¶ … tale as old as that of Leif Eriksson's visit to Vinland should come to us in a number of different forms, for stories evolve over time even as does everything else. The fact that this particular story - or rather the various versions of this particular story - were preserved in oral memory. There was long an assumption amongst scholars that oral traditions tended to be conservative, with each generation slavishly memorizing and handing down the exact form of stories and other elements of expressive culture that it had received from the generation above it. But anyone who has ever lived in an oral subculture - such as a club or company in which written notes were not kept about how key decisions were made and what those decisions were - knows from personal experience that an oral culture allows for a great deal of emendation, editing and elaboration by every new possessor of a tale. The fact that the stories that have come down to us of Leif Eriksson's voyages are as consistent as they are underscores how important these stories were to the tellers, who made a conscious attempt to be as faithful as possible to the version that they themselves had learned.
Vinland is a wooded place somewhere in North America that the Vinland sagas tell us was visited - and given this name - by the explorer Leif Eriksson in about the year 1000 CE. No specific spot has been designated by modern scholars as the place where Eriksson landed, although there is general agreement that the spot must lie somewhere along the Atlantic coastline eastern Canada.
There are two important sagas that provide the modern reader (for we are no longer so fortunate as to be able to listen to the sagas) with information about the Vikings' voyages to Vinland. There are important differences between the two. The Vinland History of the Flat Island Rock (which is also often called the Saga...
This saga tells us that he sailed along the Atlantic coastline of what would later become Canada, exploring the eastern edge of this country before sailing back to Greenland and that it was he who discovered the land that would be called Vinland.
The saga of Erik the Red presents that case that it was Leif Eriksson who actually was the first European to see Vinland when Eriksson, accompanied by a crew of 35, set out to find the landmass that Bjarni had accidentally found. (The Saga of Erik the Red presents Leif himself as the first to sight Vinland.) Important in the tale of Leif's expedition is an icy and inhospitable land that the Vikings called Helluland (which can be translated as "Flat-Stone Land" or "Flat Island Rock"). Leaving this cold place, they sailed southward until they came to a flat woodland that they named simply Markland (or "Woodland"). Here is a translation of the description of this part of the journey:
They put the ship in order; and, when they were ready, they sailed out to sea, and found first that land which Biarni and his shipmates found last. They sailed up to the land, and cast anchor, and launched a boat, and went ashore, and saw no grass there. Great ice mountains lay inland back from the sea, and it was as a [tableland of] flat rock all the way from the sea to the ice mountains; and the country seemed to them to be entirely devoid of good qualities. Then said, Leif "It has not come to pass with us in regard to this land as with Biarni, that we have not gone upon it. To this country I will now give a name, and call it Helluland." They returned to the ship, put out to sea, and found a second…
