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

convinced that Helluland, Markland, and Vinland of the sagas, are
Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia.[10-1] The sailing
directions in the "Saga of Eric the Red" are given with surprising detail.
These, with other observations, seem to fit Nova Scotia remarkably
well. Only one thing appears to speak against Storm's view, and that is
the abundance of grapes to which the Flat Island Book account testifies.
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.
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