The reader who has attentively followed the argument so far will, I think, be convinced that the discovery and exploration of some parts of America by the Norsemen rests upon a solid historical foundation.
It now becomes necessary to deal with a matter as to which there is considerably more scope for controversy; the reconstruction, so far as is reasonably possible, of the voyages themselves. No one acquainted with the difficulties presented by the records of far later explorers, such as Cabot and Corte Real, will expect this to be a subject on which it is possible to dogmatize; the geographical details can probably never be settled with absolute finality. We must advance cautiously and by stages, eliminating the impossible and establishing broad lines, before we embark on the fascinating task of theorizing on points of detail.
The principal difficulty lies in the fact that in the primitive state of the science of navigation at the period those particulars are naturally most vague and unreliable on which we are most accustomed to depend. There are no precise latitudes or longitudes, and even the compass, though in use before the extant manuscripts were written, was not known to these early explorers. For distances we have to depend on periods of time which may have been inaccurately copied, and the very meaning of which is a subject of acute controversy. (See previous chapter, §1.) The courses set down are quite likely to have been affected by the preconceived ideas of later editors, and are in any case vague, often only roughly indicated by the direction of the wind.
We have in fact to depend to a large extent on what we are told of the appearance of the various coasts, and of the different local products.
And so far as one version of the story is concerned, we have to depend for these on the description of one voyage only—Karlsefni’s. With regard to the other version, that of the Flatey Book, it must be borne in mind that the writers of that saga considered all the explorers to have made the same landfall. They came to ‘Leif’s camp’. Now, while this was a natural idea to those who had no notion of the size of the country, it seems to me improbable that it represents the actual facts. To the writer of the Flatey Book version, ‘Leif’s camp’ and ‘Wineland’ were more or less synonymous terms. But the more detailed account of Karlsefni’s voyage suggests that while the later explorer was looking for the district visited by Leif, he never in fact found it. Leif seems to have hurried ashore on his first sight of the country, and to have conducted a merely local exploration. His brother, Thorvald, who, following immediately after Leif, may have arrived at the same base, we are told, ‘thought that the exploration of the country had been confined to too narrow an area’. Karlsefni, on the other hand, after arrival at Keelness, conducted a very protracted exploration, and apparently split his party into two, one going north and the other south, with the object of rediscovering Leif’s Wineland. As I hope presently to show, Leif cannot have penetrated to Karlsefni’s Hóp. Yet the writer of the Flatey Book, imbued with the idea that Leif and Karlsefni occupied identical camps, has evidently felt himself at liberty to draw his description of the scene of Leif’s landing from the fullest report available, which, as he tells us, was Karlsefni’s. Given the notion that all the explorers made the same landfall, this was natural and legitimate enough, but it adds an element of confusion to our already difficult task. There can, I think, be little doubt that the combination of shoal, river, and lake in the description of Leif’s camp is Karlsefni’s Hóp, but, as will be seen later, it is improbable that Leif ever got there.
I am inclined to think that another instance of the same sort of confusion is to be traced in Hauk’s version of the story. After the resolve to return home on account of the savages, the author brings the party back to Straumsfjord. He then evidently wishes to incorporate some matter from different sources. So he first puts in a note of some information at variance with that just given, ‘Some men say’, &c., and then interpolates his version of the death of Thorvald Ericson, who, as has been pointed out in the chapter on the Flatey Book (p. 126), has really no place in this saga up to this point. It will be observed that in both versions Thorvald is killed on a voyage north past Keelness, where as one story has it, ‘it was all covered with wood’, while the other says, ‘there was nothing but desolate woods’. It seems most unlikely that Karlsefni’s party, after a definite resolve to return home, should have embarked on a fresh voyage of discovery, so, though the evidence may not be conclusive, I am inclined to think that the matter here incorporated was originally an account of an independent voyage undertaken by Thorvald, as given in the Flatey Book. The verses about the uniped, which are old, certainly mention Karlsefni, but, as Storm points out in his edition of the saga, the verses seem but loosely fitted to the context, and make no mention of the uniped’s ferocity. It seems probable therefore that the uniped is made to kill Thorvald in order that the lay may be worked in, just as the author works in the death-speech of Thormod Kolbrunarskald, with very little alteration and considerable infelicity, as the last words of Thorvald Ericson.
Seeing, then, that we have reason to suspect confusions of this nature, it is plainly impossible to discriminate as much as could be wished between the different voyages, and we are thrown back mainly on Karlsefni, though Bjarni Herjulfson’s adventure is on rather a different footing, and can be investigated independently.
Faced with these difficulties, how are we to proceed? It is established that the Norsemen visited North America: the map of that country lies before us, awaiting the results of our survey. The evidence to hand is plainly of unequal value; we are in fact very much in the position of the cartographer, whose material ranges from the meticulously accurate work of the professional expert with his theodolite to the hasty compass traverses and sketches of the pioneer explorer fighting his way through trackless and savage wilds. The method by which the map-maker obtains the most satisfactory results from his material is, I think, one to be imitated here. To a framework made up of a number of points fixed with the utmost certainty of which science is capable, he adjusts the less trustworthy material, rejecting altogether that which cannot be brought into line with such facts as have been definitely ascertained. Any haphazard selection of separate items is bound to result in a considerable if not a cumulative error.
So in the present case, unless we adhere inflexibly to what may be regarded as our fixed points, adapting that which fits, either wholly or in part, and inexorably rejecting the remainder, we shall be apt to jump to a conclusion and indulge in an arbitrary selection of whatever pieces of evidence happen to support it. A study of the results achieved by some earlier investigators of the subject presses this danger very forcibly upon one’s attention.
Now perhaps some may be inclined to demur to the use of such an expression as ‘fixed points’ in this connexion, but there are really quite a number of statements standing out from the rest as facts which anyone who credits the sagas at all must regard as reasonably certain. These I will endeavour to set out before drawing any conclusions, in the hope that, studied apart from any question of where they may lead us, they may meet with general acceptance.
1. A line drawn about the 49th parallel of north latitude is fixed by the ‘eyktarstad’ observation as the northern limit of the area in which Wineland is to be sought. The passage, as we have seen, cannot be interpreted to mean that the sun set on the shortest day precisely at the point of eyktarstad. It would, in fact, be a coincidence difficult to credit if the sunset on a particular day corresponded with a mark arbitrarily fixed in Iceland for a wholly different purpose. The passage means, in fact, rather that the sun had not set at the point in question; consequently to the south of this line we have an increasing probability for a considerable distance.
2. The scope of our inquiry is further restricted by the limits within which the wild vine is to be found. Omitting as irrelevant Jacques Cartier’s discoveries of this plant in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,[96] this area may be said to begin with the Annapolis Basin in western Nova Scotia, excluding the rest of that peninsula, and from thence to follow the coast of New England as far south as we care to go. The discovery of the vine by the Norsemen is, I think, conclusively established. The name conferred on the country, which can be traced back to the very inception of written history, in itself goes far to prove it. It is corroborated by Adam of Bremen at a still earlier date, and it is plain from the apparently contemporary verses of Thorhall the Hunter that before the time of Karlsefni’s voyage it had been alleged by some member of a prior expedition that the vine flourished in the new country. The corn is perhaps a little more doubtful, and its nature more controversial; it is accordingly excluded from our cardinal points.
3. The area explored must be divided by stretches of open sea into three independent land-forms. Different parts of one unbroken coastline will not suit the conditions required. All the accounts agree in deferring any coasting voyage to the point where Wineland is reached.
4. Helluland, Markland, Wineland, Furdustrands, are all place-names drawn from natural characteristics. Whatever form their attributes may have taken, we are justified in treating Helluland as a land of stones, Markland as one of woods, Wineland as a grape-country, and Furdustrands as a coast with a beach of extraordinary length. The last-named was not an isolated point; the name survived into later Icelandic geography as that of a district comparable with the three main divisions of the country, though with most erroneous ideas as to its situation. Thus the geographical treatise known as Gripla:
‘Furdustrands is the name of a land where there is hard frost, so that it is not habitable, so far as is known; south of it is Helluland, &c.’
Its existence is corroborated by a reference in the very early verses ascribed to Thorhall the Hunter,—‘and boil their whales on Furdustrand’—and if we accept the testimony of the saga as to the locality where these verses were composed, the beaches in question must have stretched at least from Keelness to Straumsfjord.
5. Keelness, as a cape running in a more or less northerly direction, and constituting the first point touched at in Wineland, is established by the constant references to such a feature in both the independent versions of the story. The derivation of its name, in spite of statements in the sagas, may well be treated as uncertain. Both Keelness and Bjarney (Bear Island) are names existing elsewhere, and what we are told of them may have been invented to account for them. They may, in fact, owe their names to a fancied resemblance to prototypes elsewhere.
6. Straumsfjord, with its island and strong currents, is too circumstantially described to be an invention.
7. The topographical characteristics of Hóp, apart from the meaning of the name, which seems to be a land-locked tidal estuary, are confirmed by the evidence of both independent versions. We must therefore accept its main features—extensive shoals, and a river running through a lake into the sea.
These then are our points of departure. To these we may safely add, as a general rule, points as to which the independent versions agree. The savages, though equally well authenticated, and valuable as evidence of the general truthfulness of the story, are not included, since, whatever the opinion we ourselves have formed, it may still be considered arguable by some that they were Eskimo. In any case they do not help us to fix any situation more closely than our other data. If they were Indians they might occur anywhere within the area of our inquiry, if Eskimo they cannot carry Wineland with them north of the 49th parallel, or away from the vines from which it derived its name. Their existence, if established, would only prove a more southerly migration of the Eskimo than has been hitherto generally accepted.
In spite of all this some writers have strenuously maintained that the full scope of all the voyages recorded should be confined to the Labrador coast. These are not generally to be found among those who have specialized on the subject. They are more usually those who, like Weise (Discoveries of America to 1525), deal with the matter incidentally, as part of a wider historical study. Their view, for the most part, seems to be connected with a sceptical attitude towards the sagas as a whole. It is, indeed, independent of the story except in so far as this supplies some corroboration of the bare fact that the Norsemen discovered America. Its advocates mainly argue on independent grounds that bold sailors like the Norsemen, having got so far as Greenland, must occasionally have been driven to Labrador. Nothing that is recorded of Wineland can really be brought into line with such theory, except possibly the skrælings, who are made the most of for that purpose with very inconclusive results. The ‘eyktarstad’ observation (see previous chapter, p. 211), a most circumstantial point in the story, rules out the whole of Labrador.
The climate, too, is altogether inappropriate, and, of course, the vines and corn become an absurdity. Apart from these things one may ask where, on the Labrador coast, we are to find three distinct land-forms, with wholly different characteristics, and separated from one another by days of open sea.
It is true that a Boston botanist, Professor Fernald, has endeavoured to suggest that the vines, the corn, and the mösur wood were all products of quite a different order, which are to be found in Labrador. The vines, according to him, are the ‘partridge-berry’ of Canada (the tyttebær of Norway); the corn, lyme-grass (arundo arenaria); and the mösur a form of birch. If this were so it is difficult to understand why things perfectly well known in Iceland should have attracted so much attention, or have been described by totally new names; or why a land containing nothing better than partridge-berries should have been called Wineland. As regards the vines, it may be further pointed out that ‘Vine-wood’ (vínvið) is more frequently mentioned in the sagas than grapes, which seems to rule out berries; lyme-grass (melur) is well known in Iceland, and a kind of flour was prepared from it in that country in quite recent times.[97] Lastly, the mösur wood was not anything known to the Norsemen, for we are expressly told, in the episode of the Bremen merchant, that Karlsefni did not know what wood it was.
Altogether this, the latest variant of the Labrador theory, must be discarded like its predecessors.
The theory most generally accepted at the present time is that put forward by Dr. Storm in Studier over Vinlandsreiserne.
Before making any independent analysis of the voyages, it will be useful to examine this theory in the light of the principles just laid down. According to Storm, Helluland, Markland, and Wineland are Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia respectively.
The identification of Labrador with Helluland is based mainly upon the appearance of that barren coast, and the presence there of arctic foxes in large numbers. Certainly the little that we are told of Helluland suits Labrador very well, and the name conferred is suggestive of the unflattering description of the country written in later times by Jacques Cartier:—‘It should not be named the New Land, but the land of stones and rocks, frightful and ill-shaped, for in all the said North coast I did not find a cartload of earth, though I landed in many places,—in short, I deem rather than otherwise that it is the land God gave to Cain’. Indeed, as I know from personal experience, the bald, glaciated rocks of the Labrador coast are a feature so striking that one must admit the probability of the country deriving a name from them.
Yet it can hardly be disputed that at the date under consideration all that we are told of Helluland would suit Newfoundland as well as Labrador. No doubt at the present day the arctic fox is more suggestive of Labrador, but in past times this animal seems to have been quite common in Newfoundland. Thus Antony Parkhurst writes to Hakluyt from that country in 1578,—‘I had almost forgotten to speake of the plentie of wolves, and to show you that there be foxes, blacke, white and grey’, and in another passage he speaks of the remarkable fearlessness of these foxes—a trait more characteristic, even in a new country, of the arctic than the red species. The red fox, even where it is unaccustomed to the sight of man, is easily scared and habitually cunning, but I myself have found the arctic fox so fearless that it was practically impossible to keep it away from meat lying close to the camp. A handkerchief tied to the horn of a dead caribou was of no use even as a temporary check.
Still, so far as all this goes, Helluland might well be in Labrador. But even if Helluland be Labrador, can we consider Newfoundland as Markland? Accepting the only authority relied on by Storm and his school, we do not get any positive clue from the description given of the country. ‘Much wood and many beasts’ is not distinctive, though, no doubt, it can be made to apply to Newfoundland as well as any other place. If we include the Flatey Book description, ‘low-lying, with wide stretches of white sand, the slope from the sea was not abrupt’, it is difficult any longer to look for Markland along the bold, rocky coasts of Newfoundland. The description is certainly not characteristic. But setting the question of local resemblance apart, the identification is defended on the ground that one text gives for the direction from Helluland, ‘they changed their course from south to south-east’. This seems to me a most unreliable statement on which to found a definite and positive conclusion. In the first place, the change of course indicated is only given by Hauk; the purer companion version states merely that the explorers had a north wind. Having regard to the fact that the word ‘south-east’ (landsuðr) occurs in the very next sentence,—‘an island lay to the south-east’—there is here an obvious trap for the unwary copyist. Supposing the word in the archetype of the saga to have been originally south-west (utsuðr), a course more consistent with the general direction of Karlsefni’s investigations, it is extremely likely to have been mistranscribed with a word so like it close at hand to catch the eye. Besides, the courses on the whole are so manifestly wrong, or at best vague approximations, that no one can be on sure ground who relies on them. (Cf. Chapter II, p. 131.)
But, more than this, inherent probability is dead against a south-easterly course between Helluland and Markland. The original discoverer, whoever he was, would never have sailed into the open sea south-east from Labrador. If return to Greenland was his object he would turn north-east; if exploration, he would hug the coast. In the latter event he would either sail through the Strait of Belle Isle, which he clearly did not, or, regarding this as a mere inlet or fjord, would treat Newfoundland and Labrador as one country. If Karlsefni was navigating independently of the experience of a predecessor, he would have acted in the same way, and formed the same conclusion. If he were making use of another explorer’s sailing directions, he might, indeed, cut south-east from Labrador to Cape Freels, but he would do so with a knowledge of what lay before him, and would not therefore regard as a separate country what his predecessor had decided to be connected with Helluland. For these reasons I am disposed to reject the identification of Markland with Newfoundland, and to conclude that, whether the spot visited in Helluland lay in Newfoundland or in Labrador, the name must be regarded as including both countries.
Still more unsatisfactory is the identification of Nova Scotia with Wineland. Except in the Annapolis basin on the west, which does not suit the requirements of the saga, no wild grapes can be found there. The temperature falls to 20° below zero in winter; frost generally continues from Christmas to April. Moreover, the description of the coast in the sagas, at all events in the neighbourhood of Keelness, the cape at its northern extremity, insists upon long beaches and sands, so remarkable in extent as to give rise to the name Furðustrandir (The Wonderful Beaches). Nova Scotia shows nothing of the kind. This is a circumstance of such importance that I shall return to it hereafter; here it will be sufficient to state that all authorities, ancient and modern, agree in speaking of Nova Scotia as a rocky coast, with numerous indentations. Of the authorities who accept Storm’s views in the main, Mr. Dieserud and Mr. Babcock have realized this difficulty, though Mr. Babcock alone has made a serious attempt to face it. His solution may be left for later consideration; here he shall merely be called as an unwilling witness against Nova Scotia. ‘These people had swift ships. Beaches of ordinary length must also have been familiar to all of them.... They would not marvel at a stretch of fifty miles’. ‘The palpable fact that Nova Scotia does not now supply these wonderstrands ... seems to have compelled Dr. Storm to piece out this part of his theory with minor beaches that the Icelanders would have hardly glanced at as they swept by’. The objection could not be more forcibly stated; there let us leave it for the moment.
Again: Karlsefni was exploring for three years. On more than one occasion he sailed ‘a long time’. When the saga means a day or two, it says so; nay, it frequently seems, if anything, to understate the time occupied. The extreme length of Nova Scotia is under 350 miles; two days and nights at 7 knots would about cover the distance. We need far more space than this theory affords; in fact, it needs Procrustean methods to fit the Wineland of the sagas into the confines of Nova Scotia. To compress the whole scope of the exploration, from Keelness to Hóp, as Mr. Dieserud does, into the coast between Cape Breton and Halifax, seems inconsistent both with the letter and the spirit of the story.
Members of the older school of Wineland investigators are, at present, greatly discredited. Their enthusiasm outran all bounds of scientific caution, and they heaped ridicule on their theories by the attempt to support them with evidence which was largely pure rubbish. Alleged Norse remains in America have justly become a byword; although Mr. Babcock thinks it worth while to review all that has been adduced of this sort of testimony, he adopts without hesitation the general verdict that, as was a priori probable, no vestiges of Norse visits remain to the present day. There can never have been more than the makeshifts of a transient encampment; ‘perierunt etiam ruinae’. As a result of their ill-judged and credulous enthusiasm, no serious writer finds himself able to agree on a point of detail with Rafn or Horsford without a preliminary apology.
Yet there may be something to be said for the adoption of the main lines of their identification of the ‘three lands’: Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New England standing for Helluland, Markland, and Wineland. It is the theory that leaps to the eye on looking at a map with a view to discovering three separate land-forms lying in the track of an exploration from Greenland or Iceland. It is, perhaps, at its weakest in its identification of Helluland, though, as has been shown, Newfoundland is not excluded by the conditions required. If, however, as I have suggested, Labrador and Newfoundland were likely to have been regarded as one and the same country, the identification of Markland and Wineland is not affected.
The little we know of Markland fits Nova Scotia very well. ‘Much wood and many beasts’ may, of course, be descriptive of Newfoundland and its caribou, but it would also be true of Nova Scotia. In the voyage of Mr. Hill of Redrife in 1593, given in Hakluyt, a casual run ashore at Cape Breton is thus described;—‘and as they viewed the country they saw divers beastes and foules, as black foxes, deere, otters, &c., &c.’. It is apparent that as late as the sixteenth century the fauna of Nova Scotia was sufficiently plentiful to strike a ship’s crew as soon as they went ashore. The description of the country given in the Flatey Book, which is unlike anything Icelandic and consequently sounds genuine, will suit the southern extremity of Nova Scotia, a very likely landfall, much better than Newfoundland. It is low-lying and wooded, as Champlain found between Port Mouton and Cape Negro,—‘the shores which I saw, up to that point, are very low, and covered with such wood as that seen at the Cap de la Heve’. As to the white sand we may compare Hudson’s description,—‘The land by the water side is low land, and white sandie banks rising, full of little hills.’
While there is no sufficient extent of beach in Nova Scotia to serve for Furdustrands, there is enough sand as a local feature to suit the conditions required for Markland.
In their identification of Wineland with New England rather than Nova Scotia, the older school are on even less questionable ground, however rash their speculations on points of detail. Indeed, there seems to be a tendency at the present day, which is exemplified in the conclusions of Mr. Babcock, to depart so far from Storm’s theories as to include a part of the New England coast-line. The addition of New England gets over the formidable difficulties before noticed, of want of space for the whole of Karlsefni’s expedition, and almost entire absence of the wild vine. Whether or no we must also include Nova Scotia in the ‘third land’ visited by the Norsemen, we shall be well advised to look for Hóp, at any rate, along the coast of the United States. Personally, I feel strongly that Nova Scotia is needed for Markland, and that Wineland must have been situated altogether to the west or south-west of it.
Before entering upon the more detailed consideration of the voyages which forms the subject of the ensuing chapters, I would provisionally fix the broad lines of our research in accordance with the arguments adduced above. Helluland will then be in all probability Newfoundland and Labrador considered as one country, or perhaps Newfoundland alone; Markland will be Nova Scotia; and Wineland, the most important area in the inquiry, somewhere on the eastern seaboard of the United States.
It will be convenient here to deal with the theories advanced by two recent writers, whose works did not come to my notice until all the chapters of the present volume were written. These are:
1. Professor W. Hovgaard’s Voyages of the Norsemen to America (New York, 1915), and
2. Professor H. P. Steensby’s The Norsemen’s route from Greenland to Wineland (Copenhagen, 1918).
Of the two treatises the second is on the whole the more revolutionary. For Professor Steensby, after locating both Helluland and Markland in Labrador, and identifying Bjarney with Newfoundland, brings his explorers into the gulf of St. Lawrence, with southern Labrador for Furdustrands, Keelness (after Furdustrands) at Point Vaches by the mouth of the Saguenay, Straumsey at Hare Island in the St. Lawrence river, and Hóp, still in the St. Lawrence, at St. Thomas on the southern side.
Though entertaining widely different views as to the relative value of the sources—Professor Steensby altogether rejecting the Flatey Book, whose authority the other author upholds—both writers agree in certain respects which are somewhat novel. Both make Karlsefni’s first landing-place, in Helluland, at a point in Labrador which is almost in the same latitude as southern Greenland, involving a course very far to the west of south; and both insist on a coasting voyage throughout, with no intervals of open sea between the different lands visited. It seems to me that both these theories rest on a substitution of what their authors regard as inherent probabilities for the express language of the sagas.
More especially is this the case with Professor Hovgaard’s treatment of Bjarni. He brings him first to Newfoundland, and carries him back along the Labrador coast to Resolution Island off Baffin Land, in order to substantiate the ice (jökul, understood as glaciers) of the story. The effect of this treatment, when the author comes to consider Leif’s and Thorvald’s voyages, is to leave an enormous unexplained stretch of coast between Helluland (Resolution Island) and Markland, which he agrees cannot be reasonably identified with any place north of Cape Sable in Nova Scotia. (As regards Leif’s Markland and Wineland, indeed, Professor Hovgaard comes to substantially the same conclusions as myself.) But, considered apart from this difficulty, there are still formidable objections to this reconstruction of Bjarni’s voyage.
1. The text either expresses or implies an open sea passage out of sight of land between the various landfalls. From the first to the second land this is implied in the statement ‘after sailing two days they saw another (or the second) land’. From the second to the third land it is expressly stated that the ship sailed ‘out to sea for three days, when they saw the third land’. In the remaining case ‘they turned the bows away from the land and held out to sea’.
2. The whole point of giving the direction of the wind (south-west) is to supply an indication of the course. To this course Professor Hovgaard pays no attention: from Resolution Island to Herjulfsness the bearing would actually be to the south of east, and the rest of the voyage is to the west of north.
With regard to Karlsefni, Professor Hovgaard’s treatment of his authorities is even more arbitrary. The previous expeditions, he agrees with me, had found Wineland on the coast of the United States. Now Wineland was Karlsefni’s objective, and his expedition, if somewhat cumbrous, was more elaborately equipped and took more time than any other. Yet, according to the writer under consideration, Karlsefni never got to Wineland at all. He first paid a visit to Baffin Land or northern Labrador, then coasted to Nain on the Labrador coast and conferred on that locality a name (Markland) already allocated by his predecessor to a spot far to the south,[98] and next, instead of following Leif’s directions, went wandering into Sandwich Bay, which is here identified with Straumsfjord. True, as our author remarks, the winter at Straumsfjord is described as severe. Still, the expedition was evidently not frozen in, as it would have been in Labrador, for even at this time the Norsemen ‘hoped for fishing or jetsam’, and actually acquired a stranded whale. Captain Cartwright, who settled in this region, thus describes the winter conditions:—
In this spot, according to Professor Hovgaard, maddened by mosquitoes in the summer, and hopelessly frozen in during a long winter, the experienced Karlsefni, far north of his objective, established his principal base. And in all the three years of his exploration, according to the same author, Karlsefni never penetrated farther than a ‘Hóp’ in Newfoundland, having failed to reach even the Markland of his predecessor. The theory in fact involves a wholesale readjustment and arbitrary selection of the available material which must be read to be appreciated. Of course Karlsefni found no vines or corn, and the ‘sands’ of Furdustrands are conspicuously absent.
The minor point that this theory requires a coasting voyage throughout may now be considered in conjunction with Professor Steensby’s conclusions. I do not lay much stress on the evidence of the old maps, dealt with later on in Chapter IX, though they show that there was always understood to be open sea between the three principal ‘lands’. The Icelandic geography referred to in the same chapter (p. 287) likewise assumes sea at any rate between Markland and Wineland. I would ask the impartial reader to refer to the text, and see whether it conveys to him any idea of a coasting voyage until Keelness is reached, except in one case in Hauk’s version, which is at variance with the purer language of Eric’s Saga. Let him further decide whether, on a dispassionate reading of the evidence, Helluland, Markland, and Wineland can be treated as parts of one and the same unbroken coastline.
Professor Steensby (p. 32) argues that the Norsemen habitually coasted on approaching land, saying, moreover, ‘This applies in a quite especial degree when new land was in question.’ I should have thought it more true to say that the Norsemen were the pioneers of open-sea navigation, and the necessity for keeping plenty of sea-room would be particularly cogent in the case of a coast whose dangers were quite unknown. Moreover, according to all accounts, the first discovery was accidental, and open sea might well have been crossed in the endeavour to get back to Greenland, as we are told in the case of Bjarni: if this were so, subsequent expeditions would keep as far as possible to the track of their predecessors up to the point when they arrived at the country (Wineland) which alone was considered desirable to visit and explore. Along the shores of Wineland they would undoubtedly coast, and this is exactly what we are told in the sagas.
I will not dwell on the modification of the courses given, as this is not a point upon which much reliance can, in the circumstances, be placed. The statement, however, of the saga, that Helluland lay south of Greenland, is corroborated by the old Icelandic geography (see, post Chapter IX, p. 287), and in any case the ultimate objective lay so far to the south that a ship, limited in storage capacity, would naturally press in that direction as quickly as possible. As I shall have occasion to point out later (Chapter VIII, p. 262), a ship coasting Labrador in the early summer would be liable to be tremendously delayed by ice, of which we find no mention, apart from other considerations, in the report of Karlsefni’s expedition. If the manipulation of the courses stood alone, however, this point would hardly be conclusive.
But once we are in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the objections to this theory are formidable indeed. In the first place, Professor Steensby is compelled to keep Karlsefni in Straumsfjord (the St. Lawrence) throughout, and to make Hóp a point actually in the fjord. This is quite inconsistent with our authority. The climatic conditions of Straumsfjord and Hóp appear to have been markedly different, and the language everywhere implies that it was necessary to leave the one place to reach the other.
Secondly, the author under consideration is forced to place Keelness after Furdustrands and close to the Straumsfjord base. The saga, however, before mentioning Furdustrands, states ‘there was a cape (Keelness) where they arrived’, i.e. it was the first point sighted after leaving Markland. Again, in reverse order from Straumsfjord, ‘Thorhall wished to go north by Furdustrands and past Keelness.’ Straumsey is identified with Hare Island, which even at the present day is described as ‘densely wooded’, an unlikely place, one would think, for quantities of breeding sea-fowl, and ill-adapted as a pasture land for cattle. Finally, Professor Steensby’s ‘Hóp’, at St. Thomas, faces north, which is in conflict with the saga, where we are told more than once that the Skrælings came in from the south. From the situation of Karlsefni’s camp by the ‘lake’ it is clear that the arrival of the savages could only have been perceived after they had entered the estuary, which must accordingly, if the authority is to be trusted, have faced south rather than north.
St. Thomas, being slightly south of the 47th parallel, is within the possible limits of the eyktarstad observation. This, however, is only true if we understand that the sun set at that precise point on the day in question. As I have elsewhere pointed out, it would be too strange a coincidence to be readily accepted if the Norsemen settled at a spot where the sun, exactly on the shortest day of the year, covered at the very moment of setting one of the eight marks fixed in a totally different latitude for the purpose of determining three-hour intervals. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the sun had not set at the moment in question, but was up at this point so as to be capable of being used. This being so, a latitude far south of the computed limit is indicated, and, as regards this observation, Professor Steensby’s Hóp is within an area too near this limit to be at all probable.