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The Story of North American Discovery and Exploration. Julius E. Olson
Читать онлайн.Название The Story of North American Discovery and Exploration
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isbn 4064066394059
Автор произведения Julius E. Olson
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Издательство Bookwire
Concerning Freydis. — Freydis now went to her home, since it had remained unharmed during her absence. She bestowed liberal gifts upon all of her companions, for she was anxious to screen her guilt. She now established herself at her home; but her companions were not all so close-mouthed, concerning their misdeeds and wickedness, that rumors did not get abroad at last. These finally reached her brother, Leif, and he thought it a most shameful story. He thereupon took three of the men, who had been of Freydis’s party, and forced them all at the same time to a confession of the affair, and their stories entirely agreed. “I have no heart,” says Leif, “to punish my sister, Freydis, as she deserves, but this I predict of them, that there is little prosperity in store for their offspring.” Hence it came to pass, that no one from that time forward thought them worthy of aught but evil. It now remains to take up the story from the time when Karlsefni made his ship ready, and sailed out to sea. He had a successful voyage, and arrived in Norway safe and sound. He remained there during the winter, and sold his wares, and both he and his wife were received with great favor by the most distinguished men of Norway. The following spring he put his ship in order for the voyage to Iceland; and when all his preparations had been made, and his ship lying at the wharf, awaiting favorable winds, there came to him a Southerner, a native of Bremen in the Saxonland, who wished to buy his “house-neat.”11 “I do not wish to sell it,” said he. “I will give thee half a ‘mörk’ in gold for it,” says the Southerner. This Karlsefni thought a good offer, and accordingly closed the bargain. The Southerner went his way, with the “house-neat,” and Karlsefni knew not what wood it was, but it was “mösur,” come from Wineland.
Karlsefni sailed away, and arrived with his ship in the north of Iceland, in Skagafirth. His vessel was beached there during the winter, and in the spring he bought Glaumbœiar-land, and made his home there, and dwelt there as long as he lived, and was a man of the greatest prominence. From him and his wife, Gudrid, a numerous and goodly lineage is descended. After Karlsefni’s death, Gudrid, together with her son, Snorri, who was born in Wineland, took charge of the farmstead; and when Snorri was married, Gudrid went abroad, and made a pilgrimage to the South, after which she returned again to the home of her son, Snorri, who had caused a church to be built at Glaumbœr. Gudrid then took the veil and became an anchorite, and lived there the rest of her days. Snorri had a son, named Thorgeir, who was the father of Ingveld, the mother of Bishop Brand. Hallfrid was the name of the daughter of Snorri, Karlsefni’s son; she was the mother of Runolf, Bishop Thorlak’s father. Biorn was the name of [another] son of Karlsefni and Gudrid; he was the father of Thorunn, the mother of Bishop Biorn. Many men are descended from Karlsefni, and he has been blessed with a numerous and famous posterity; and of all men Karlsefni has given the most exact accounts of all these voyages, of which something has now been recounted.
1 Reeves’s translation. In Origines Islandicae, Vol. II., p. 598, this saga is called “The Story of the Wineland Voyages, commonly called The Story of Eric the Red.”
2 The original word for “Brief History” also means “section,” “episode,” “little story,” i.e., extract or abbreviated account.
3 About 985 (983-986). One vellum of the Landnama-bok (Book of Settlements) says sixteen, the other fifteen years.
4 Bishop Frederick was from “Saxland” (Saxony). According to the Kristni-Saga he came to Iceland “in the summer when the land had been settled one-hundred-and-seven winters,” i.e., in 981. He made but little headway in preaching Christianity.
5 Hafgerdingar (sea-rollers) are supposed to have been earthquake waves, and the lines evidently refer to such tidal-waves caused by an unusually severe earthquake in the year 986. See Reeves, p. 180, (63). The prose sense of the stave is: “I beg the blessed friend of the monks to further our voyage. May the Lord of the heavens hold his hand over me.”
6 “Certainly a marvellous coincidence, but it is quite in character with the no less surprising accuracy with which the explorers of this history [i.e., the Flat Island Book narrative] succeeded in finding ‘Leif’s-booths’ in a country which was as strange to them as Greenland to Biarni.” (Reeves.)
7 Earl Eric ruled in Norway from 1000 to 1015.
8 These two words designate positions of the sun at two points of time. Early commentators got much more definite results from this observation than later ones, with scientific assistance, have succeeded in getting. Largely on the basis of it, Rafn (in Antiquitates Americanæ), concluded that Vinland was in Rhode Island. Both Storm and Reeves, after detailed investigation, declare that it cannot be shown from this passage how far to the south Vinland was located. Captain Phythian, U.S.N., who has given the question careful consideration, says: “The data furnished are not sufficiently definite to warrant a more positive assertion than that the explorers could not have been, when the record was made, farther north than Lat. [say] 49°.” See Reeves, p. 181, (66).
9 Evidently an incorrect statement. Landnama-bok, the authority on genealogical matters, says: “His son was Thorbiorn, father of Gudrid who married Thorstein, son of Eric the Red, and afterwards Thorfinn Karlsefni.” Thori Eastman (the Norwegian) is not mentioned in the Landnama-bok.
10 This cruel virago plays a much less conspicuous part in the version of Hauk’s Book and AM. 557.
11 “A weather-vane, or other ornament at the point of the gable of a house or upon a ship.” (Fritzner.)
From Adam of Bremen’s1 Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis
Moreover he2 spoke of an island in that ocean3 discovered by many, which is called Vinland, for the reason that vines grow wild there, which yield the best of wine. Moreover that grain unsown4 grows there abundantly, is not a fabulous fancy, but, from the accounts of the Danes, we know to be a fact. Beyond this island, it is said, that there is no habitable land in that ocean, but all those regions which are beyond are filled with insupportable ice and boundless gloom, to which Martian thus refers: “One day’s sail beyond Thile the sea is frozen.” This was essayed not long since by that very enter prising Northmen’s prince, Harold,5 who explored the extent of the northern ocean with his ship, but was scarcely able by retreating to escape in safety from the gulf’s enormous abyss, where before his eyes the vanishing bounds of earth were hidden in gloom.