In Northern Mists Volume I Part 17

"were to show him the way, since seafaring men had no 'leidarstein'

[lodestone, magnetic needle] at that time in the North...." "He came first to Hjaltland [Shetland] and lay in Floka-bay. There Geirhild, his daughter, was drowned in Geirhilds-lake." "Floki then sailed to the Faroes, and there gave his [other] daughter in marriage. From her is come Trond in Gata. Thence he sailed out to sea with the three ravens.... And when he let loose the first it flew back astern [i.e., towards the Faroes]. The second flew up into the air and back to the s.h.i.+p. The third flew forward over the prow, where they found the land.

They came to it on the east at Horn. They then sailed along the south of the land. But when they were sailing to the west of Reykjanes and the fjord opened up, so that they saw Snaefellsnes, Faxi [a man on board] said, 'This must be a great land that we have found; here are great waterfalls.' This is since called Faxa-os. Floki and his men sailed west over Breidafjord, and took land there which is called Vatsfjord, by Bardastrond. The fjord was quite full of fish, and on account of the fis.h.i.+ng they did not get in hay, and all their cattle died during the winter. The spring was a cold one. Then Floki went northward on the mountain and saw a fjord full of sea-ice. Therefore they called the country Iceland.... In the summer they sailed to Norway. Floki spoke very unfavourably of the country. But Herjolf said both good and evil of the country. But Thorolf said that b.u.t.ter dripped from every blade of gra.s.s in the country they had found; therefore he was called Thorolf Smor [b.u.t.ter]."

These three voyages of discovery are supposed to have taken place about 860-870. A few years after that time began the permanent settlement of the country by Norwegians; according to the chronicles this was initiated by Ingolf Arnarson with his establishment at Reykjarvik (about the year 874), which is mentioned as early as Are Frode (see above, p. 253), and this establishment may be more historical. Harold Fairhair's conquest of the whole of Norway, of which he made one kingdom, and his hard-handed procedure may have been partly responsible for the emigration of Norwegians to the poorer island of Iceland; many of the chiefs preferred to live a harder life there than to remain at home under Harold's dominion. A larger part of the settlers, and among them many of the best, had first emigrated from Norway to the Scottish isles and to Ireland, but on account of troubles moved once more to Iceland.[236] As has been suggested already (p. 167), there was probably, besides the Irish priests, some Celtic population before the Norwegians arrived, which gave Celtic names to various places in the country. The omission of any mention of these Celts, with the exception of the "Papar," in the Landnama is no more surprising than the strange silence about the primitive people of Greenland, whom we now know with certainty to have been in the country when the Icelanders came thither.

THE DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT OF GREENLAND BY THE NORWEGIANS

[Sidenote: Oldest authority on Greenland]

The earliest mention of Greenland known in literature is that found in Adam of Bremen (see above, p. 194). It was written about a hundred years after the probable settlement of the country, and shows that at least the name had reached Denmark at that time. In another pa.s.sage of his work Adam says that "emissaries from Iceland, Greenland and the Orkneys" came to Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen "with requests that he would send preachers to them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Greenland. The shaded parts along the coast are not covered by the inland ice, which otherwise covers the whole of the interior]

[Sidenote: Are Frode, circa 1120]

The oldest Icelandic account of the discovery of Greenland, and of the people settling there, is found in Are Frode's islendingabok (c. 1130). He had it from his uncle, Thorkel Gellisson, who had been in Greenland and had conversed with a man who himself had accompanied Eric the Red thither. Thorkel lived in the second half of the eleventh century, and "remembered far back." Are's statements have thus a good authority, and they may be regarded as fairly trustworthy, at all events in their main outlines; for the events were no more remote than a couple of generations, and accounts of them may still have been extant in Iceland. Unfortunately the records that have come down to us, from the hand of Are himself, are very brief. He says:

"The land which is called Greenland was discovered and settled from Iceland. Eirik Raude [Eric the Red] was the name of a man from Breidafjord, who sailed thither from hence and there took land at the place which is since called Eiriksfjord. He gave the land a name and called it Greenland, and said that having a good name would entice men to go thither. They found there dwelling-sites of men, both in the east and the west of the country, and fragments of boats ('keiplabrot') and stone implements, so that one may judge from this that the same sort of people had been there as inhabited Wineland, whom the Greenlanders[237] call Skraelings.[238] Now this, when he betook himself to settling the country, was fourteen or fifteen winters before Christianity came here to Iceland,[239] according to what Thorkel Gellisson was told in Greenland by one who himself accompanied Eric the Red thither."

It is strange that we only hear of traces left by the primitive people of Greenland, the Skraelings or Eskimo. This looks as though Eric the Red did not come across the people themselves, though this seems improbable. We shall return to this later, in a special chapter on them.

It is probable that in other works, which are now lost, Are Frode wrote in greater detail of the discovery of Greenland and its first settlement by the Icelanders, and that later authors, whose works are known to us, have drawn upon him; for where they speak of other events that are mentioned in Are's islendingabok, the same expressions are often used, almost word for word. The oldest of the later accounts known to us, which give a more complete narrative of the discovery of Greenland, were written between 1200 and 1305. The Landnamabok may be specially mentioned; upon this is based the Saga of Eric the Red (also called Thorfinn Karlsevne's Saga), written, according to the opinion of G. Storm, between the years 1270 and 1300, while Finnur Jonsson [1901] a.s.signs it to the first half of the thirteenth century. By collating these various accounts we can form a picture of what took place; even though we must suppose that traditions which have been handed down orally for so long must in course of time have been considerably transformed--especially where they cannot have been based on well-known geographical conditions--and that they have received many a feature from other traditions, or from pure legend.

[Sidenote: Gunnbjorn Ulfsson]

Many accounts, both in Hauk's Landnamabok and in the Sturlubok, and in other sagas, mention that Greenland was first discovered by the Norwegian Gunnbjorn, son of Ulf Krka, shortly after the settlement of Iceland. On a voyage to Iceland, presumably about the year 900, he was carried out of his course to the west, and saw there a great country, and found certain islands or skerries, which were afterwards called "Gunnbjornskerries."

These must have been off Greenland, most probably near Cape Farewell; but if it was late in the summer, in August or September, when there is little ice along the east coast, he may even have come close to the land farther north, and there found islands, at Angmagsalik, for instance. It is, however, of no great importance where it was; for when he saw that it was not Iceland that he had made, but a less hospitable country which did not look inviting for winter quarters, he probably sailed again at once, in order to reach his destination before the ice and the late season stopped him, without spending time in exploring the country. Whether Gunnbjorn established himself in Iceland we do not know; but it is recorded that his brother, Grimkell, took land at Snaefellsnes and was among the first settlers, and his sons, Gunnstein and Halldor, took land in the north-west on Isafjord.

Various later writers have interpreted this to mean that Gunnbjornskerries lay to the west of Iceland, and far from the great land that Gunnbjorn saw; but the earliest notices (in the Hauksbok and Sturlubok) do not warrant such a view. It has even been suggested as possible that Gunnbjornskerries lay in the ocean between Iceland and Greenland, but were destroyed later by a volcanic outbreak. In the Dutchman Ruysch's map of 1508 an island is marked in this ocean, with the note that: "This island was totally consumed in the year 1456 A.D."[240] It is inconceivable that such an island midway in the course between Iceland and Greenland should have entirely escaped mention in the oldest accounts of the voyages of Eric the Red and later settlers in Greenland, to say nothing of the circ.u.mstance that it would certainly have been mentioned in the ancient sailing-directions (e.g., in the Hauksbok and Sturlubok) for the voyage from Iceland to Greenland. Nor are there any known banks in this part of the ocean which might indicate that such an island had existed. It is in itself not the least unlikely that Gunnbjorn reached some islands of the Greenland coast, and that these in later tradition received the name of Gunnbjornskerries.

That they were gradually transferred by tradition to a place where islands were no longer to be met with, or which in any case was unapproachable on account of ice, appears from the description of Greenland ascribed to Ivar Bardsson (probably written in the fifteenth century), where we read:[241]

"Item from Snaefellsnes in Iceland, which is shortest to Greenland, two days' and two nights' sail, due west is the course, and there lie Gunnbjornskerries right in mid-channel between Greenland and Iceland.

This was the old course, but now ice has come from the gulf of the sea to the north-east ['landnorden botnen'] so near to the said skerries, that none without danger to life can sail the old course, and be heard of again."

Later in the same statement we read:

"Item when one sails from Iceland, one must take his course from Snaefellsnes ... and then sail due west one day and one night, very slightly to the south-west[242] to avoid the before-mentioned ice which lies off Gunnbjornskerries, and then one day and one night due north-west, and thus he will come straight on the said highland Hvarf in Greenland."

This description need not be taken to indicate that the Gunnbjornskerries were supposed to lie in the midst of the sea between Iceland and Greenland; some place on the east coast of Greenland (e.g., at Angmagsalik) may rather be intended, which was sighted on the voyage between Iceland and the Eastern Settlement (taking "Greenland" to mean only the settled districts of the country). The direction "due west, etc.," for the voyage to the Eastern Settlement is too westerly, unless it was a course by compa.s.s, which, although possible, is hardly probable. But as we shall see later there is much that is untrustworthy in the description attributed to Ivar Bardsson.

A later tradition of Gunnbjorn's voyage also deserves mention; it is found in the "Annals of Greenland" of the already mentioned Bjorn Jonsson of Skardsa (1574-1656), which he compiled from older Icelandic sources, with corrections and "improvements" of his own. He says there ("Gronl. hist.

Mind.," i. p. 88) that the reason why Eric the Red

"sailed to Greenland was no other than this, that it was in the memory of old people that Gunnbjorn, Ulf Krka's son, was thought to have seen a glacier in the western ocean ('til annars jokulsins i vestrhafnu'), but Snaefells-glacier here, when he was carried westward on the sea, after he sailed from the Gunnbjorn's islands. Iceland was then entirely unsettled, and newly discovered by Gardar, who sailed around the country from ness to ness ('nesjastefnu'), and called it Gardarsholm. But this Gunnbjorn, who came next after him, he sailed round much farther out ('djupara'), but kept land in sight, therefore he called the islands skerries in contradistinction to the holm [i.e., Gardarsholm]; but many histories have since called these islands land, sometimes large islands."

This last statement is in any case an explanatory "improvement" by Bjorn Jonsson himself, and doubtless this is also true of the rest. According to this the Gunnbjornskerries lay even within sight of Iceland. In this connection it is worth remarking that his contemporary Arngrim Jonsson imagines ("Specim. Island.," p. 34) the Gunnbjornskerries as a little uninhabited island north of Iceland. This would agree best with the little Meven-klint, which lies by itself in the Polar Sea fifty-six nautical miles north of land, and perhaps it is not wholly impossible that it was rumours of this in later times that gave rise to the ideas of the Gunnbjornskerries, which however by confusion were transferred westward.

It was long before any attempt was made, according to the narratives, to search for the land discovered by Gunnbjorn. In Hauk's Landnamabok [c.

122] we read:

[Sidenote: Snaebjorn Galti and Rolf of Raudesand]

"Snaebjorn [Galti, Holmsteinsson] owned a s.h.i.+p in Grims-os, and Rolf of Raudesand bought a half-share in it.[243] They had twelve men each.

With Snaebjorn were Thorkel and Sumarlide, sons of Thorgeir Raud, son of Einar of Stafholt. Snaebjorn also took with him Thorodd of Thingnes, his foster-father, and his wife, and Rolf took with him Styrbjorn, who quoth thus after his dream:

'The bane I see of both of us, all dolefully north-west in the sea, frost and cold, all kinds of anguish; from such I foresee the slaying of Snaebjorn.'

"They went to seek for Gunnbjornskerries, and found land. Snaebjorn would not let any one land at night. Styrbjorn went from the s.h.i.+p and found a purse of money in a grave-mound ['k.u.ml,' a cairn over a grave], and hid it. Snaebjorn struck at him with an axe, and the purse fell. They built a house, and covered it all over with snow ['ok lagdi hann i fonn']. Thorkel Raudsson found that there was water on the fork that stuck out at the aperture of the hut. That was in the month of Goe.[244] Then they dug themselves out. Snaebjorn made ready the s.h.i.+p.

Of his people Thorodd and his wife stayed in the house; and of Rolf's Styrbjorn and others, and the rest went hunting. Styrbjorn slew Thorodd, and both he and Rolf slew Snaebjorn. Raud's sons and all the others took oaths [i.e., oaths of fidelity] to save their lives. They came to Halogaland, and went thence to Iceland, and arrived at Vadil." There both Rolf and Styrbjorn met their death.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Eastern Settlement of Greenland. The black points mark ruins of the homesteads of the ancient Greenlanders (from Finnur Jonsson, 1899)]

It is possible that this strange fragmentary tale points back to an actual attempt at settlement in Greenland, due to Snaebjorn and Rolf having to leave Iceland on account of homicide. The attempt may have been abandoned on account of dissensions, or because the country was too inhospitable.

From the genealogical information the voyage may possibly be placed a little earlier than Eric the Red's first voyage to Greenland [cf. K.

Maurer, 1874, p. 204]. Whereabouts in Greenland they landed and spent the winter is not stated; but the fact that the snow first began to thaw in the month of "Goe" would point to a cold climate, and this agrees best with the east coast of Greenland. But the story is so obscure that it is difficult to form any clear opinion as to its general credibility; the grave-mound and the purse of money must in any case have come from elsewhere. The circ.u.mstance that on their return they sailed first to Norway and thence to Iceland may be derived from a later time, when there was no direct communication between Greenland and Iceland, but the communication with Greenland took place by way of Norway.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Western Settlement of Greenland. The black points mark ruins of the homesteads of the ancient Greenlanders (from F. Jonsson, 1899)]

[Sidenote: Eric the Red]

The greatest and most important name connected with the discovery of Greenland is without comparison that of Eirik Raude (Erik the Red). The description of this remarkable man (in the Landnama and in the Saga of Eric the Red) forms a good picture; warlike and hard as the fiercest Viking, but at the same time with the superior ability of the born explorer and leader to plan great enterprises, and to carry them out in spite of all difficulties. He was a leader of men. He was born in Norway (circa 950); but on account of homicide he and his father Thorvald left Jaederen and went to Iceland about 970. They took land on the Horn-strands, east of Horn (Cape North). There Thorvald died. Eric then married Tjodhild, whose mother, Thorbjorg Knarrar-bringa (i.e., s.h.i.+p's breast), lived in Haukadal. Eric therefore moved south and cleared land in Haukadal (inland of Hvamsfjord, north of Snaefellsnes) and lived at Eirikstad by Vatshorn. Eric quarrelled with his neighbours and killed several of them.

He was therefore condemned to leave Haukadal. He took land on Broko and oksno, islands outside Hvamsfjord; but after fresh conflicts and slaughter he and his men were declared outlaws for three years, at the Thorsnes thing, about 980. Eric then fitted out his s.h.i.+p, and a friend concealed him, while his enemies went all round the islands looking for him.

"He told them [i.e., his friends] that he meant to seek the land that Gunnbjorn, Ulf Krka's son, saw when he was driven west of Iceland and found Gunnbjornskerries. He said he would come back for his friends, if he found the land. Eric put to sea from Snaefells-glacier;[245] he arrived off Mid-glacier, at the place called Blaserk. [Thence he went south, to see whether the land was habitable.] He sailed westward round Hvarf [west of Cape Farewell] and spent the first winter in Eiriksey near [the middle of] the Eastern Settlement. Next spring he went to Eiriksfjord [the modern Tunugdliarfik, due north of Julianehaab; see map, p. 265] and gave names to many places. The second winter he was at Eiriksholms by Hvarfsgnipa [Hvarf Point]; but the third summer he went right north to Snaefell[246] and into Ravnsfjord.[247] Then he thought he had come farther into the land than the head of Eiriksfjord. He then turned back, and was the third winter in Eiriksey off the mouth of Eiriksfjord. The following summer he went to Iceland, to Breidafjord. He pa.s.sed that winter at Holmlt with Ingolf. In the spring they fought with Thorgest [Eric's former enemy], and Eric was beaten. After that they were reconciled. That summer Eric went to settle the land that he had found, and he called it Greenland; because, said he, men would be more willing to go thither if it had a good name."

"[Eric settled at Brattalid in Eiriksfjord.] Then Are Thorgilsson says that that summer twenty-five s.h.i.+ps sailed to Greenland from Borgarfjord and Breidafjord; but only fourteen came there--some were driven back, others were lost. This was sixteen winters before Christianity was made law in Iceland."[248] This would therefore be about 984.

[Ill.u.s.tration: View from the mountain Igdlerfigsalik (see map, p. 271) over Tunugdliarfik (Eiriksfjord and Brattalid), farther to the left Sermilik (Isafjord and the Mid-fjords) into which a glacier falls; in the right centre Korok-fjord, with a glacier falling into it. The whole background is covered by the inland ice; behind it on the right the Nunataks near the east coast. (After D. Bruun, 1896)]

Eric the Red's first voyage to Greenland is one of the most remarkable in the history of arctic expeditions, both in itself, on account of the masterly ability it shows, and for the vast consequences it was to have.

With the scanty means of equipment and provisioning available at that time in the open Viking s.h.i.+ps,[249] it was no child's play to set out for an unknown arctic land beyond the ice, and to stay there three years.

Perhaps, of course, he did it from necessity; but he not only came through it alive--he employed the three years in exploring the country, from Hvarf right up to north of Davis Strait, and from the outermost belt of skerries to the head of the long fjords. This was more than 500 years before the Portuguese came to the country, and exactly 600 before John Davis thought himself the discoverer of this coast.

But not only does Eric seem to have been pre-eminent, first as a fighter and then as a discoverer; as the leader of the colony founded by him in Greenland he must also have had great capabilities; he got people to emigrate thither, and looked after them well; and he was regarded as a matter of course as the leading man and chief of the new free state, whom every one visited first on arrival. His successors, who resided at the chief's seat of Brattalid, were the first family of the country.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Part of the interior of Eiriksfjord, at Brattalid and beyond. The mountain Igdlerfigsalik in the background (after D. Bruun, 1896)]

Immigration to Greenland must according to the saga have gone on rapidly; for in the year 1000 there were already so many inhabitants that Olaf Tryggvason thought it worth while to make efforts to Christianise them, and sent a priest there with Eric's son Leif. Eric's wife, Tjodhild, at once received the faith; but the old man himself did not like the new doctrine, and found it difficult to give up his own. Tjodhild built a church at some distance from the houses; "there she made her prayers, and those men who accepted Christianity, but they were the most. She would not live with Eric, after she had taken the faith; but to him this was very displeasing." In Snorre's Heimskringla we read that men called Leif "the Lucky [see Chap. ix.]; but Eric, his father, thought that one thing balanced the other, that Leif had saved the s.h.i.+pwrecked crew and that he had brought the hypocrite ['skaemannin'] to Greenland, that is, the priest."

The Nors.e.m.e.n established themselves in two districts of Greenland. One of these was the "Eastern Settlement" [osterbygden], so called because it lay farthest to the south-east on the west coast, between the southern point, Hvarf, and about 61 N. lat. It corresponds to the modern Julianehaab District. It was the most thickly populated, and it was here that Eiriksfjord and Brattalid lay. In the whole "Settlement" there are said to have been 190 homesteads ["Gronl. hist. Mind.," iii. p. 228]. Ruins of these have been found in at least 150 places [cf. D. Bruun, 1896; G. Holm, 1883].

[Ill.u.s.tration: The central part of the Eastern Settlement. Black points mark ancient ruins, crosses mark churches]

[Sidenote: The Western Settlement]

The other district, the "Western Settlement" [Vesterbygden], lay farther north-west between 63 and 66-1/2 (see map, p. 266), for the most part in the modern G.o.dthaab District, and its population was densest in Ameralik-fjord and G.o.dthaabsfjord. There are said to have been ninety homesteads in this settlement. Many ruins of Nors.e.m.e.n's stone houses are still found in both districts, and they show with certainty where the settlements were and what was their extent.