‘And here’, in the words of Eric’s Saga, ‘this story ends.’ The attempt at colonization had proved a failure; the snows of Iceland and Greenland were thenceforward to be preferred to the chance of frequent collision with the Wineland Skrælings. No further attempt at a permanent settlement seems ever to have been made.
It by no means follows that the newly-discovered countries remained unvisited. A land full of timber, lying but a few days’ sail from Greenland, where such a commodity was unobtainable, must almost certainly have tempted the members of Eric’s small colony at any rate to occasional visits. Of these we could not, in the nature of things, expect to hear much. Always more or less isolated by its dangerous coast and the little-known sea which separated it from Iceland, Greenland became after 1294 almost entirely cut off from the land of saga by the Norwegian royal edict making trade with the former country a crown monopoly. The minor enterprises of the colonists were, moreover, of little or no interest to Icelandic audiences.[104]
From the prevailing obscurity two attempts at revisiting the New World emerge in the Icelandic Annals. The first of these may indeed have been intended as a prelude to further efforts at colonization. In 1121, Eric, bishop of Greenland, sailed for Wineland. Of his intentions or subsequent fate nothing is known, but we may imagine a bold resolve to make an end of the one obstacle to settlement by converting the Skrælings to Christianity. Anyhow, Bishop Eric set out, and never returned, his episcopal seat being filled in a few years’ time. It is true that the bishop is credited by the Danish poet Lyskander (1609) with complete success both in his missionary and his colonial enterprise, but of this there is no evidence, and we must regard the statement as poetical licence.
The second visit recorded is of less importance, but may well have been more successful in its objects. In 1347, we are told in the Annals, there arrived in Iceland from Greenland a ship, which struck the Icelanders as being of exceptionally small size. She had lost her anchor, but contained a crew of 17 or 18 men, who had been to Markland, but on the way back to Greenland had been driven by stress of weather to the harbour where they arrived.
Probably no very unique enterprise is here chronicled. It was but the accident occasioning the visit of this ship to Iceland which preserved this voyage from oblivion. ‘Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona.’
No other clear reference is to be found to subsequent voyages to the lands named in the sagas of Wineland. In 1285, however, the Annals mention a discovery of ‘New Land’, which is variously recorded in different MSS. as follows, taken in order of date:
1. Land was discovered to the west of Iceland.
2. The Down Islands were discovered.
3. Helgi’s sons Adalbrand and Thorvald discovered the New Land.
4. Helgi’s sons sailed to the uninhabited parts of Greenland.
This discovery appears to have created no small stir at the time. The King of Norway was interested, and commissioned one Land-Rolf to go to Iceland and organize an expedition for exploring purposes. Rolf, according to the Annals, sailed to Iceland in 1290, and endeavoured to carry out his instructions, but he does not seem to have succeeded in obtaining the requisite support, and his death in 1295 appears to have put an end to the project.
Where was this New Land?
Storm, following the fourth authority, declares emphatically in favour of the east coast of Greenland. But, if this be the correct solution, it is difficult to understand the interest and excitement occasioned. Voyages to the uninhabited parts of Greenland were not unprecedented, but were bound to be quite unprofitable; we may doubt, moreover, whether an isolated landfall on the east coast would have been dignified with the title of discovery of a New Land. What would be the object of further exploration? Down would hardly provide a sufficient incentive; the Iceland eiders must then as now have provided it in plenty. With lapse of time the supposed position of the New Land may have become displaced, as we have seen was eventually the case with Furdustrands. (See further, on this point, p. 294.) But even if we accept it as true that Helgi’s sons sailed in the direction of Greenland, it is quite possible that they were driven elsewhere. On the whole, then, there seems more than a possibility that this allusion has reference to some part of the American coast, though from the very fact that it was treated as a new discovery it seems improbable that the actual lands visited by Karlsefni and his predecessors are here in question.
There is another possible reference to a Wineland voyage, though it must in any case have been an unsuccessful one. At Hönen in Ringerike there existed in 1823 a stone with an undoubted runic inscription, which was fortunately copied in that year. The stone subsequently disappeared. As is the case with many runic inscriptions, the interpretation is doubtful, but it has been thus rendered by Professor Bugge, of Norway:
‘They came out and over wide expanses, and, needing cloth to dry themselves, and food, away towards Wineland, up into the ice in the uninhabited country. Evil can take away luck, so that one dies early.’ (See In Northern Mists, vol. ii, p. 27.)[105]
If this is indeed a reference to an expedition to the Wineland with which we have hitherto been dealing, it is plain that the luckless explorers must have been driven far out of their course, probably to some part of Greenland, or possibly the arctic regions of Canada. They can never have revisited the temperate regions recorded by Leif and Karlsefni.
Adam of Bremen’s allusion to Wineland, already referred to (chapter 1, p. 98), is immediately succeeded by the following report of a voyage undertaken by King Harald Haardraade, of which no other record is preserved.
‘After which island (Wineland)’, said he (King Svein), ‘no habitable land is found in that ocean, but all that is beyond is full of intolerable ice and utter darkness (immensa caligine). Of which matter Marcianus thus bears record, saying, “Beyond Thule, one day’s sail, the sea is frozen solid (concretum).” This was lately tested by the most enterprising Harald, prince of the Norsemen, who, when investigating with his ships the breadth of the northern ocean, hardly escaped with safety from the awful gulf of the abyss, by turning back, when at length the bounds of the earth where it ends (deficientis) grew dark before his eyes.’
Professor Yngvar Nielsen, in an article entitled Nordmaend og Skraelinger i Vinland (Norske Geografiske Selskabs Aarbog for 1904), argues that the voyage here referred to was possibly another attempt to find Wineland. He sees, too, a possible connexion with the Hönen runes, since Harald hailed from Ringerike, from which district the unknown hero of the inscription would seem also to have come. This connexion is evidently too fanciful to be taken seriously, though, if Harald’s voyage had Wineland as its objective, the possibility is not altogether excluded. It is true that the voyage of the Norwegian king is reported in a context which links it closely with Wineland, and it seems at first sight unlikely that Harald would have organized an expedition of so unprofitable a nature as a mere scientific exploration of the Arctic Ocean. On the other hand, the words ‘latitudinem septentrionalis oceani perscrutatus’ do seem to suggest that the object was arctic exploration, and, since Adam considers Marcianus’s remarks about the sea beyond Thule as relevant, we are not justified in concluding that Harald’s voyage was any more intimately connected with the question of Wineland. Of the theory which associates Wineland with the arctic regions something remains to be said later. (See p. 294). Here we may merely observe that there does not appear to be any reliable evidence to connect Harald’s voyage with the subject of Wineland, particularly as the experiences related, if they amount to more than a sailor’s yarn, are suggestive of the ice-floes and long night of the Polar regions.
An Icelandic geography preserved in various manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contains a reference to the lands discovered in America, which, in its fullest form, runs as follows:
‘South from Greenland is Helluland, next to it is Markland, thence it is not far to Wineland the Good, which some men think is connected with Africa; and, if so, then the outer ocean must fall in between Wineland and Markland. It is said that Thorfin Karlsefni cut a tree for a “húsa snotra” (cf. Flatey Book account, p. 71), and after this went to seek for Wineland the Good, and came where this land was believed to be, but did not explore it or settle there. Leif the Lucky was the first to discover Wineland, and on that occasion he found merchantmen in danger on the sea, and rescued them by God’s mercy; he also introduced Christianity to Greenland, and it prospered so that an episcopal seat was placed there, at Garda.’
Part of this account claims to be founded on the information of Abbot Nicholas of Thingeyre, who died in 1159. The references to Karlsefni and Leif appear rather to be confused summaries of the statements contained in the sagas. They can hardly be relied on to displace anything occurring in the records with which we have been dealing.
As regards the relative position of the three countries, the geography knows nothing precise, except that Helluland lay to the south of Greenland, as stated in the Saga of Eric the Red. Probably it was known, or deduced from the information as to climate, that Markland and Wineland belonged to lower latitudes, and hence the error, reproduced in Eric’s Saga, of imagining the course between all the lands to be uniformly south, was generally accepted. The writers of the geography do not, however, commit themselves to any such view. Apparently they knew more about Helluland and Markland than about Wineland, which looks as if the former had been more recently visited. They evidently knew that Helluland and Markland were not connected with Africa, while Wineland might be. With the way in which such a theory as the connexion between Wineland and Africa may have arisen I have already dealt (p. 274). The theory, it will be noticed, is mentioned in connexion with the ancient hypothesis of the all-encircling ocean, which long hampered geographical and cartographical science.
We have to wait till a period subsequent to the re-discovery of America for the earliest known attempt to depict Wineland, and the two more northerly lands known to the Norsemen, in the form of a map. There exists, however, in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, a copy, made apparently about 1590, of a map drawn by Sigurd Stefansson, an Icelander, about one hundred years previously. The map is dated 1570, but it has been clearly proved that this is a mistake on the part of the copyist, and that the date must probably have been 1590 on the original map. The general lines of this map are here reproduced. With regard to the point marked A there is a note by the author betraying a knowledge of Frobisher’s voyage in 1576, which is in itself sufficient to show the date, 1570, to be an error.
A map drawn by Hans Poulson Resen in 1605 is also in existence which covers the same ground, and is so similar in most features that it has generally been accepted as being a mere copy of Stefansson’s work, revised in the light of such information as more recent voyages could provide. The relevant features of this map are also here reproduced.
Now, in the first place, there arises on consideration a very great difficulty in the way of adopting the current view, maintained by Storm and others, that the Resen map is based on that of Stefansson.
The inscription on Resen’s work runs as follows:
‘Indicatio Groenlandiae et vicinarum regionum, versus Septentrionem et Occidentem, ex antiqua quadam mappa, rudi modo delineata, ante aliquot centenos annos, ab Islandis, quibus tunc erat ista terra notissima, et nauticis nostri temporis observationibus.’
The error in the date on the extant copy of Stefansson’s map is manifestly the work of an unintelligent copyist, which makes it practically certain that the original was also dated; moreover the note on the point A, to which allusion has been made, is stated to be by Stefansson himself, and must therefore in all probability have been attached to the original. In any case it must have been made about the same time, for the author of the map was drowned in Iceland not long after the date of its production. It seems, therefore, practically impossible that Resen, with such evidence of recent composition before him, could have described as a map made ‘some centuries ago’ a work so nearly contemporaneous with his own. He could not have, in fact, formed any such conclusion, and there would be no point in falsely ascribing to his source an origin which detracts from its authority. Again, though neither work is a masterpiece, Sigurd Stefansson’s production compares quite favourably in point of finish with Resen’s, and could therefore hardly be stigmatized by the latter author as rudi modo delineata. The form, moreover, of Hvitserk in Greenland is more complicated in Resen’s map than in the earlier work, and, as the cartographer could have had no modern source from which to correct this feature, it is difficult to suppose that its form is borrowed from Stefansson. Finally, Resen introduces in his map such place-names as Ericsfjord, Vesterbygdsfjord, and Österbygd, which do not occur in Stefansson, and are not derived from the work of later discoverers.
In fact, all the evidence confirms the probability that both Resen and Stefansson worked, not one from the other, but both from a common source, of earlier date, which may well have been made, as Resen claims, ante aliquot centenos annos, and was, if so, pre-Columbian.
Now, if the two maps are independent of one another, the common source must clearly have contained, not only the representation of Greenland which is found in both, but equally the representation of Helluland, Markland, and Wineland, which shows, allowing for revision in the light of later exploration, almost as marked similarity. Unless, then, the mapping of these lands is merely based on the contemporary interpretation of the sagas, we have here fresh evidence of subsequent voyages, if not to the lands explored by Karlsefni, at least to some parts of North America which became confused with them.
The hypothesis that the land-forms are merely drawn from a reading of the sagas is that adopted by Storm. It is difficult, however, to account in this way for such a feature as the south-easterly trend from Markland to Wineland, which distinctly conflicts with the sources which we have been following. There is, moreover, as will be seen by a comparison with the map on p. 291, a striking resemblance to the actual form of Baffin Land and northern Labrador, the shape of the latter peninsula especially in Resen’s map being remarkably accurate in points not traceable to any map of the period known to me. The indications of Ungava Bay and Cape Chidley in particular are features unrepresented by contemporary cartographers, and though Labrador is much too small in proportion to the two main peninsulas of Baffin Land, this is what one would expect from crude and early representations, which are apt to devote more space to well-known than to less-known places. It is quite clear, in any case, that both Stefansson and Resen considered that their maps represented Baffin Land and Labrador, and this argues a better knowledge of the appearance of these localities than other cartographers of the period seem to have been able to derive from the reports of explorers. On the whole, then, I incline to the view that these maps are evidence of voyages to America subsequent to those of which we have any record.
What then? Must we discard all the conclusions hitherto arrived at, and adopt those of the Labrador school which we have rejected so unhesitatingly and for such formidable reasons? By no means. It is quite in accordance with precedent that a confusion should have arisen in the identification of places visited by early explorers, and that Baffin Land and Labrador, when visited by later Norsemen, should have been wrongly assumed to be the lands discovered and described by their predecessors. Thus Frobisher’s discoveries in Meta Incognita were for a long time supposed to be situated in Greenland, while the latter country, and not that which now bears the name, was the original Labrador.
To suppose that the old Norsemen, with a possibly imperfect recollection of the sagas, should have identified Labrador with Wineland is to accuse them of no grosser error than that committed by many modern critics of the subject, to whom the whole of the relevant evidence was readily accessible. The reader can hardly have failed to notice that some such confusion as is here suggested must, at a very early date, have taken place. Whereas the sagas themselves speak clearly of southerly latitudes and a temperate climate, the later tradition and such records as we have of possible later voyages indicate an idea that Wineland was to be found in the Arctic Regions. Thus, the Hönen runes speak of ‘ice in the uninhabited regions’, Adam of Bremen associates Wineland with ‘intolerable ice’ and frozen seas, the ‘New Land’ is identified in the later MSS. of the Annals with the wilds of Greenland, and Furdustrands becomes a region uninhabitable on account of frost (see p. 227).
It is not difficult to see how such ideas may have arisen in Iceland and European Scandinavia. The maps under consideration supply us with a probable clue. Greenland is quite wrongly oriented, with its southern extremity pointing south-east instead of south, or, as a compass-chart would have represented it, considerably to the west of south. The cartographer has evidently been misled by the names Western and Eastern Settlement, conferred on the colonies at Godthaab and Julianehaab respectively, which are, in fact, more or less north and south in relation to one another. The confusion produced by this inappropriate nomenclature persisted down to very recent times. The effect of such an error is to suggest to intending explorers that land which really lies to the west of Greenland may be reached by sailing in a direction which is actually north. Although I have suggested another reason for Karlsefni’s alleged visit to the Western Settlement before setting out on his travels, it is always possible, as Dr. Nansen says (vol. 1, p. 321) that this too is a mistake on the part of the saga-writer, based on the not unnatural assumption that the Western Settlement lay due west of the Eastern, and was therefore the nearest point to Wineland instead of the farthest from it. The unduly shortened distance in the saga between Greenland and Helluland (two dægr) may possibly be explained in the same way, and in this case the Bear Islands may actually mean Disko. (Cf. Chapter VIII, p. 262). If so, however, one would have to suppose the saga-writer to have had access to the report of some subsequent explorer, who, sailing from Disko, had touched or sighted the Cumberland peninsula of Baffin Land, and the earlier part of the record of Karlsefni’s voyage would have to be rejected, in so far as it purported to represent historically the experience of that explorer.
Now if, from a misunderstanding, of the true orientation of the Greenland peninsula, Icelandic or Norwegian sailors got the idea that it was necessary to follow the Greenland coast in order to approach the countries discovered in America, it is easy to see how they might bring back reports of ice and arctic conditions, and possibly of parts of Baffin Land and northern Labrador, which might thus become identified with the lands discovered by Leif and Karlsefni.
The Icelandic geography referred to above conveys, as already stated, an impression that while countries identified with Helluland and Markland had been visited, Wineland had been sought for in vain, and its exact situation was at the time of writing unknown. This is quite intelligible if later explorers had, for the reason suggested above, confined their search to more northerly latitudes.
Whilst, then, these early maps are of no use as authorities whereby we may unravel the problems of the original Wineland voyages, I think that they are of considerable interest both as affording evidence of later Scandinavian voyages to America, and also as providing a solution of the way in which the mistaken idea which associated Wineland with the north may have come into existence.
The data being now exhausted, it only remains to bid farewell to our explorers. Comparisons are proverbially odious, and it is futile to bring Columbus and his successors into the question. Karlsefni and his contemporaries were—as discoverers—born out of due time. With the general interest which was felt in exploration in the fifteenth and following centuries, with kings to back them and states to develop their discoveries, above all, with an armament immeasurably superior to that of the natives, such as the later explorers possessed, these simple Norse seamen might have attained a far wider fame, or even have affected the course of history. As it was their deeds were unimportant, and soon almost if not quite forgotten. To-day the man in the street looks incredulous or astonished at the very mention of the Wineland voyages, however well authenticated these are seen to be by the student of the subject. A little less scepticism, a little less complete oblivion is all that shall be asked for them here.