Читать книгу The Lost Atlantis and Other Ethnographic Studies - Sir Daniel Wilson - Страница 6

Some say he bid his Angels turn askance

The poles of Earth twice ten degrees and more

From the sun’s axle … … …

. … . Now from the north

Of Norumbega, and the Samoed shore,

Bursting their brazen dungeon, arm’d with ice,

And snow, and hail, and stormy gust and flaw,

Boreas …

which seems to imply very Icelandic and Arctic associations of the Miltonic muse. But the gentle New England poet, Whittier, who had sung of his Christian knight in vain quest of the marvellous city, thus writes in sober prose to its modern discoverer: “I had supposed that the famed city of Norumbega was on the Penobscot when I wrote my poem some years ago; but I am glad to think of it as on the Charles, in our own Massachusetts.” This work of rearing anew on the banks of the river Charles the metropolis of Vinland the Good may be best entrusted to the poets of New England.

All praise is due to the enthusiastic editors of the Antiquitates Americanæ for their reproduction of the original records on which the history and the legends of Vinland rest. They found only too willing recipients of the theories and assumptions with which they supplemented the genuine narrative; nor has the uncritical spirit of credulous deduction wholly ceased. In the untimely death of Professor Munch, the historian of Norway, the University of Christiana lost a ripe and acutely critical scholar in the very flower of his years. But in Dr. Gustav Storm a successor has been found not unworthy to fill his place, and represent the younger generation of Northern antiquaries, who have now taken in hand, in a more critical spirit, yet with no less enthusiasm, the work so well begun by Rafn, Finn Magnusen, and Sveinbiorn Egilsson. In the same year in which Leif Ericson’s statue was set up in Boston, and all the old enthusiasm for the identification of the lost Vinland was revived, there appeared in the Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord a series of Studies on the Vineland Voyages, from the pen of Professor Storm, embodying a critical analysis of the evidence relating to the Vinland voyages, which is treated still more fully in his Studier over Vinlandsreiserne, Vinlands Geografi og Ethnographi. The whole is now available, along with valuable additions, including photographic facsimiles illustrative of the original MSS., in Reeves’ Finding of Wineland the Good.^[7] The evidence has to be gleaned from two independent series of narratives: the one the Icelandic Sagas and other embodiments of the Vinland tradition; the other the more amplified, but less reliable narratives of Norwegian chroniclers. The earliest Icelandic accounts are derived directly or indirectly from Ari froði, more particularly referred to on a later page, whose date as an author is given as about 1120; thereby marking the transmission of the narrative to a younger generation before it was committed to writing. Ari froði, i.e. the learned, derived the story from his paternal uncle Thorkell Gellisson of Helgufell, who lived in the latter half of the eleventh century; and so was a contemporary of Adam of Bremen, who, when resident at the Danish Court, about the year 1070, obtained the information relating to the Northern regions which he embodied in his Descriptio insularum aquilonis. Ari’s uncle, Thorkell, is said to have spoken, when in Greenland, with a man who, in the year 985, had accompanied Erik the Red on his expedition from Iceland; so that the authority is good, if the narrative were sufficiently ample; but unfortunately, though Ari’s notes of what he learned from his uncle are still extant in the Libellus Islandorum, they are exceedingly meagre. The Vinland explorations had no such importance for the men of that age as they possess for us, and are accordingly dealt with as a very secondary matter. Professor Gustav Storm, in his Studies on the Vineland Voyages, notes that Thorkell seems to have told his nephew most about the colonisation of Greenland. In Professor Storm’s Studies, and in the exhaustive Finding of Wineland the Good, by Arthur Middleton Reeves, the entire bearings of the evidence, and the relative value of the various ancient authorities, are discussed with minute care; and lead alike to the inevitable conclusion that any assignment of a site for the lost Vinland, either on Rhode Island, or on any part of the New England coast, is untenable. The deductions of Professor Rafn from the same evidence were accepted as a final verdict, until the too eager confirmation of his Rhode Island correspondents brought them into discredit. Now when we undertake an unbiassed review of them, it is manifest that too much weight has been attached to his estimate of distances measured by the vague standard of a day’s sail of a rude galley dependent on wind and tide. This Professor Rafn assumed as equivalent to twenty-four geographical miles. But very slight consideration suffices to show that, with an indefinite starting-point, and only a vague indication of the direction of sailing, with the unknown influences of wind and tide, any such arbitrary deduction of a definite measurement from the log of the old Northmen is not only valueless, but misleading.

A reconsideration of the evidence furnished by the references to the fauna and flora of the different points touched at, shows that others of Professor Rafn’s deductions are equally open to correction. Helluland, a barren region, of large stone slabs, with no other trace of life than the Arctic fox, presented the same aspect as Labrador still offers to the eye of the voyager. But there is no need to traverse the entire Canadian and New England coasts before a region can be found answering to the descriptions of a forest-clad country, of numerous deer, or even of the vine, as noted by the old explorers from Greenland. To the eye of the Greenlander, the Markland, or forest-clad land, lay within sight no farther south than Newfoundland or Cape Breton. To those who are accustomed to associate the vine with the Rhine land, or the plains of Champagne, it sounds equally extravagant to speak of the Maritime Provinces, or of the New England States, as “Vinland the Good.” But numerous allusions of voyagers and travellers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries refer with commendation to the wild grapes of North America. Jacques Cartier on making his way up the St. Lawrence, in his second voyage, gave to the Isle of Orleans the name of the Isle de Bacchus, because of the many wild vines found there; though he notes that, “not being cultivated nor pruned, the grapes are neither so large nor so sweet as ours”—that is, those of France. Lescarbot, in like manner, in 1606, records the grape vine as growing at Chuakouet, or Saco, in Maine, and in the following year they are noted as abundant along the banks of the river St. John in New Brunswick.

To voyagers from Iceland or Greenland many portions of the coast of Nova Scotia would present the aspect of a region clothed with forest, and, as such, “extremely beautiful.” Deer are still abundant both there and in Newfoundland; and as for the grapes gathered by Leif Ericson, or those brought back to Thorvald by Hake and Hekia, the swift runners, at their more northern place of landing, the wild vine is well known at the present time in sheltered localities of Nova Scotia. Having therefore carefully studied the earliest maps and charts, of which reduced copies are furnished in the Mémoires, and reviewed the whole evidence with minute care, Professor Storm thus unhesitatingly states the results: “Kjalarnes, the northern extremity of Vinland, becomes Cape Breton Island, specially described as low-lying and sandy. The fiord into which the Northmen steered, on the country becoming fjorthskorit, i.e. ‘fiord-indented,’ may have been one of the bays of Guysborough, the county of Nova Scotia lying farthest to the north-east; possibly indeed Canso Bay, or some one of the bays south of it. Therefore much further to the south in Nova Scotia must we seek the mouth of the river where Karlsefn made his abortive attempt at colonisation. … The west coast of northern Vinland is characterised as a region of uninhabited forest tracks, with few open spots, a statement admirably agreeing with the topographical conditions distinguishing the west coast of Cape Breton Island, which in a modern book of travels is spoken of as ‘an unexplored and trackless land of forests and mountains.’ Hence to the south of this region search has to be made for the mouth of the streamlet where Thorvald Eriksson was killed.” Various points, accordingly, such as Salmon river, or one of the rivers flowing into Pictou harbour, are suggested as furnishing features of resemblance and inviting to further research.

Here, then, is the same problem submitted to the historical antiquaries of Nova Scotia which those of Rhode Island took up upwards of half a century ago, with unbounded zeal, and very surprising results. Nor is there a “Dighton Rock” wanting; for Nova Scotia has its inscribed stone, already interpreted as graphic runes, replete with equally suggestive traces of the Northmen of the tenth century. The inscribed rock at Yarmouth has long been an object of curious interest. So far back as 1857 I received from Dr. J. G. Farish a full-sized copy of the inscription, with the following account of it: “The inscription, of which the accompanying sketch is an exact copy,

Inscription, Yarmouth Rock, Nova Scotia.

was discovered forty-five years ago, at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. The rock on which the characters are engraved is about two feet in diameter, of an irregular hemispherical shape, with one naturally smooth surface. It lies on the shore of a small inlet, at high-water mark, and close to the bank, on which it may formerly have rested. The stone has been split where a very thin vein of quartz once traversed it, but the corresponding half could never be found. The tracing has been done with a sharp-pointed instrument carried onward, by successive blows of a hammer or mallet, the effect of which is plainly visible. The point of the instrument barely penetrated the layer of quartz, which is almost as thin as the black marks of the sketch. The inscription has been shown to several learned gentlemen—one intimately acquainted with the characters of the Micmac and Millicet Indians who once inhabited this country; another, familiar with the Icelandic and other Scandinavian languages; but no person has yet been able to decipher it.” Again, in 1880, I received from Mr. J. Y. Bulmer, Secretary of the Nova Scotia Historical Society, a photograph of the Yarmouth rock, with an accompanying letter, in which he remarks: “I am directed by the council of the Nova Scotia Historical Society to forward to you a photographic view of a stone found near the ocean, in Yarmouth county, N.S., and having an inscription which, if not runic or Phœnician, is supposed by many to be the work of man. As ancient remains are most likely to be preserved by calling attention to all such works and inscriptions, we thought it best to forward it to you, where it could be examined by yourself and others likely to detect a fraud, or translate an inscription. The stone is now—or was one hundred years ago—near, or in fact on, the edge of the sea. It has since been removed to Yarmouth for preservation. It was found near Cape Sable, a cape that must have been visited by nearly every navigator, whether ancient or modern.”

The earlier description of Dr. Farish is valuable, as it preserves an account of the rock while it still occupied its original site. He speaks, moreover, definitely as to the period when it first attracted attention; and which, though more recent than the “one hundred years” of my later correspondent, or a nearly equivalent statement in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, that “it has been known for nearly an hundred years,” is sufficiently remote to remove all idea of fraud, at least by any person of the present generation. The description given by Dr. Farish of the apparent execution of the inscription by means of a sharp-pointed instrument—meaning thereby no doubt a metallic tool—and a hammer or mallet, clearly points to other than native Indian workmanship, whatever may have been the date of its execution. As will be seen from the accompanying copy, it is in arbitrary linear characters bearing no resemblance to the abbreviated symbols familiar to us in Indian epigraphy; and at the same time it may be described as unique in character. Having been known to people resident in its vicinity for many years before the attention of students of the early monuments of the continent was invited to it, it appears to be beyond suspicion of purposed fraud. I did not attempt any solution of the enigma thus repeatedly submitted to my consideration; but it was this graven stone that was referred to when, in the inaugural address to the section of History and Archæology of the Royal Society of Canada, in 1882, the remark was made: “I know of but one inscription in Canada which seems to suggest the possibility of a genuine native record.”

On nearly every recurrence of an inscription in any linear form of alphabetic character brought to light in the western hemisphere, the first idea has been to suggest a Phœnician origin; and this is, no doubt, implied in the statement of its runic decipherer, in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, that “the glyphs have been at various times copied and sent abroad to men of learning who have made more or less attempts at deciphering them, more than one savant seeing traces of Semitic origin.” But latterly with the reported discovery of any linear inscription on the eastern seaboard, the temptation has been to refer it to the Northmen of the eleventh century. To this accordingly the allusions of both of my Nova-Scotian correspondents pointed. But the characters of the Scandinavian futhork are sufficiently definite to satisfy any one familiar with Scottish and Manx runic inscriptions, or with Professor George Stephens’ ample illustrations of them as they are found in the native home of the Northmen, that it is vain to look to either for a key to the graven legend on the Yarmouth rock. The presence of the Northmen, not only in Iceland and Greenland, but as transient visitors on some portion of the North American mainland, now rests on satisfactory historical evidence. In Greenland they left indisputable literate records of their colonisation of the region to which they gave the inapt name it still retains. The runic inscriptions brought to Copenhagen in 1831 not only determine the sites of settlements effected by the companions and successors of Eric, but they serve to show the kind of evidence to be looked for, alike to the north and the south of the St. Lawrence, if any traces yet survive of their having attempted to colonise the old Markland and Vinland, whether the latter is recovered in Nova Scotia or New England. Their genuine memorials are not less definite than those left by the Romans in Gaul or Britain; and corresponding traces of them in the assumed Vinland, and elsewhere in the United States, have been perseveringly, but vainly, sought for. One unmistakably definite Scandinavian inscription, that of the “Huidœrk,” professedly found on the river Potomac, does not lay claim to serious criticism. It was affirmed to have been discovered in 1867 graven on a rock on the banks of the Potomac; but to any student familiar with the genuine examples figured in the Antiquitates Americanæ, it will be readily recognised as a clever hoax, fabricated by the correspondent of the Washington Union out of genuine Greenland inscriptions. It reads thus: hir huilir syasy fagrharrdr avstfirthingr iki a kildi systr thorg samfethra halfthritgr gleda gvd sal henar. To this are added certain symbols, suggested it may be presumed by the Kingiktorsoak inscription, from which the translator professes to derive the date a.d. 1051.

In the interval between the dates of the two communications previously referred to, a rubbing of the inscription on the Yarmouth rock was forwarded to Mr. Henry Phillips jr., of Philadelphia. It appears to have been under consideration by him at intervals for nine years, when at length it was made the subject of a paper read before the American Philosophical Society, and printed in its Proceedings in 1884. After a description of the locality, and the discovery of the inscribed stone on its original site, “about the end of the last century, by a man named Fletcher,” Mr. Phillips states the reasons which sufficed to satisfy him that the inscription is a genuine one. He then proceeds thus: “Having become imbued with a belief that no deception was intended, or practised, I entered upon the study of the markings with a mind totally and entirely free from prejudice. So far from believing that the inscription was a relic of the pre-Columbian discovery of America, I had never given any credence to that theory.” Thus, not only entirely unbiassed, but, as he says, “somewhat prejudiced against the authenticity of any inscription on this continent purporting to emanate from the hardy and intrepid Norsemen,” he proceeded to grapple with the strange characters. “As in a kaleidoscope, word after word appeared in disjointed form, and each was in turn rejected, until at last an intelligible word came forth, followed by another and another, until a real sentence with a meaning stood forth to my astonished gaze: Harkussen men varu—Hako’s son addressed the men.” On reverting to the old Vinland narrative this seemed all unexpectedly to tally with it, for Mr. Phillips found that in the expedition of Thorfinn Karlsefne, in 1007, one named Haki occurs among those who accompanied him. Still more noteworthy, as it appears, though overlooked by him, this oldest record of a European visitor to the Nova-Scotian shores, if actually referable to Hake, the fellow-voyager of Thorfinn, was no Northman, but a Scot! For Thorfinn himself, the old Saga, as reproduced in the Antiquitates Americanæ, claims a comprehensive genealogy in which his own Scottish ancestry is not overlooked. In the summer of 1006, according to the narrative of the “settlement effected in Vinland by Thorfinn,” “there arrived in Greenland two ships from Iceland; the one was commanded by Thorfinn, having the very significant surname of Karlsefn (i.e. who promises, or is destined to be an able or great man), a wealthy and powerful man, of illustrious lineage, and sprung from Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Irish and Scottish ancestors, some of whom were kings of royal descent. He was accompanied by Snorre Thorbrandson, who was also a man of distinguished lineage. The other ship was commanded by Bjarne Grimolfson, of Breidefiord, and Thorhall Gamlison, of Austfiord. They kept the festival of Yule at Brattalid. Thorfinn became enamoured of Gudrida, and obtained the consent of her brother-in-law, Leif, and their marriage was celebrated during the winter. On this, as on former occasions, the voyage to Vinland formed a favourite theme of conversation, and Thorfinn was urged both by his wife and others to undertake such a voyage. It was accordingly resolved on in the spring of 1007.” This later narrative distinctly sets forth an organised scheme of permanent settlement in the tempting land of the vine. Thorvald, who was in command of one of the three ships fitted out for the expedition, was married to Freydisa, a natural daughter of Eric the Red. “On board this ship was also a man of the name of Thorhall, who had long served Eric as a huntsman in summer, and as house-steward in winter, and who had much acquaintance with the uncolonised parts of Greenland. They had in all 160 men. They took with them all kinds of live stock, it being their intention to establish a colony, if possible.” Then follows the notice of their observations of the characteristic features, and of the fauna and flora of Helluland, Markland, and subsequent points; to the last of which, characterised by “trackless deserts and long beaches with sands,” they gave the name of Furdustrandir. After passing this, the characteristic feature is noted that the land began to be indented by inlets, or bays. Then follows the notice of Hake, the Scot, to whom Mr. Phillips conceives the Yarmouth inscription may be due. The reference, accordingly, with its accompanying description of the country, has a special claim to notice here. “They had,” says the Saga, “two Scots with them, Haki and Hekia, whom Leif had formerly received from the Norwegian King, Olaf Tryggvason,” it may be assumed as slaves carried off in some marauding expedition to the British Islands. The two Scots, man and woman, it is added, “were very swift of foot. They put them on shore recommending them to proceed in a south-west direction, and explore the country. After the lapse of three days they returned, bringing with them some grapes and ears of wheat, which grew wild in that region. They continued their course until they came to a place where the firth penetrated far into the country. Off the mouth of it was an island past which there ran strong currents, which was also the case further up the firth. On the island there was an immense number of eider ducks, so that it was scarcely possible to walk without treading on their eggs. They called the island Straumey (Stream Isle), and the firth Straumfiordr (Stream Firth). They landed on the shore of this firth, and made preparations for their winter residence. The country was extremely beautiful,” as we may readily imagine a sheltered nook of Nova Scotia to have appeared to voyagers fresh from Iceland and the Greenland shores. It may be well to note here that the incident of the discovery of the vine and the gathering of grapes reappears in different narratives under varying forms. It was a feature to be specially looked for by all later voyagers in search of the Vinland of the first expedition, that set out in search for the southern lands of which Bjarni Herjulfson is reported to have brought back an account to Greenland. Nor is the discovery of the vine by successive explorers along the American seaboard in any degree improbable, though it can scarcely be doubted that some of the later accounts are mere amplifications of the original narrative. It is, at any rate, to be noted that the scene of Haki the Scot’s discovery, was not the Hóp, identified by the Rhode Island Historical Society with their own Mount Hope Bay. As for Thorhall and his shipmates, they turned back, northward, in search of Vinland, and so deserted their fellow-voyagers before the scene of attempted colonisation was reached, and were ultimately reported to have been wrecked on the Irish coast.

Such is the episode in the narrative of ancient explorations of the North American shores by voyagers from Greenland, in which Mr. Phillips was gratified by the startling conformity, as it seemed to him, of the name of Haki, with the Harkussen of his runes; though, it must be admitted, the identity is far from complete. If, however, there were no doubt as to the inscription being a genuine example of Northern runes, the failure to refer them to Hake, or any other specific member of an exploring party, would be of little moment. Here, at any rate, was evidence which, if rightly interpreted, was calculated to suggest a reconsideration of the old localisation of Vinland in the state of Rhode Island; and to this other evidence pointed even more clearly. Reassured, accordingly, by a study of the map, which shows the comparatively trifling distance traversed by the assumed voyagers from Greenland, when compared with that from their remote European fatherland, Mr. Phillips submitted his interpretation to the American Philosophical Society “as worthy of consideration, if not absolutely convincing.” To the topographer of the maritime coasts of Canada, a genuine runic inscription which proved that Norse voyagers from Greenland did actually land on the shores of Nova Scotia, in a.d. 1007, and leave there a literate record of their visit, would be peculiarly acceptable. But whatever be the significance of the Yarmouth inscription, it fails to satisfy such requirements. It neither accords with the style, or usual formula of runic inscriptions; nor, as will be seen from the accompanying facsimile, is it graven in any variation of the familiar characters of the Scandinavian futhork. The fascinating temptation has to be set aside; and the Hake or Harkussen of its modern interpreter must take rank with the illusory Thorfinn discovered by the Rhode Island antiquaries on their famed Dighton Rock, which still stands by the banks of the Taunton river.

It is indeed vain for us to hope for evidence of the same definite kind as that which establishes beyond question the presence of the Northmen on the sites of their long-settled colonies in Greenland. Their visits to the Canadian seaboard were transitory; and any attempt at settlement there failed. Yet without the definite memorials of the old Norse colonists recovered in the present century on the sites of their Greenland settlements, it would probably have proved vain to identify them now. The coast of Nova Scotia is indented with inlets, and estuaries of creeks and rivers, suggesting some vague resemblance to the Hóp, or creek of the old Sagas. Whether any one of them presents adequate features for identification with the descriptions furnished in their accounts has yet to be ascertained. But there is every motive to stimulate us to a careful survey of the coast in search of any probable site of the Vinland of the old Northmen. Slight as are the details available for such a purpose, they are not without some specific definiteness, which the Rhode Island antiquaries turned to account, not without a warning to us in their too confident assumption of results. Dr. E. B. Tylor, in his address to the section of anthropology at the Montreal meeting of the British Association, after referring to the Icelandic records of the explorations of the hardy sea-rovers from Greenland, as too consistent to be refused belief as to the main facts, thus proceeded: “They sailed some way down the American coast. But where are we to look for the most southerly points which the Sagas mention as reached in Vineland? Where was Keel-ness where Thorvald’s ship ran aground, and Cross-ness where he was buried when he died by the Skræling’s arrow? Rafn, in the Antiquitates Americanæ, confidently maps out these places about the promontory of Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, and this has been repeated since from book to book. I must plead guilty to having cited Rafn’s map before now, but when with reference to the present meeting I consulted our learned editor of Scandinavian records at Oxford, Mr. Gudbrand Vigfusson, and afterwards went through the original passages in the Sagas with Mr. York Powell, I am bound to say that the voyages of the Northmen ought to be reduced to more moderate limits. It appears that they crossed from Greenland to Labrador (Helluland), and thence sailing more or less south and west, in two stretches of two days each, they came to a place near where wild grapes grew, whence they called the country Vineland. This would, therefore, seem to have been somewhere about the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and it would be an interesting object for a yachting cruise to try down from the east coast of Labrador a fair four days’ sail of a Viking ship, and identify, if possible, the sound between the island and the ness, the river running out of the lake into the sea, the long stretches of sand, and the other local features mentioned in the Sagas.” A fresh stimulus is thus furnished to Canadian yachtsmen to combine historical exploration with a summer’s coasting trip, and go in search of the lost Vinland. The description of the locality that furnished the data from which the members of the Rhode Island Historical Society satisfied themselves as to the identity of their more southern site on the Pacasset river, has to be kept in view in any renewed inquiry. At the same time it must not be overlooked that the oldest and most trustworthy narrative, in the Saga of Eric the Red, with the credited, and probably genuine story of the voyage of Karlsefne, are expanded, in the Grænlendingathàttr, into five voyages, with their incidents recast with modifications and additions. The expedition of Leif Ericson, and his accidental discovery of Vinland, and the subsequent attempt at colonisation of Karlsefne, in company with Thorvald and Freydisa, are the only adventures accredited by the oldest tradition. In the latter narrative it is stated that “they sailed for a long time, until they came at last to a river which flowed down from the land into a lake, and so into the sea. There were great bars at the mouth of the river, so that it could only be entered at the height of the flood tide. Karlsefn and his men sailed into the mouth of the river, and called it Hóp,” i.e. a land-locked bay. “They found self-sown wheat fields wherever there were hollows, and where there was hilly ground there were vines.” Subsequent descriptions are obviously based on this account. But to whatever extent the description of the locality where Thorvald, the brother of Leif Ericson, was killed by a Skræling may have been suggested by that narrative, the localities are different. It was apparently in the spring of a.d. 1004 that Karlsefne set out on his colonising expedition. The voyagers sailed along Furdustrandir, a long, low sandy coast, till they came to where the land was indented with creeks and inlets. There they steered into the Straumsfjord, to a spot where Karlsefne and his companions spent the winter of a.d. 1005; and where, therefore, we may assume the observations to have been made that determined the length of the day in Vinland at the winter solstice. The narrative of noteworthy incidents is accompanied with topographical details that have to be kept in view in any attempt at recovering traces of the locality. There, if it could be identified, we have to look for a promontory answering to the Krossanes, or promontory of the crosses: the spot where Thorvald was buried; and as would seem to be implied, where a cross was set up at the grave mound. The style of such a sepulchral memorial of the Northmen at a little later date is very familiar to us. The discovery on some hitherto unheeded spot of the Nova-Scotian coast of a bautastein, graven like those recovered on the sites of the old Greenland colony, would be an invaluable historical record. It might be expected to read somewhat in this fashion: Leif sunr Erikr rautha raisti krus thana eftir Thorvald brothur sina. But there is slight ground for imagining that the transient visitors from Greenland to the Canadian shores left any more lasting memorial of the tragic event that reappears in successive versions of the narrative of their presence there, than a wooden grave-post, or uninscribed headstone.

One other element in the characteristic features of the strange land visited by the Greenland explorers is the native population, and this has a specific interest in other respects, in addition to its bearing on the determination of a Nova-Scotian site for “Vineland the Good.” They are designated Skrælings (Skrælingjar), and as in this the Greenland voyagers applied the same name to the natives of Vinland as to the Greenland Eskimo, it has been assumed that both were of the same race. But the term “skræling” is still used in Norway to express the idea of decrepitude, or physical inferiority; and probably was used with no more definite significance than our own word “savage.” The account given in the Saga of the approach of the Skrælings would sufficiently accord with that of a Micmac flotilla of canoes. Their first appearance is thus described: “While looking about one morning, they observed a great number of canoes. On exhibiting friendly signals the canoes approached nearer to them, and the natives in them looked with astonishment at those they met there. These people were sallow-coloured and ill-looking, had ugly heads of hair, large eyes and broad cheeks.” The term skræling has usually been interpreted “dwarf,” and so seemed to confirm the idea of the natives having been Eskimo; but, as already stated, the word, as still used in Norway, might mean no more than the inferiority of any savage race. As to the description of their features and complexion, that would apply equally well to the red Indian or the Eskimo, and so far as the eyes are spoken of, rather to the former than the latter. More importance may be attached to the term hudhkeipr applied to their canoes, which is more applicable to the kayak, or skin-boat, than to the birch-bark canoe of the Indian; but the word was probably loosely used as applicable to any savage substitute for a keel, or built boat.

This question of the identification of the Skrælings, or natives, whether of Nova Scotia or New England, is one of considerable ethnographic significance. The speculations relative to the possible relationship of the Eskimo to the post-glacial cave-dwellers of the Dordogne valley, and their consequent direct descent from palæolithic European man, confer a value on any definite evidence bearing on their movements in intermediate centuries. On the other hand, the approximate correspondence of the Huron-Iroquois of Canada and the state of New York to the Eskimo in the dolichocephalic type of skull common to both, gives an interest to any evidence of the early presence of the latter to the south of the St. Lawrence. In their western migrations the Eskimo attract the attention of the ethnographer as the one definite ethnic link between America and Asia. They are met with, as detached and wandering tribes, across the whole continent, from Greenland to Behring Strait. Nevertheless, they appear to be the occupants of a diminishing rather than an expanding area. This would accord with the idea of their area extending over the Canadian maritime provinces, and along the New England coast, in the eleventh century; and possibly as indicating the early home, from which they were being driven northward by the Huron-Iroquois or other assailants, rather than implying an overflow from their Arctic habitat. Seal hunting on the coast of Newfoundland, and fishing on its banks and along the shores of Nova Scotia, would even now involve no radical change in the habits of the Eskimo. It was with this hyperborean race that the Scandinavian colonists of Greenland came in contact 800 years ago, and by them that they were exterminated at a later date. If it could be proved that the Skrælings of the eleventh century, found by the Northmen on the American mainland, were Eskimo, it would furnish the most conclusive evidence that the red Indians—whether Micmac, Millicet, or Hurons—are recent intruders there.

In any process of aggression of the native American race on the older area of the Eskimo, some intermixture of blood would naturally follow. The slaughter of the males in battle, and the capture of women and children, everywhere leads to a like result; and this seems the simplest solution of the problem of the southern brachycephalic, and the northern dolichocephalic type of head among native American races. When the sites of the ancient colonies of Greenland were rediscovered and visited by the Danes, they imagined they could recognise in the physiognomy of some of the Eskimo who still people the shores of Davis Straits, traces of admixture between the old native and the Scandinavian or Icelandic blood. Of the Greenland colonies the Eskimo had perpetuated many traditions, referring to the colonists under the native name of Kablunet. But of the language that had been spoken among them for centuries, the fact is highly significant that the word Kona, used by them as a synonym for woman, is the only clearly recognised trace. This is worthy of note, in considering the distinctive character of the Eskimo language, and its comparison with the Indian languages of the North American continent. It has the feature common to nearly all the native languages of the continent north of the Mexican Gulf in the composite character of its words; so that an Eskimo verb may furnish the equivalent to a whole sentence in other tongues. But what is specially noteworthy is that, while the Huron-Iroquois, the Algonkin, and other Indian families of languages have multiplied widely dissimilar dialects, Dr. Henry Rink has shown that the Eskimo dialects of Greenland or Labrador differ slightly from those of Behring Strait; and the congeners of the American Eskimo, who have overflowed into the Aleutian Islands, and taken possession of the north-eastern region of Asia, perpetuate there nearly allied dialects of the parent tongue.^[8] The Alaskan and the Tshugazzi peninsulas are in part peopled by Eskimo; the Konegan of Kudjak Island belong to the same stock; and all the dialects spoken in the Aleutian Islands, the supposed highway from Asia to America, betray in like manner the closest affinities to the Arctic Mongolidæ of the New World. They thus appear not only to be contributions from the New World to the Old, but to be of recent introduction there. If the cave-dwellers of Europe’s palæolithic era found their way as has been suggested, in some vastly remote age, either by an eastern or a western route to the later home of the Arctic Eskimo, it is in comparatively modern centuries that the tide of migration has set westward across the Behring Strait, and by the Aleutian Islands, into Asia.

The reference to the Skrælings in the first friendly intercourse of Thorfinn Karlsefne and his companions with the natives, and their subsequent hostile attitude, ending in the death of Thorvald Ericson, has given occasion to this digression. But the question thus suggested is one of no secondary interest. If we could certainly determine their ethnical character the fact would be of great significance; and coupled with any well-grounded determination of the locality where the fatal incident occurred, would have important bearings on American ethnology. The description of the sallow, or more correctly, swarthy coloured, natives with large eyes, broad cheek-bones, shaggy hair, and forbidding countenances is furnished in the Saga, and then the narrative thus proceeds: “After the Skrælings had gazed at them for a while, they rowed away again to the south-west past the cape. Karlsefne and his company had erected their dwelling-houses a little above the bay, and there they spent the winter. No snow fell, and the cattle found their food in the open field. One morning early, in the beginning of 1008, they descried a number of canoes coming from the south-west past the cape. Karlsefne having held up the white shield as a friendly signal, they drew nigh and immediately commenced bartering. These people chose in preference red cloth, and gave furs and squirrel skins in exchange. They would fain also have bought swords and spears, but these Karlsefne and Snorre prohibited their people from selling to them. In exchange for a skin entirely gray the Skrælings took a piece of cloth of a span in breadth, and bound it round their heads. Their barter was carried on in this way for some time. The Northmen then found that their cloth was beginning to grow scarce, whereupon they cut it up in smaller pieces, not broader than a finger’s breadth, yet the Skrælings gave as much for these smaller pieces as they had formerly given for the larger ones, or even more. Karlsefne also caused the women to bear out milk soup, and the Skrælings relishing the taste of it, they desired to buy it in preference to everything else, so they wound up their traffic by carrying away their bargains in their bellies. Whilst this traffic was going on it happened that a bull, which Karlsefne had brought along with him, came out of the wood and bellowed loudly. At this the Skrælings got terrified and rushed to their canoes, and rowed away southwards. About this time Gudrida, Karlsefne’s wife, gave birth to a son, who received the name of Snorre. In the beginning of the following winter the Skrælings came again in much greater numbers; they showed symptoms of hostility, setting up loud yells. Karlsefne caused the red shield to be borne against them, whereupon they advanced against each other, and a battle commenced. There was a galling discharge of missiles. The Skrælings had a sort of war sling. They elevated on a pole a tremendously large ball, almost the size of a sheep’s stomach, and of a bluish colour; this they swung from the pole over Karlsefne’s people, and it descended with a fearful crash. This struck terror into the Northmen, and they fled along the river.”

It was thus apparent that in spite of the attractions of the forest-clad land, with its tempting vines, there was little prospect of peaceful possession. The experience of these first colonisers differed in no degree from that of the later pioneers of Nova Scotia or New England. Freydisa, the natural daughter of Eric, whom Thorvald had wedded, is described as taunting the men for their cowardice in giving way before such miserable caitiffs as the Skrælings or savage natives, and vowing, if she had only a weapon, she would show better fight. “She accordingly followed them into the wood. There she encountered a dead body. It was Thorbrand Snorrason. A flat stone was sticking fast in his head. His naked sword lay by his side. This she took up, and prepared to defend herself. She uncovered her breasts and dashed them against the naked sword. At this sight the Skrælings became terrified, and ran off to their canoes. Karlsefne and the rest now came up to her and praised her courage. But Karlsefne and his people became aware that, although the country held out many advantages, still the life that they would have to lead here would be one of constant alarm from the hostile attacks of the natives. They therefore made preparations for departure with the resolution of returning to their own country.” To us the attractions of a Nova-Scotian settlement might seem worth encountering a good many such assaults rather than retreat to the ice-bound shores of Greenland. But it was “their own country”; their relatives were there. Nor to the hardy Northmen did its climate, or that of Iceland, present the forbidding aspect which it would to us. So they returned to Brattalid, carrying back with them an evil report of the land; and, as it seems, also bringing with them specimens of its natives. For, on their homeward voyage, they proceeded round Kialarnes, and then were driven to the nort-west. “The land lay to larboard of them. There were thick forests in all directions as far as they could see, with scarcely any open space. They considered the hills at Hope and those which they now saw as forming part of one continuous range. They spent the third winter at Streamfirth. Karlsefne’s son Snorre was now three years of age. When they sailed from Vinland they had southerly wind, and came to Markland, where they met with five Skrælings. They caught two of them (two boys), whom they carried away along with them, and taught them the Norse language, and baptized them; these children said that their mother was called Vethilldi and their father Uvaege. They said that the Skrælings were ruled by chieftains (kings), one of whom was called Avalldamon, and the other Valdidida; that there were no houses in the country, but that the people dwelled in holes and caverns.”

Thus ended the abortive enterprise of Thorfinn and his company to found, in the eleventh century, a colony of Northmen on the American mainland. The account the survivors brought back told indeed of umbrageous woodland and the tempting vine. But the forest was haunted by the fierce Skrælings, and its coasts open to assault from their canoes. To the race that wrested Normandy from the Carlovingian Frank, and established its jarldoms in Orkney, Caithness, and Northumbria, such a foe might well be deemed contemptible. But the degenerate Franks, and the Angles of Northumbria, tempted the Norse marauder with costly spoils; and only after repeated successful expeditions awakened the desire to settle in the land and make there new homes. Alike to explorers seeking for themselves a home, and to adventurers coveting the victors’ spoils, the Vinland of the Northmen offered no adequate temptation, and so its traditions faded out of memory, or were recalled only as the legend of a fabulous age. At the meeting of the British Association at Montreal in 1884 Mr. R. G. Halliburton read a paper entitled “A Search in British North America for lost Colonies of Northmen and Portuguese.” Documents were quoted by him showing that from a.d. 1500 to 1570 commissions were regularly issued to the Corte Reals and their successors. Cape Breton was colonised by them in 1521; and when Portugal became annexed to Spain in 1680, and Terra Nova passed with it to her rule, she sent colonists to settle there. The site which they occupied, Mr. Halliburton traced to Spanish Harbour (Sydney), Cape Breton, and this he claimed to be the earliest European settlement in North America. For, as for the Northmen’s reputed explorations and attempt at settlement, his verdict is thus briefly summed up: “When we can discover Greenland’s verdant mountains we can also hope to find the vine-clad hills of Vineland the Good.” That, however, is too summary a dismissal of evidence which, if vague, is to every appearance based on authorities as seemingly authentic and trustworthy as those on which many details of the history of early centuries rest. It would manifestly be unwise to discountenance further inquiry by any such sweeping scepticism, or to discourage the hope that local research may yet be rewarded by evidence confirmatory of the reputed visit of Thorfinn and his fellow-explorers to some recognisable point on the Nova-Scotian coast.

The diligent research of scholars familiar with the Old Norse, in which the Sagas are written, is now clearing this inquiry into reputed pre-Columbian discovery and colonisation of much misapprehension. The extravagant assumptions alike of earlier Danish and New England antiquaries in dealing with the question were provocative of an undue bias of critical scepticism. The American historian Bancroft gave form to this tendency when he affirmed that “the story of the colonisation of America by Northmen rests on narratives mythological in form and obscure in meaning; ancient, yet not contemporary.” If the historian had adduced in evidence of this the story of the Eyrbyggja Saga, and the later amplifications of reputed voyages to “White Man’s Land,” and to “Newland,” his language would have been pardonable. Of the later fictitious Sagas are the Landvætta-sögur; Stories of the guardian-spirits of the land; and the Saga of Halfdan Eysteinsson, from which we learn that “Raknar brought the deserts of Heluland under his rule, and destroyed all the giants there”; or again we have the Saga of “Barthar Snæfellsass,” or the Snow-fell God, and the King Dumbr of Dumbshaf. But all such mythical Sagas belong to later Icelandic and Norwegian literature, and have no claim to historical value.

The genuine documentary evidence of Vinland is recoverable from manuscripts of earlier date, and a widely different character. Had Bancroft been familiar with the early Icelandic Sagas he could never have spoken of them as mythological. They are, on the contrary, distinguished by their presentation of events in an extremely simple and literal manner; equally free from rhetorical embellishment and the extravagances of the romancer. But the occupation of the new-found land was brief; and as the tale of its explorers faded from the memory of younger generations, fancy toyed with the legend of a sunny land of the Vine, with its self-sown fields of ripened grain. At a later date Greenland itself vanished from the ken of living men; and romance sported with the fancies suggested by its name as a fertile oasis of green pastures walled in by the ice and snows of its Arctic zone.

The first authentic reference, now recoverable, to Vinland the Good has already been referred to. It occurs in a passage in the Iselandinga Vók, by Ari Thorgilsson, the oldest Icelandic historiographer. Ari, surnamed froði, or the learned, was born a.d. 1067, and survived till 1148. The earliest manuscript of the Saga of Eric the Red dates as late as a.d. 1330. It is contained in the Arna Magnæan Codex, commonly known as Hauks Vók. Hauk Erlendsson, to whom the preservation of this copy of the original Saga is due, and by whom part of it appears to have been written, has appended to the manuscript a genealogy, in which he traces his descent from the son of Karlsefne, born in Vinland. Two versions of the narrative have been preserved, differing only in slight details; and of those Reeves says: “They afford the most graphic and succinct exposition of the discovery; and, supported as they are throughout by contemporary history, appear in every respect most worthy of credence.”^[9] The simple, unadorned narrative bears out the idea that it is a manuscript of information derived from the statements of the actual explorers. The later story of Barni Herjulfson—an obvious amplification of the original narrative, with a change of names, and many spurious additions—occurs in the Flatey Book, a manuscript written before the close of the fourteenth century, when the Northmen of the Scandinavian fatherland were reawakening to an interest in the memories or traditions of early voyages to strange lands beyond the Atlantic Ocean, and fashioning them into legend and romance.

The poet, William Morris, represents the Vikings of the fourteenth century following the old leadings of Leif Ericson in search of the earthly paradise:—