A History of the Vikings
Chapter 15
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my reward for my chanting and spells, since Thor has seldom failed me'. Some of the eaters were ill already, but when they heard this they one and all refused to have anything more to do with the whale-flesh and immediately cast it away from them over the cliffs, committing themselves, as they did so, to the keeping of Almighty God.
Soon after this the weather improved and the ice melted; they were able to row out to sea and henceforth there was no lack of provisions; by the time spring came fish, game, and eggs, were once more plentiful. But they could not afford to stay on here for they had not yet found Wineland, so there was a consultation as to how their voyage was to be continued. Thorhall, thoroughly disgruntled and objectionable, pointed out that so far he had not tasted a drop of the wine he had been promised, that he had had a very uncomfortable time with little to eat and nothing but hard work to do, and that he did not intend accompanying Karlsefni if he chose to proceed in what he himself considered to be quite the wrong direction for Wineland; so while Karlsefni coasted southwards with two ships, Thorhall with nine malcontents renounced the quest of the grapes, taking the third ship first to explore the country to the west and then to set off northwards to Wonderstrands and Keelness on their way back to Greenland.
Karlsefni and his people left Straumfjord and followed the coast first to the south, after which they rounded Cape Breton and made their way southwest along Nova Scotia; at last they came to a river-mouth, probably the estuary of the Hudson (if it was not further south in Leif's Wineland), that they called Hóp,1 a name meaning inlet or creek. Here on the low ground was wild wheat and on the hills were vines; the streams were full of fish, and by digging pits at high-water mark
1. The Hudson mouth is the Hop of Mr. Gathorne Hardy. Professor Hovgaard, who does not believe that Karlsefni ever got to Wineland at all, makes Straumfjord Sandwich Bay on the east coast of Labrador, and Hop White Bay in Newfoundland. Professor Steensby puts Straumfjord and Hop in the St. Lawrence estuary; Mr. W. H. Babcock (Smithsonian Misc. Coll. 59, 1913, No. 19, pp. 124, 139) places Straumfjord in Passamaquoddy Bay and Hop in Mount Hope Bay. Gustav Storm placed both Straumfjord and Hop on the south-east coast of Nova Scotia. And this illustrates the almost hopeless difficulty of describing these voyages in a coherent story that does not at some point run counter to the narratives in the sagas. I cannot defend the identifications I have chosen here, but I have picked out what seem to me to be the best guesses, and I earnestly commend to the student a very excellent little paper by Professor Halldór Hermannsson (Geographical Review, New York, January, 1927, p. 107) who begins his study by the novel and ingenious method of plotting Leif's course back to Greenland. To Professor Hermannsson is due the identification that I have adopted here of Straumfjord as Chaleur Bay. The trouble, of course, is that the sources are in no sense sailing directions; they are narratives, as muddled and misleading as any other stories set down in writing some two or three hundred years after they were first told, and the plain truth is that the identification of the viking settlements in America will only be conclusively settled, if ever, by the actual discovery of the Norse booths. Unfortunately, the search for Scandinavian remains in the New World has so far yielded no results in spite of various extravagant claims. The old stone mill at Newport, Rhode Island, thought to date from the time of the Norsemen, proves to have been built in the seventeenth century, the alleged runes on the Dighton Rock and the Yarmouth Stone are certainly not Norse, the Kensington runic inscription in Minnesota is a forgery, and there is no hope for the painted boulder at Spokane, Washington. Excavation has failed to show that certain ruins on the Charles River at Cambridge, Massachusetts, are Norse, as was at one time believed, and other ruins and graves on the east coast of Labrador near Nain and Amitok Island, also thought to be of Norse origin, are now known to be the work of other peoples.
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in the estuary they were able to catch fine halibut when the tide ebbed; there was game of every variety and good pasture for their remaining cattle. So they built themselves houses and settled down to enjoy themselves.
After they had been a fortnight at Hop nine canoes loaded with Indians appeared; the natives were swinging their rattlesticks (1) sunwise, that is from east to west, and Karlsefni and Snorri interpreted this as a sign of peace so they displayed a white shield in answer. The Indians proved to be friendly, but they were very timid and soon took themselves off; the Norse described them as swarthy men, ugly to look at and with unkempt hair, large eyes, and broad cheeks. Nothing more was heard of them during the winter.
At Hop, unlike Straumfjord, the weather remained mild and there was no snow; so the tiny settlement prospered, the men busy chiefly with the cutting of timber for transport to the northern colonies. At the beginning of spring the Indians returned, this time in large numbers, and began to trade with the Norsemen, bartering their furs for red cloth and for milk; they wanted also to buy swords and spears, but Karlsefni wisely forbade his men to part with their weapons. For a good skin the natives got a span of the cloth, which they then tied round their heads; when the cloth got scarce the Norsemen began to cut it into smaller and smaller pieces until at last the fragments measured
1. The word trjóna is usually translated pole or stave, but I adopt here Mr. Gathorne Hardy suggestion (op. cit., p. 182).
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not more than a finger's breadth. Yet the Indians gave as much, or even more, for these little scraps.
The trading, however, was interrupted by two most unfortunate incidents: one the frightening of the natives by Karlsefni's bull and the other the murder of one of the Indians by a Norseman whose weapons he had tried to steal. The result was that the Indians departed in an obviously angry mood, so Karlsefni saw nothing for it but to erect a strong pallisade around the settlement and make ready for its defence. At the end of three weeks came the expected attack. The Indians were in even greater numbers, and this time they were shouting and waving their rattles not sunwise but widdershins. Karlsefni saw that this meant war and so he raised a red shield as a sign that he also was ready to fight, and there followed a battle. The savages had a very peculiar engine of war, a variety of ballista that was worked by several men, (1) and this so terrified the Norsemen that they fled. But they were rallied by the woman Freydis and in the end they beat off the Indians, killing four of them and losing only two of their own number.
After this it was plain that however attractive the land might be Karlsefni and his people would live henceforth in constant danger of attack by the Indians. So the Norsemen packed up and sailed off to Straumfjord, and here, now that they were well stocked with provisions, they passed their third winter; but it was not a happy one as there were quarrels of a serious nature over the women. Karlsefni himself took one ship and went off to look for Thorhall the Hunter, sailing, it seems, westwards up the St. Lawrence estuary. (2) But Thorhall, who had left the expedition two years previously with the intention of exploring to the west, that is up the St. Lawrence, had changed his mind and had tried to return to Greenland; on his way back he had met with misfortune as storms had driven him far out of his course and he is said to have landed eventually in Ireland where
1. The Norsemen described this as a large ball, resembling a sheep's paunch and dark-coloured, which was slung from a pole and made a horrible noise when it descended. Modern Indians use no such weapon, but Algonquin tradition has preserved the memory of a formidable ballista which was made of a boulder sewn up tight in a skin and slung at the end of a long rod, H. R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, I (1851), p. 85.
2. Karlsefni is said to have sailed northward to Keelness and then westwards, having land on his port side. This probably means that he sailed across the Gulf of St. Lawrence and then back again in a westerly direction to the Gaspé peninsula and thence westward along the south bank of the St. Lawrence.
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he was taken prisoner and killed. Karlsefni, therefore, saw nothing of his former companion; so he returned to Straumfjord and then with the second boat began his return journey to Greenland. For this boat of Bjarni Grimolfsson the homeward trip was disastrous, for he was storm-driven far out into the western Atlantic where his ship foundered and only a half of the crew escaped with their lives. But Karlsefni came safely to Greenland and there spent the winter (1023-4) with old Eric the Red.
The story of the next voyage to Wineland is less the narrative of a journey than the tale of an evil woman and her doings; for though America was indeed the stage whereon her worst villainy was played, yet of the travelling thither and the discoveries or fortunes of the voyage there is nothing told.
Perhaps it is largely for this reason that the historicity of this last adventure in Wineland has been challenged, and it is certainly true that the story is related by the Flatey Book alone. There may be some reasonable misgivings, furthermore, over the circumstance that the cruel woman who dominates the almost unbelievable drama now to be unfolded herself accompanied Karlsefni. For it is Freydis, the wild and valorous daughter of Eric, who inspired and directed this next enterprise, and as she has already been heard of as rallying Karlsefni's Norsemen when the Indians pressed them it is easy to suspect that the new tale of her adventures in America may likewise be an episode happening during Karlsefni's voyage, perhaps on the return journey when the leader himself was away searching for Thorhall.
This, however, is the Flatery Book tale. After Karlsefni's return to Greenland, Freydis, who seemingly could make her rich and stupid husband do whatever she wanted, determined to go back to Wineland, and she persuaded two brothers, Helgi. and Finnbogi, Icelanders lately arrived in Greenland, to accompany her with their ship, this on the condition that she and they should share the profits of the expedition. It was agreed that the brothers should take thirty men of fighting age, besides women, and Freydis thirty also in her own ship; but Freydis began her cheating by smuggling five extra men on board.
The two boats sailed for Leif's camp and the brothers, arriving first, took up their belongings to the booths where they imagined the crews of both ships would make their home. But Freydis, when she came, had them turned out. 'Leif lent the houses to me and not to you', said she. 'We are certainly no match for you in wickedness', replied Helgi, and he and his brother carried
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away their goods and built a camp for themselves some distance away. By the time winter came the arrogance of Freydis had made friendly relations between herself and the brothers impossible and soon the quarrel of the leaders spread into an open hostility between the two settlements. This was exactly what Freydis desired to happen, and now it was that this woman did her foulest deed; she had long coveted, it seems, the brothers' ship, for it was a bigger and better boat then her own, and early one morning she went over quite alone to their house and bargained for it. Evidently she was refused, as she had every reason to expect she would be, and she returned to her husband, Thorvard, and roused him to tell him that the brothers had so abused and ill-treated her that the insult could only be wiped out with blood. The miserable Thorvard was at length goaded into action and, summoning his men, he let Freydis lead them off to attack the camp of the brothers. They took the place by surprise and having captured every single man, including the wretched brothers, they led them out and killed them one by one. But the five women of the camp remained, and though they had been witnesses of the atrocity, yet no one of Thorvard's men could bring himself to slay them. And then it was that Freydis stood forth. 'Give me an axe', she cried, and when they put one in her hand she went up to the five women and killed them every one.
Freydis said to her men, 'If we have the luck to get back to Greenland I shall certainly contrive the death of anyone who speaks of this event. We shall say that the crew of the other ship stayed behind here when we came away'. But when, after fitting out and loading the brothers' ship, they sailed back in the spring to Ericsfjord the story of this utterly abominable massacre leaked out. Yet Leif could not bring himself to punish his sister as she deserved, though from that time onwards she and her husband were everywhere regarded with loathing.
She was not the last of the Greenlanders, this remarkable Freydis, to sail for the New World. It is related that in 1121, just about a hundred years later, Eric Gnupsson, said to have been Bishop of Greenland, went in search of Wineland, maybe to preach the gospel to the Indians or Eskimos of America; but he never returned and there was nothing heard of his fate. Probably Markland was visited more than once during the period of the decline of the colony in order that wood might be obtained and there is, indeed, record of a voyage thither in the fourteenth century, for in the year 1347 it was reported that there arrived in Iceland a little Greenland ship with a crew of seventeen or
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eighteen men that had been to Markland and subsequently driven out of her course on the return journey. So it must be counted to the credit of the sickly colony of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that the Greenlanders still dared to make the perilous crossing to the great continent their ancestors had found. But that they made their way far enough south to visit Wineland no man knows. (1)
1. It is sometimes said that Harald Hardradi journeyed to Wineland during his celebrated voyage to investigate the breadth of the northern ocean (Adam of Bremen, IV, 38), but actually there is no reason for supposing that he reached America. Nor is the Honen rune-stone in Ringerike of any historic importance even though an uncertain reading seems to record an expedition to Wineland by explorers who lost themselves among the ice of uninhabited countries. Nor, moreover, can anything be made of a projected expedition to discover the 'New Land' found in the northern seas by Icelandic explorers about 1290. On this, and Harald's voyage, see F. Nansen, In Northern Mists.
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