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But coupled with this testimony are statements (to say nothing of the unreliability of this saga in other respects) that indicate that the Icelandic narrators had come to believe that grapes were gathered in the spring, thus invalidating the testimony as to abundance.

      A sort of negative corroboration of this is offered by a work of high rank, the famous Speculum Regale, written in Old Norse in Norway in the middle of the thirteenth century. It contains much trustworthy information on Greenland; it tells, “with bald common sense,” of such characteristic things as glaciers and northern lights, discusses the question as to whether Greenland is an island or a peninsula, tells of exports and imports, the climate, the means of subsistence, and especially the fauna, but not one word concerning any natives. Moreover Ivar Bardsen’s account of Greenland, which is entirely trustworthy, gives a distinct impression that the colonists did not come into conflict with the Eskimos until the fourteenth century.

      There is consequently no valid reason for doubting that the savages described in the sagas were natives of Vinland and Markland. But whether it can ever be satisfactorily demonstrated that the Norse explorers came in contact with Algonquin, Micmac, or Beothuk Indians, and just where they landed, are not matters of essential importance. The incontrovertible facts of the various Norse expeditions are that Leif Ericson and Thorfinn Karlsefni are as surely historical characters as Christopher Columbus, that they visited, in the early part of the eleventh century, some part of North America where the grape grew, and that in that region the colonists found savages, whose hostility upset their plans of permanent settlement.

      According to the usually accepted chronology, Leif’s voyage from Norway to Greenland (during which voyage he found Vinland) was made in the year 1000, and Karlsefni’s attempt at colonization within the decade following. On the basis of genealogical records (so often treacherous) some doubt has recently been cast on this chronology by Vigfusson, in Origines Islandicae (1905). Vigfusson died in 1889, sixteen years before the publication of this work. He had no opportunity to consider the investigations of Dr. Storm, who accepts without question the first decade of the eleventh century for the Vinland voyages. Nor do Storm’s evidences and arguments on this point appear in the work as published. Therefore we are obliged to say of Vigfusson’s observations on the chronology of the Vinland voyages, that they stand as question-marks which call for confirmation.

      In regard to the extract from Adam of Bremen, which we print, it should be observed that its only importance lies in the fact that it corroborates the Icelandic tradition of a land called Vinland, where there were grapes and “unsown grain,” and thus serves to strengthen faith in the trustworthiness of the saga narrative. The annals and papal letters that follow need no further discussion, we think, than that contained in the annotations.

      Besides the texts in Icelandic, already described, by Rafn, Reeves, Vigfusson and Powell, and Storm, it may be mentioned that the Flat Island text is given in Vol. I. of Flateyjar-bok, ed. Vigfusson and Unger, Christiania, 1860. There are translations of both texts in Beamish, Discovery of North America by the Northmen (London, 1841), in Slafter, Voyages of the Northmen (Boston, 1877), and in De Costa, Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen (Albany, 1901). But most of these are confused in arrangement, and the best is that by the late Mr. Reeves, which by the kind consent of his representatives we are permitted to use in this volume.

      Julius E. Olson.

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