Vinland Sagas

¶ … 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 of the Greenlanders) tells how it was a man named Bjarni Herjulfsson, attempting in about 986 to sail to Greenland but caught by a violent storm and blown off-course, who would become the first European to sight mainland America.

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 land. They sailed again to the land, and came to anchor, and launched the boat, and went ashore. This was a level wooded land; and there were broad stretches of white sand where they went, and the land was level by the sea.

Then said Leif, "This land shall have a name after its nature; and we will call it Markland." (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1000Vinland.html). It was when they left Markland, this version of the saga tells us, the Eriksson and his men came to Vinland, where they actually built a small settlement and rested for some period of time before returning to Greenland.

The lushness and gentleness of this land in the eyes of people from the far north is apparent in this description of Vinland, a name that means Wineland. While it is just possible that Eriksson and his men actually found grapes in Canada, they would in fact have considered any berry to be appropriate for the making of wine, and scholars now believe that what they found - and hope to induce into drinkable wine - were cranberries.

They sailed toward this land, and came to an island which lay to the northward off the land. There they went ashore and looked about them, the weather being fine, and they observed that there was dew upon the grass, and it so happened that they touched the dew with their hands, and touched their hands to their mouths, and it seemed to them that they had never before tasted anything so sweet as this.

They went aboard their ship again and sailed into a certain sound, which lay between the island and a cape, which jutted out from the land on the north, and they stood in westering past the cape.

At ebb-tide, there were broad reaches of shallow water there, and they ran their ship aground there, and it was a long distance from the ship to the ocean; yet were they so anxious to go ashore that they could not wait until the tide should rise under their ship, but hastened to the land, where a certain river flows out from a lake.

As soon as the tide rose beneath their ship, however, they took the boat and rowed to the ship, which they conveyed up the river, and so into the lake, where they cast anchor and carried their hammocks ashore from the ship, and.