The Discovery of America Part 15

[Sidenote: The northern or Flateyar-bok version.]

The northern version is that which was made about the year 1387 by the priest Jon Thordharson, and contained in the famous compilation known as the _Flateyar-bok_, or "Flat Island Book."[240] This priest was editing the saga of King Olaf Tryggvesson, which is contained in that compilation, and inasmuch as Leif Ericsson's presence at King Olaf's court was connected both with the introduction of Christianity into Greenland and with the discovery of Vinland, Jon paused, after the manner of mediaeval chroniclers, and inserted then and there what he knew about Eric and Leif and Thorfinn. In doing this, he used parts of the original saga of Eric the Red (as we find it reproduced in the western version), and added thereunto a considerable amount of material concerning the Vinland voyages derived from other sources. Jon's version thus made has generally been printed under the t.i.tle, "Saga of Eric the Red."[241]

[Footnote 240: It belonged to a man who lived on Flat Island, in one of the Iceland fiords.]

[Footnote 241: It is printed in Rafn, pp. 1-76, under the t.i.tle "Thaettir af Eireki Rauda ok Graenlendingum." For a critical account of these versions, see Storm, _op. cit._ pp. 319-325; I do not, in all respects, follow him in his depreciation of the Flateyar-bok version.]

[Sidenote: Presumption against sources not contemporary.]

Now the older version, written at the beginning of the fourteenth century, gives an account of things which happened three centuries before it was written. A cautious scholar will, as a rule, be slow to consider any historical narrative as quite satisfactory authority, even when it contains no improbable statements, unless it is nearly contemporary with the events which it records. Such was the rule laid down by the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and it is a very good rule; the proper application of it has disenc.u.mbered history of much rubbish.

At the same time, like all rules, it should be used with judicious caution and not allowed to run away with us. As applied by Lewis to Roman history it would have swept away in one great cataclysm not only kings and decemvirs, but Brennus and his Gauls to boot, and left us with nothing to swear by until the invasion of Pyrrhus.[242] Subsequent research has shown that this was going altogether too far. The mere fact of distance in time between a doc.u.ment and the events which it records is only negative testimony against its value, for it may be a faithful transcript of some earlier doc.u.ment or doc.u.ments since lost. It is so difficult to prove a negative that the mere lapse of time simply raises a presumption the weight of which should be estimated by a careful survey of all the probabilities in the case. Among the many Icelandic vellums that are known to have perished[243] there may well have been earlier copies of Eric the Red's Saga.

[Footnote 242: Lewis's _Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History_, 2 vols., London, 1855.]

[Footnote 243: And notably in that terrible fire of October, 1728, which consumed the University Library at Copenhagen, and broke the heart of the n.o.ble collector of ma.n.u.scripts, Arni Magnusson. The great eruption of Hecla in 1390 overwhelmed two famous homesteads in the immediate neighbourhood. From the local history of these homesteads and their inmates, Vigfusson thinks it not unlikely that some records may still be there "awaiting the spade and pickaxe of a new Schliemann."

_Sturlunga Saga_, p. cliv.]

[Sidenote: Hauk Erlendsson and his ma.n.u.scripts.]

Hauk Erlendsson reckoned himself a direct descendant, in the eighth generation, from Snorro, son of Thorfinn and Gudrid, born in Vinland. He was an important personage in Iceland, a man of erudition, author of a brief book of contemporary annals and a treatise on arithmetic in which he introduced the Arabic numerals into Iceland. In those days the lover of books, if he would add them to his library, might now and then obtain an original ma.n.u.script, but usually he had to copy them or have them copied by hand. The Hauks-bok, with its 200 skins, one of the most extensive Icelandic vellums now in existence, is really Hauk's private library, or what there is left of it, and it shows that he was a man who knew how to make a good choice of books. He did a good deal of his copying himself, and also employed two clerks in the same kind of work.[244]

[Footnote 244: An excellent facsimile of Hauk's handwriting is given in Rafn, tab. iii., lower part; tab. iv. and the upper part of tab. iii. are in the hands of his two amanuenses. See Vigfusson, _op. cit._ p. clxi.]

[Sidenote: The story is not likely to have been preserved to Hauk's time by oral tradition only.]

Now I do not suppose it will occur to any rational being to suggest that Hauk may have written down his version of Eric the Red's Saga from an oral tradition nearly three centuries old. The narrative could not have been so long preserved in its integrity, with so little extravagance of statement and so many marks of truthfulness in details foreign to ordinary Icelandic experience, if it had been entrusted to oral tradition alone. One might as well try to imagine Drake's "World Encompa.s.sed" handed down by oral tradition from the days of Queen Elizabeth to the days of Queen Victoria. Such transmission is possible enough with heroic poems and folk-tales, which deal with a few dramatic situations and a stock of mythical conceptions familiar at every fireside; but in a simple matter-of-fact record of sailors' observations and experiences on a strange coast, oral tradition would not be long in distorting and jumbling the details into a result quite undecipherable.

The story of the Zeno brothers, presently to be cited, shows what strange perversions occur, even in written tradition, when the copyist, instead of faithfully copying records of unfamiliar events, tries to edit and amend them. One cannot reasonably doubt that Hauk's vellum of Eric the Red's Saga, with its many ear-marks of truth above mentioned, was copied by him--and quite carefully and faithfully withal--from some older vellum not now forthcoming.

[Sidenote: Allusions to Vinland in other doc.u.ments.]

As we have no clue, however, beyond the internal evidence, to the age or character of the sources from which Hauk copied, there is nothing left for us to do but to look into other Icelandic doc.u.ments, to see if anywhere they betray a knowledge of Vinland and the voyages thither.

Incidental references to Vinland, in narratives concerned with other matters, are of great significance in this connection; for they imply on the part of the narrator a presumption that his readers understand such references, and that it is not necessary to interrupt his story in order to explain them. Such incidental references imply the existence, during the interval between the Vinland voyages and Hauk's ma.n.u.script, of many intermediate links of sound testimony that have since dropped out of sight; and therefore they go far toward removing whatever presumption may be alleged against Hauk's ma.n.u.script because of its distance from the events.

[Sidenote: Eyrbyggja Saga.]

Now the Eyrbyggja Saga, written between 1230 and 1260, is largely devoted to the settlement of Iceland, and is full of valuable notices of the heathen inst.i.tutions and customs of the tenth century. The Eyrbyggja, having occasion to speak of Thorbrand Snorrason, observes incidentally that he went from Greenland to Vinland with Karlsefni and was killed in a battle with the Skraelings.[245] We have already mentioned the death of this Thorbrand, and how Freydis found his body in the woods.

[Footnote 245: Vigfusson, _Eyrbyggja Saga_, pp. 91, 92. Another of Karlsefni's comrades, Thorhall Gamlason, is mentioned in _Grettis Saga_, Copenhagen, 1859, pp. 22, 70; he went back to Iceland, settled on a farm there, and was known for the rest of his life as "the Vinlander." See above, pp. 165, 168.]

[Sidenote: The abbot Nikulas, etc.]

Three Icelandic tracts on geography, between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, mention h.e.l.luland and Vinland, and in two of these accounts Markland is interposed between h.e.l.luland and Vinland.[246] One of these tracts mentions the voyages of Leif and Thorfinn. It forms part of an essay called "Guide to the Holy Land," by Nikulas Saemundsson, abbot of Thvera, in the north of Iceland, who died 1159. This Nikulas was curious in matters of geography, and had travelled extensively.

[Footnote 246: Werlauf, _Symbolae ad Geogr. Medii aevi_, Copenhagen, 1820.]

[Sidenote: Ari Frodhi.]

With the celebrated Ari Thorgilsson, usually known as Frodhi, "the learned," we come to testimony nearly contemporaneous in time and extremely valuable in character. This erudite priest, born in 1067, was the founder of historical writing in Iceland. He was the princ.i.p.al author of the "Landnama-bok," already mentioned as a work of thorough and painstaking research unequalled in mediaeval literature. His other princ.i.p.al works were the "Konunga-bok," or chronicle of the kings of Norway, and the "Islendinga-bok," or description of Iceland.[247] Ari's books, written not in monkish Latin, but in a good vigorous vernacular, were a mine of information from which all subsequent Icelandic historians were accustomed to draw such treasures as they needed. To his diligence and ac.u.men they were all, from Snorro Sturlason down, very much indebted. He may be said to have given the tone to history-writing in Iceland, and it was a high tone.

[Footnote 247: For a critical estimate of Ari's literary activity and the extent of his work, the reader is referred to Mobius, _Are's Islanderbuch_, Leipsic, 1869; Maurer, "uber Ari Thorgilsson und sein Islanderbuch," in _Germania_, xv.; Olsen, _Ari Thorgilsson hinn Frodhi_, Reykjavik, 1889, pp. 214-240.]

[Sidenote: Ari's significant allusion to Vinland.]

Unfortunately Ari's Islendinga-bok has perished. One cannot help suspecting that it may have contained the contemporary materials from which Eric the Red's Saga in the Hauks-bok was ultimately drawn. For Ari made an abridgment or epitome of his great book, and this epitome, commonly known as "Libellus Islandorum," still survives. In it Ari makes brief mention of Greenland, and refers to his paternal uncle, Thorkell Gellison, as authority for his statements. This Thorkell Gellison, of Helgafell, a man of high consideration who flourished about the middle of the eleventh century, had visited Greenland and talked with one of the men who accompanied Eric when he went to settle in Brattahlid in 986. From this source Ari gives us the interesting information that Eric's party found in Greenland "traces of human habitations, fragments of boats, and stone implements; so from this one might conclude that people of the kind who inhabited Vinland and were known by the (Norse) Greenlanders as Skraelings must have roamed about there."[248] Observe the force of this allusion. The settlers in Greenland did not at first (nor for a long time) meet with barbarous or savage natives there, but only with the vestiges of their former presence. But when Ari wrote the above pa.s.sage, the memory of Vinland and its fierce Skraelings was still fresh, and Ari very properly inferred from the archaeological remains in Greenland that a people similar (in point of barbarism) to the Skraelings must have been there. Unless Ari and his readers had a distinct recollection of the accounts of Vinland, such a reference would have been only an attempt to explain the less obscure by the more obscure. It is to be regretted that we have in this book no more allusions to Vinland; but if Ari could only leave us one such allusion, he surely could not have made that one more pointed.

[Footnote 248: Their "fundo thar manna vister baethi austr ok vestr a landi ok kaeiplabrot ok steinsmithi, that es af thvi ma scilja, at thar hafdhi thessconar thjoth farith es Vinland hefer bygt, ok Graenlendinger calla Skrelinga," i. e.

"invenerunt ibi, tam in orientali quam occidentali terrae parte, humanae habitationis vestigia, navicularum fragmenta et opera fabrilia ex lapide, ex quo intelligi potest, ibi versatum esse nationem quae Vinlandiam incoluit quamque Graenlandi Skraelingos appellant." Rafn, p. 207.]

[Sidenote: Other references.]

But this is not quite the only reference that Ari makes to Vinland.

There are three others that must in all probability be a.s.signed to him.

Two occur in the Landnama-bok, the first in a pa.s.sage where mention is made of Ari Marsson's voyage to a place in the western ocean near Vinland;[249] the only point in this allusion which need here concern us is that Vinland is tacitly a.s.sumed to be a known geographical situation to which others may be referred. The second reference occurs in one of those elaborate and minutely specific genealogies in the Landnama-bok: "Their son was Thordhr Hest-hofdhi, father of Karlsefni, who found Vinland the Good, Snorri's father," etc.[250] The third reference occurs in the Kristni Saga, a kind of supplement to the Landnama-bok, giving an account of the introduction of Christianity into Iceland; here it is related how Leif Ericsson came to be called "Leif the Lucky," 1. from having rescued a s.h.i.+pwrecked crew off the coast of Greenland, 2. from having discovered "Vinland the Good."[251] From these brief allusions, and from the general relation in which Ari Frodhi stood to later writers, I suspect that if the greater Islendinga-bok had survived to our time we should have found in it more about Vinland and its discoverers. At any rate, as to the existence of a definite and continuous tradition all the way from Ari down to Hauk Erlendsson, there can be no question whatever.[252]

[Footnote 249: _Landnama-bok_, part ii. chap. xxii.]

[Footnote 250: Id. part iii. chap. x.]

[Footnote 251: _Kristni Saga_, apud _Biskupa Sogur_, Copenhagen, 1858, vol. i. p. 20.]

[Footnote 252: Indeed, the parallel existence of the Flateyar-bok version of Eric the Red's Saga, alongside of the Hauks-bok version, is pretty good proof of the existence of a written account older than Hauk's time. The discrepancies between the two versions are such as to show that Jon Thordharson did not copy from Hauk, but followed some other version not now forthcoming. Jon mentions six voyages in connection with Vinland: 1. Bjarni Herjulfsson; 2. Leif; 3.

Thorvald; 4. Thorstein and Gudrid; 5. Thorfinn Karlsefni; 6.

Freydis. Hauk, on the other hand, mentions only the two princ.i.p.al voyages, those of Leif and Thorfinn; ignoring Bjarni, he accredits his adventures to Leif on his return voyage from Norway in 999, and he makes Thorvald a comrade of Thorfinn, and mixes his adventures with the events of Thorfinn's voyage. Dr.

Storm considers Hauk's account intrinsically the more probable, and thinks that in the Flateyar-bok we have a later amplification of the tradition. But while I agree with Dr.

Storm as to the general superiority of the Hauk version, I am not convinced by his arguments on this point. It seems to me likely that the Flateyar-bok here preserves more faithfully the details of an older tradition too summarily epitomized in the Hauks-bok. As the point in no way affects the general conclusions of the present chapter, it is hardly worth arguing here. The main thing for us is that the divergencies between the two versions, when coupled with their agreement in the most important features, indicate that both writers were working upon the basis of an antecedent written tradition, like the authors of the first and third synoptic gospels. Only here, of course, there are in the divergencies no symptoms of what the Tubingen school would call "_tendenz_," impairing and obscuring to an indeterminate extent the general trustworthiness of the narratives. On the whole, it is pretty clear that Hauks-bok and Flateyar-bok were independent of each other, and collated, each in its own way, earlier doc.u.ments that have probably since perished.]

[Sidenote: Adam of Bremen.]

The testimony of Adam of Bremen brings us yet one generation nearer to the Vinland voyages, and is very significant. Adam was much interested in the missionary work in the north of Europe, and in 1073, the same year that Hildebrand was elected to the papacy, he published his famous "Historia Ecclesiastica" in which he gave an account of the conversion of the northern nations from the time of Leo III. to that of Hildebrand's predecessor. In prosecuting his studies, Adam made a visit to the court of Swend Estridhsen, king of Denmark, nephew of c.n.u.t the Great, king of Denmark and England. Swend's reign began in 1047, so that Adam's visit must have occurred between that date and 1073. The voyage of Leif and Thorfinn would at that time have been within the memory of living men, and would be likely to be known in Denmark, because the intercourse between the several parts of the Scandinavian world was incessant; there was continual coming and going. Adam learned what he could of Scandinavian geography, and when he published his history, he did just what a modern writer would do under similar circ.u.mstances; he appended to his book some notes on the geography of those remote countries, then so little known to his readers in central and southern Europe. After giving some account of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, he describes the colony in Iceland, and then the further colony in Greenland, and concludes by saying that out in that ocean there is another country, or island, which has been visited by many persons, and is called Vinland because of wild grapes that grow there, out of which a very good wine can be made. Either rumour had exaggerated the virtues of fox-grape juice, or the Northmen were not such good judges of wine as of ale. Adam goes on to say that corn, likewise, grows in Vinland without cultivation; and as such a statement to European readers must needs have a smack of falsehood, he adds that it is based not upon fable and guess-work, but upon "trustworthy reports (_certa relatione_) of the Danes."

[Sidenote: Adam's misconception of the situation.]

Scanty as it is, this single item of strictly contemporary testimony is very important, because quite incidentally it gives to the later accounts such confirmation as to show that they rest upon a solid basis of continuous tradition and not upon mere unintelligent hearsay.[253]

The unvarying character of the tradition, in its essential details, indicates that it must have been committed to writing at a very early period, probably not later than the time of Ari's uncle Thorkell, who was contemporary with Adam of Bremen. If, however, we read the whole pa.s.sage in which Adam's mention of Vinland occurs, it is clear from the context that his own information was not derived from an inspection of Icelandic doc.u.ments. He got it, as he tells us, by talking with King Swend; and all that he got, or all that he thought worth telling, was this curious fact about vines and self-sown corn growing so near to Greenland; for Adam quite misconceived the situation of Vinland, and imagined it far up in the frozen North. After his mention of Vinland, the continental character of which he evidently did not suspect, he goes on immediately to say, "After this island nothing inhabitable is to be found in that ocean, all being covered with unendurable ice and boundless darkness." That most accomplished king, Harold Hardrada, says Adam, tried not long since to ascertain how far the northern ocean extended, and plunged along through this darkness until he actually reached the end of the world, and came near tumbling off![254] Thus the worthy Adam, while telling the truth about fox-grapes and maize as well as he knew how, spoiled the effect of his story by putting Vinland in the Arctic regions. The juxtaposition of icebergs and vines was a little too close even for the mediaeval mind so hospitable to strange yarns.

Adam's readers generally disbelieved the "trustworthy reports of the Danes," and when they thought of Vinland at all, doubtless thought of it as somewhere near the North Pole.[255] We shall do well to bear this in mind when we come to consider the possibility of Columbus having obtained from Adam of Bremen any hint in the least likely to be of use in his own enterprise.[256]

[Footnote 253: It is further interesting as the only undoubted reference to Vinland in a mediaeval book written beyond the limits of the Scandinavian world. There is also, however, a pa.s.sage in Ordericus Vitalis (_Historia Ecclesiastica_, iv.

29), in which _Finland_ and the Orkneys, along with Greenland and Iceland, are loosely described as forming part of the dominions of the kings of Norway. This Finland does not appear to refer to the country of the Finns, east of the Baltic, and it has been supposed that it may have been meant for Vinland.

The book of Ordericus was written about 1140.]

[Footnote 254: The pa.s.sage from Adam of Bremen deserves to be quoted in full: "Praeterea unam adhuc insulam [regionam]

recitavit [i. e. Svendus rex] a multis in eo repertam oceano, quae dicitur Vinland, eo quod ibi vites sponte nascantur, vinum bonum gerentes [ferentes]; nam et fruges ibi non seminatas abundare, non fabulosa opinione, sed certa comperimus relatione Danorum. Post quam insulam terra nulla invenitur habitabilis in illo oceano, sed omnia quae ultra sunt glacie intolerabili ac caligine immensa plena sunt; cujus rei Marcia.n.u.s ita meminit: ultra Thyle, inquiens, navigare unius diei mare concretum est.

Tentavit hoc nuper experientissimus Nordmannorum princeps Haroldus, qui lat.i.tudinem septentrionalis oceani perscrutatus navibus, tandem caligantibus ante ora deficientis mundi finibus, immane abyssi baratrum, retroactis vestigiis, vix salvus evasit." _Descriptio insularum aquilonis_, cap. 38, apud _Hist. Ecclesiastica_, iv. ed. Lindenbrog, Leyden, 1595. No such voyage is known to have been undertaken by Harold of Norway, nor is it likely. Adam was probably thinking of an Arctic voyage undertaken by one Thorir under the auspices of King Harold; one of the company brought back a polar bear and gave it to King Swend, who was much pleased with it. See Rafn, 339. "Regionam" and "ferentes" in the above extract are variant readings found in some editions.]

[Footnote 255: "Det har imidlertid ikke forhindret de senere forfattere, der benyttede Adam, fra at blive mistaenksomme, og saalaenge Adams beretning stod alene, har man i regelen vaegret sig for at tro den. Endog den norske forfatter, der skrev 'Historia Norvegiae' og som foruden Adam vel ogsaa bar kjendt de hjemlige sagn om Vinland, maa have anseet beretningen for fabelagtig og derfor forbigaaet den; han kjendte altfor G.o.dt Grnland som et nordligt isfyldt Polarland til at ville tro paa, at i naerheden fandtes et Vinland." Storm, in _Aarbger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed_, etc., Copenhagen, 1887, p. 300.]

[Footnote 256: See below, p. 386.]