliar sights and sounds, e.g. a domesticated bull; they are unacquainted with civilized weapons; they are unsophisticated but vindictive. All these are genuine savage characteristics, some of them specially appropriate to Indians.
8. The waving poles cannot be satisfactorily explained as kayak paddles, and any attempt made to identify the words ascribed to the Skræling captives as Eskimo, after they had been transcribed by several generations of copyists, must necessarily be very inconclusive.
9. The ‘Hvítramannaland’ passage can be interpreted in a sense consistent with Indian customs, though any alleged statements by the savages must be regarded as most untrustworthy and extremely liable to misinterpretation.
10. The descriptions are accurate and life-like, and show no clear traces of features borrowed from Celtic or other romantic sources. On the whole, then, we may assert confidently that the sagas contain accurate descriptions of American Indians, and that these, made at a time when savages were otherwise unknown to the Norsemen, constitute an unimpeachable confirmation of the essential historic accuracy of the story.