The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 | Page 7

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.
Whether the savages that the sagas describe were Indians or Eskimos is a question of some interest. John Fiske[10-2] believes that the explorers came in contact with American Indians; Vigfusson, on the other hand, believes that the sagas describe Eskimos. Here, however, the American has the better right to an opinion.
On this point, it is of importance to call attention to the fact that the Norse colonists in Greenland found no natives there, only vestiges of them. They were at that time farther north in Greenland; the colonists came in contact with them much later,--too late to admit of descriptions of them in any of the classical Icelandic sagas, in which the Greenland colonists play no inconspicuous part. Ari, the great authority on early Norse history, speaking of the Greenland colonists, says in his Libellus Islandorum:[11-1] "They found there men's habitations both east and west in the land [i.e., in both the Eastern and Western settlements] both broken cayaks and stone-smithery, whereby it may be seen that the same kind of folk had been there as they which inhabited Vinland, and whom the men of Greenland [i.e., the explorers] called Skrellings."
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[11-2] 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[12-1] (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.
We are surprised, moreover, to find that Origines Islandicae prints the Flat Island Book story first, apparently on account of the belief that this story contains the "truer account of the first sighting of the American continent" by Biarni Herjulfson.[12-2] It is impossible to believe that this would have been done, if the editors (Vigfusson and Powell) had known the results of Dr. Storm's work, which is not mentioned. There is, furthermore, no attempt in the Origines Islandicae to refute or explain away an opinion on AM. 557 expressed by the same authorities, in 1879,[12-3] to the effect that "it is free from grave errors of fact which disfigure the latter [the Flat Island Book saga]." We are almost forced to the conclusion that a hand less cunning than Vigfusson's has had to do with the unfinished section of the work.
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