In Northern Mists Volume Ii Part 4

(14) The Irish happy lands peopled by the sid correspond to the Norwegian huldrelands out in the sea to the west, and the Icelandic elf-lands.

(15) Since the huldre- and sid-people and the elves are originally the dead, and since the Isles of the Blest or the Fortunate Isles of antiquity were the habitations of the happy dead, these islands also correspond to the Irish sid-people's happy lands, and to the Norwegian huldrelands and the Icelandic elf-lands.

(16) The additional name of "hit Goa" for the happy Wineland and the name "Landit Goa" for huldrelands in Norway correspond directly to the name of "Insulae Fortunatae," which in itself could not very well take any other Norse form. And as in addition the huldrelands were imagined as specially good and fertile, and the underground, huldre- and sid-people or elves are called the "good people," and are everywhere in different countries a.s.sociated with the idea of "good," this gives a natural explanation of both the Norse names.

(17) The name "Vinland hit Goa" has a foreign effect in Norse nomenclature; it must be a hybrid of Norse and foreign nomenclature, through "Vinland" being combined with "Landit Goa," which probably originated in a translation of "Insulae Fortunatae."

(18) The probability of the name of Skraelings for the inhabitants of Wineland having originally meant brownies or trolls--that is, small huldre-folk, elves or pygmies--entirely agrees with the view that Wineland was originally the fairy country, the Fortunate Isles in the west of the ocean.

(19) The statement of the Icelandic geography, that in the opinion of some Wineland the Good was connected with Africa, and the fact that the Norwegian work, Historia Norwegiae, calls Wineland (with Markland and h.e.l.luland) the African Islands, are direct evidence that the Norse Wineland was the Insulae Fortunatae, which together with the Gorgades and the Hesperides were precisely the African Islands.

(20) Even though the Saga of Eric the Red and the Gronlendinga-attr contain nothing which we can regard as certain information as to the discovery of America by the Greenlanders, we yet find there and elsewhere many features which show that they must have reached the coast of America, the most decisive amongst them being the chance mention of the voyagers from Markland in 1347. To this may be added Hertzberg's demonstration of the adoption of the Icelandic game of "knattleikr" by the Indians. The name of the mythical land may then have been transferred to the country that was discovered.

(21) Hvitramanna-land is a mythical land similar to the wine-island of the Irish, modified in accordance with Christian ideas, especially perhaps those of the white garments of the baptized--as in the Navigatio Brandani in reference to the Isle of Anchorites or the "Strong Men's Isle" (== Starkra-manna-land)--and of the white hermits.

(22) Finally, among the most different people on earth, from the ancient Greeks to the Icelanders, Chinese and j.a.panese, we meet with similar myths about countries out in the ocean and voyages to them, which, whether they be connected with one another or not, show the common tendency of humanity to adopt ideas and tales of this kind.

But even if we are obliged to abandon the Saga of Eric the Red[52] and the other descriptions of these voyages as historical doc.u.ments, this is compensated by the increase in our admiration for the extraordinary powers of realistic description in Icelandic literature. In reading Eric's Saga one cannot help being struck by the way in which many of the events are so described, often in a few words, that the whole thing is before one's eyes and it is difficult to believe that it has not actually occurred. This is just the same quality that characterises our Norwegian fairy-tales: all that is supernatural is made so natural and realistic that it is brought straight before one. The Icelanders created the realistic novel; and at a time when the prose style of Europe was still in its infancy their prose narrative often reaches the summit of clear simplicity. In part this may doubtless be explained by their not being merely authors, but men of action; their presentment acquired the stamp of real life and the brevity that belongs to the narrator of things seen. And to this, of course, must be added the fact that as a rule the tales were sifted and abridged by generations of oral transmission. In later times this style became corrupted by European influence.

[Sidenote: Postscript]

After I had given, on October 7, 1910, the outlines of this examination of the sagas of the Wineland voyages before the Scientific Society of Christiania, attention was called in Sweden, by Professor F. Laffler, to the fact that the Swedish philologist, Professor Sven Soderberg, whose early death in 1901 is much to be regretted, had announced views about Wineland similar to those at which I have arrived. The ma.n.u.script of a lecture that he delivered on the subject at Lund in May 1898, but which was never printed, was then found, and has been published in the "Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snallposten" for October 30, 1910. As I have thus become acquainted with this interesting inquiry too late to be able to include it in my examination, I think it right to mention it here.

Professor Soderberg thinks, as I do, that there can be no doubt about the Nors.e.m.e.n having discovered a part of North America; but he looks upon the tales of the wine and everything connected therewith as later inventions.

He maintains that the name of "Vinland" originally meant gra.s.s-land or pasture-land (from the old Norse word "vin" == pasture), therefore something similar to the meaning of Greenland, and that it may have been the name of a country discovered in the west. Curiously enough, I took at first the same view, and thought too that Adam of Bremen might have misunderstood such a word, just as Soderberg thinks; but I allowed myself to be convinced by the linguistic objection that the word "vin" (pasture) seems to have gone out of use before the eleventh century (cf. vol. i. p.

367). However, Soderberg's reasons for supposing that the word was still in use appear to have weight; and he also makes it probable that the name formed thereby might be Vinland and not Vinjarland. (In support of this Mr. A. Kiaer gave me as an example the Norwegian name Vins.) Professor Soderberg then thinks that Adam of Bremen heard this name in Denmark, and, misinterpreting it as a foreigner to mean the land of wine, himself invented the explanation of the country's being so called. Soderberg gives several striking examples to show how this kind of "etymologising" was just in Adam's spirit (e.g., Sconia or Skne is derived from Old German "sconi" or "schon"; Greenland comes from the inhabitants being bluish-green in the face, etc.). An example from a country lying near Denmark, which appears to me even more striking than those given by Soderberg, is Adam's explanation of Kvaenland as the Land of Women (cf.

vol. i. pp. 186, f., 383), the Wizzi as white people, or Albanians, the Huns as dogs, etc. Soderberg has difficulty in explaining the statement about the unsown corn in Wineland; but if he had noticed Isidore's description of the Insulae Fortunatae with the self-grown vine and the wild-growing corn, he would have found a perfectly natural explanation of this also. If Adam had misunderstood a "Vinland" (== gra.s.s-land), and then perhaps Finland (Finmark, cf. vol i. p. 382), as meaning the land of wine, it would be just in his spirit to transfer thither Isidore's description of the Insulae Fortunatae; a parallel case is that in interpreting Kvaenland as Womanland he transfers thither the myth of the Amazons and its fables, and this in spite of its being a country on the Baltic about which it must have been comparatively easy for him to obtain information. In the same way he transfers to the "island" of Halagland, mentioned immediately before Wineland, an erroneous account of the midnight sun and the winter night taken from older writers (cf. vol. i. p. 194, note 2). But one reason for thinking that "Vinland" really meant the land of wine as early as that time is the circ.u.mstance put forward above (vol. i. p. 365), that at about the same time there occurs a Grape-island in the Navigatio Brandani.

Professor Soderberg then goes through the Icelandic accounts of Wineland, and points out, in the same way as has been done in this chapter, that the oldest authorities have nothing remarkable to report about the country, and do not mention wine there, and he rightly lays stress on this being particularly significant in the case of Snorre Sturlason,

"knowing as we do how p.r.o.ne Snorre is to digress from his proper subject, when he has anything really interesting to communicate. The reason must be that he did not know anything particularly remarkable about Wineland; and without doubt this is due to his not having known Adam of Bremen. It has, in fact, been shown that Snorre has not a single statement from Adam."

Later, Soderberg thinks, Adam of Bremen's fourth book became known in Iceland, and on the foundation of that the tale of Leif's discovery of the country with the wine and corn arose, and the later sagas developed, especially that of Thorfinn Karlsevne's voyage, which he thinks in the main "rests on a truthful foundation," though he points out that a particular feature like that of the two Scottish runners must be "pure invention, or rather ... borrowed from another saga." If Professor Soderberg had remarked how most of the incidents in this saga are spurious, he would have found even stronger support for his views in this fact.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER X

ESKIMO AND SKRaeLING

[Sidenote: Distribution]

Of all the races of the earth that of the Eskimo is the one that has established itself farthest north. His world is that of sea-ice and cold, for which nature had not intended human beings. In his slow, stubborn fight against the powers of winter he has learnt better than any other how to turn these to account, and in these regions, along the ice-bound sh.o.r.es, he developed his peculiar culture, with its ingenious appliances, long before the beginning of history. As men of the white race pushed northward to the "highest lat.i.tudes" they found traces of this remarkable people, who had already been there in times long past; and it is only in the last few decades that any one has succeeded in penetrating farther north than the Eskimo, partly by learning from him or enlisting his help.

In these regions, which are his own, his culture was superior to that of the white race, and from no other people has the arctic navigator learnt so much.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Distribution of the Eskimo (after W. Thalbitzer, 1904)]

The north coast of America and the islands to the north of it, from Bering Strait to the east coast of Greenland, is the territory of the Eskimo.

The map (below) shows his present distribution and the districts where older traces of him have been found. Within these limits the Eskimo must have developed into what they now are. In their anthropological race-characteristics, in their sealing- and whaling-culture, and in their language they are very different from all other known peoples, both in America and Asia, and we must suppose that for long ages, ever since they began to fit themselves for their life along the frozen sh.o.r.es, they have lived apart, separated from others, perhaps for a long time as a small tribe. They all belong to the same race; the cerebral formation, for instance, of all real Eskimo from Alaska to Greenland is remarkably h.o.m.ogeneous; but in the far west they may have been mixed with Indians and others, and in Greenland they are now mixed with Europeans. They are p.r.o.nouncedly dolichocephalic; but have short, broad faces, and by their features and appearance are easily distinguished from other neighbouring peoples. Small, slanting eyes; the nose small and flat, narrow between the eyes and broad below; cheeks broad, prominent and round; the forehead narrowing comparatively above; the lower part of the face broad and powerful; black, straight hair. The colour of the skin is a pale brown.

The Eskimo are not, as is often supposed, a small people on an average; they are rather of middle height, often powerful, and sometimes quite tall, although they are a good deal shorter, and weaker in appearance, than average Scandinavians. In appearance, and perhaps also in language, they come nearest to some of the North American Indian tribes.

[Sidenote: Original home]

From whence they originally came, and where they developed into Eskimo, is uncertain. The central point of the Eskimo culture is their seal-hunting, especially with the harpoon, sometimes from the kayak in open water and sometimes from the ice. We cannot believe that this sealing, especially with the kayak, was first developed in the central part of the regions they now inhabit; there the conditions of life would have been too severe, and they would not have been able to support themselves until their sealing-culture had attained a certain development. Just as in Europe we met with the "Finnish" sea-fis.h.i.+ng on a coast that was connected with milder coasts farther south, where seamans.h.i.+p was able first to develop, so we must expect that the Eskimo culture began on coasts with similar conditions, and these must be looked for either in Labrador or on Bering Strait.

As the coasts of Labrador and Hudson Bay are ice-bound for a great part of the year, it is not likely that traffic by sea began there at any very early time; and consequently no particularly favourable conditions existed there for an early development of seamans.h.i.+p. Nor is this the case to any great extent on the east coast of North America farther south, which, with the exception of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, has little protection from the sea, and offers few facilities for coastal traffic.[53] Nor has it produced any other maritime people or any similar fis.h.i.+ng-culture. Again, if the Eskimo culture had arisen there, it would be impossible to understand how they learned to use dogs as draught-animals. It is otherwise on the northern west coast of North America, which is indented by fjords and has many outlying islands, with protected channels between them and the land. Here seamans.h.i.+p might be naturally developed and form the necessary basis for a higher sealing-culture like that of the Eskimo.

In addition there is abundance of marine animals which afforded excellent conditions for hunting. Here too we have many different peoples with maritime habits: on the one side the Eskimo northwards along the coast of Alaska; on the other side the Aleutians on the islands extending out to sea, besides Indian tribes along the coast of southern Alaska and British Columbia. Until, therefore, research has produced sufficient evidence for a different view, it must seem most natural that in these favourable regions with a rich supply of marine animals of all kinds we must look for the cradle of the culture that was to render the Eskimo capable of distributing themselves over the whole Arctic world of America. To this must be added that in these regions, by intercourse with people on the Asiatic side of Bering Strait, the seafaring Eskimo may have learnt the use of the dog as a draught-animal, which is an Asiatic, and not an American invention, and which is also of great importance to the whole life and distribution of the Eskimo in the ice-bound regions. We cannot here pursue further the inquiry into the still open question of the origin of the Eskimo and the development of their culture.[54]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Kayak-fishers and a women's boat ("umiak"). Woodcut from Greenland, drawn and engraved by a native]

[Sidenote: Earlier distribution]

One might get the impression from the map, which shows where older traces of the Eskimo have been found, that they were more numerous and more widely distributed in former times. This is probably a mistake. They are hunters and fishermen who are entirely dependent on the supply of game, and who therefore frequently become nomadic and search for fis.h.i.+ng-grounds where they think the prospects are good. Sometimes they settle in a good district for a considerable time, and then they may move again; but sometimes, if exceptionally severe winters chance to come, they may succ.u.mb to famine or scurvy. But everywhere they leave behind them their peculiar sites of houses and tents and other traces, and thus these must always be found over larger areas than are actually inhabited by the Eskimo themselves. It might be objected that on the American Arctic Islands they no longer live so far north as older traces of them are found; thus Sverdrup found many relics of Eskimo in the new countries discovered by him, especially along the sound by Axel Heiberg Land. But these people may, for instance, have migrated eastward to Greenland. If we suppose the reverse to be the case, that the most northerly Eskimo tribe now known, on Smith Sound, had moved westward to Sverdrup's new islands or to the Parry Islands, then we should have found numerous traces of them in the districts about Smith Sound and Cape York, and might thus have concluded that the Eskimo were formerly more widely distributed towards the north-east.

[Sidenote: Period of immigration into Greenland]

How early the Eskimo appeared, and came to the most northern regions, we have as yet no means of determining. All we can say is that, as they are so distinct in physical structure, language and culture from all other known races of men, with the exception of the Aleutians, we must a.s.sume that they have lived for a very long period in the northern regions apart from other peoples. It would be of special interest here if we could form any opinion as to the date of their immigration into Greenland. It has become almost a historical dogma that this immigration on a larger scale did not take place until long after the Norwegian Icelanders had settled in the country, and that it was chiefly the hordes of Eskimo coming from the north that put an end, first to the Western Settlement, and then to the Eastern. But this is in every respect misleading, and conflicts with what may be concluded with certainty from several facts; moreover, the whole Eskimo way of life and dependence on sealing and fis.h.i.+ng forbids their migration in hordes; they must travel in small scattered groups in order to find enough game to support themselves and their families, and are obliged to make frequent halts for sealing. They will therefore never be able to undertake any migration on a large scale.

There can be no doubt that the Eskimo arrived in Greenland ages before the Norwegian Icelanders. The rich finds referred to, amongst others, by Dr.

H. Rink [1857, vol. ii.], of Eskimo whaling and sealing weapons and implements of stone from deep deposits in North Greenland show that the Eskimo were living there far back in prehistoric times.[55] They must originally have come by the route to the north of Baffin Bay across Smith Sound, and must have had at the time of their first immigration much the same culture in the main as now, since otherwise they would not have been able to support themselves in these northern regions.[56] Their means of transport were the kayak and the women's boat in open water, and the dog-sledge on the ice. Their whaling and sealing were conducted in kayaks in summer, but with dog-sledges in winter, when they hunted the seal at its breathing-holes in the ice, the walrus, narwhale and white whale in the open leads, and pursued the bear with their dogs. In winter they usually keep to one place, living in houses of stone, or snow, but in summer they wander about with their boats and tents of hides to the best places for kayak fis.h.i.+ng. In this way they came southward from Smith Sound along the west coast of Greenland to the districts about Umanak-fjord, Dis...o...b..y, and south to the present Holstensborg (the tract between 72 and 68 N. lat.). Here they found an excellent supply of seal, walrus, small-whale and fish, there was catching from kayaks in summer and on the ice in winter; altogether rarely favourable conditions for their accustomed life, and it is therefore natural that they settled here in large numbers.[57] Some went farther south along the coast; but they no longer found there the same conditions of life as before, the ice was for the most part absent, the walrus became rare, seal-hunting became more difficult in the open sea, and winter fis.h.i.+ng from the kayak was not very safe. Southern Greenland therefore had no great attraction, so long as there was room enough farther north. When they came round Cape Farewell to the east coast they found the conditions more what they were used to, although the sealing and whaling were not so good as on the northern west coast.

[Sidenote: Routes of immigration]

It has been a.s.sumed by several inquirers that the Eskimo immigrated to Greenland by two routes. One branch is supposed to have come southward along the west coast from Smith Sound, as suggested above, while the other branch went northward from Smith Sound and Kane Basin along the coast, where relics of Eskimo are found as far north as 82 N. lat.

They thus gradually worked their way round the north of Greenland and turned southward again along the east coast. The Eskimo who formerly lived on the northern east coast, and whom Clavering found there in 1823, are supposed to have come by that route and possibly also the tribe that still lives at Angmagsalik. But in the opinion of some they may have travelled farther south, right round Cape Farewell, and have populated the south-west coast as far north as Ny-Herrnhut by G.o.dthaab. The Dane Schultz-Lorentzen [1904, p. 289][58] thinks that support may be found for this theory of the southern immigration from the east coast in the sharp line of demarcation that exists between the dialect spoken by the Eskimo in G.o.dthaab and northward along the whole west coast, and that spoken to the south and on the east coast; furthermore, there are other points of difference: in the build and fitting together of the kayaks, in the use of part.i.tions between the family compartments on the couches in houses and tents, etc. Although in an earlier work [1891, pp. 8, f.; Engl. ed. pp. 12, ff.] I put forward reasons that are opposed to such an immigration round the north of Greenland, I must admit that there is much in favour of the Eskimo who formerly lived on the northern east coast having come that way; on the other hand, it does not appear to me very likely that this should have been the case with the Eskimo of the southern east coast and of the west coast. The difference alluded to, at G.o.dthaab, may be accounted for by a later immigration from the north to the northern west coast, which did not come any farther south than this. That the boundary-line between the two kinds of Eskimo should be so sharp just between Ny-Herrnhut and G.o.dthaab, which lie close together on the same peninsula, is easily explained by the fact of the former settlement having always belonged to the recently abandoned German Moravian mission, while the latter was the seat of Egede's and the later Danish mission. There is always the essential objection to be made against the Eskimo having migrated to the southern east coast round the north of Greenland, that the conditions of life for Eskimo, who live princ.i.p.ally by sealing and whaling, were poor on the north coast of Greenland, where there are no seals worth mentioning and few bears; and they can scarcely have got enough musk-oxen to support themselves.

Their diffusion to the east coast could not have gone on rapidly. In the ice-bound regions they may have forgotten the use of the kayak, as the Eskimo of Smith Sound had done until thirty years ago, when they became acquainted with it again through a chance immigration from the west. In any case their practice in building and using kayaks must have greatly fallen off. But when the Eskimo came southward on the east coast they again had use for both the kayak for sealing and the women's boat for travelling, and it is scarcely likely that the craft they produced after such a break in the development should be so near to the women's boats and handsome kayaks of the northern west coast as we now find them; unless, indeed, we are to suppose that they improved them again through contact with the Eskimo of the northern west coast, but in that case the whole theory appears somewhat strained.

[Sidenote: Meeting of Eskimo and Europeans]

We will now look at what the known historical authorities have to tell us about the Eskimo in Greenland during the early days of the Norse settlement. I have already stated (pp. 12, ff.) that the Norse name "Skraeling" for Eskimo must originally have been used as a designation of fairies or mythical creatures. Furthermore, there is much that would imply that when the Icelanders first met with the Eskimo in Greenland they looked upon them as fairies; they therefore called them "trolls," an ancient common name for various sorts of supernatural beings. This view persisted more or less in after times. Every European who has suddenly encountered Eskimo in the ice-covered wastes of Greenland, without ever having seen them before, will easily understand that they must have made such an impression on people who had the slightest tendency to superst.i.tion. The mighty natural surroundings, with huge glaciers, floating icebergs and drifting ice-floes, all on a vaster scale than anything they had seen before, might in themselves furnish additional food for superst.i.tion. Such an idea must from the very beginning have influenced the relations between the Nors.e.m.e.n and the natives, and is capable of explaining much that is curious in the mention of them, or rather the lack of mention of them, in the sagas, since they were supernatural beings of whom it was best to say nothing.

[Sidenote: The fairy nature of the Skraelings]

In connection with what has been said earlier (pp. 12, ff.) as to the Skraelings being regarded as fairies (of whom the name was originally used), it may be adduced that, as Storm pointed out, the word was always translated in Latin by "Pygmaei" in the Middle Ages (cf. above, p. 12). But the Pygmies were precisely "short, undergrown people of supernatural aspect"--that is, like fairies--and the Middle Ages inherited the belief in them from the Greeks and Romans, and, as Moltke Moe has pointed out, the northern Pygmies (???e??? ???a???) were already spoken of in cla.s.sical times as inhabiting the regions about Thule. But authors like Apollodorus and Strabo denied their existence, and consigned them, together with Dog-headed, One-eyed, One-footed, Mouthless, and other similar beings, to the ranks of fabulous creatures in which cla.s.sical tradition was so rich. Through St. Augustine the enumeration of these creatures reached Isidore; and from him the knowledge of the Pygmies was disseminated over the whole of mediaeval Europe--partly in the same sense, that of a more or less fabulous people from the uttermost parts of the earth; and partly in the sense of a fairy people [cf. the demons in the form of Pygmies in the "Imram Brenaind," see above, p. 10]. Supported by popular belief in various countries, the latter meaning soon became general. Of this Moltke Moe gives a remarkable example from the Welshman Walter Mapes (latter half of the twelfth century), who in his curious collection of anecdotes, etc. (called "De nugis curialium"), has a tale of a prehistoric king of the Britons called Herla.[59]

To him came a fairy- or elf-king, "rex pygmaeorum," with a huge head, thick hair and big eyes; the pygmy-king foretells to King Herla something that is to happen, and when this is fulfilled King Herla promises as a mark of grat.i.tude to be present at his wedding. The moment the pygmy-king turns his back he vanishes. Herla comes to the wedding of the fairy-king. Entering a vast cave he comes through darkness to the banqueting-hall inside the mountain, lighted by a mult.i.tude of lamps, where he is splendidly entertained. When he returns, believing he has been away for three days, he discovers that he has been absent for several hundred years.

This is a typical elf-myth, with many of the features characteristic of elves and fairies: the low stature, the big, hairy head with large eyes, the gift of prophecy, and the power of making themselves invisible in an instant, their dwelling in caves and mountains far from the light of day, the way thither through darkness and mist, the rapid disappearance of time in the fairy world, etc. But we recognise most of these, and even more fairy features, precisely in the Icelandic descriptions of the Skraelings in Wineland, Markland and Greenland, as appears from what is said about them on pp. 12, ff.; and when, for instance, ugly hair ("ilt har") and big eyes are expressly attributed to the Skraelings, this applies neither to Indians nor Eskimo, but it applies exactly to fairies. Further, we may point to the Skraelings of Markland being governed by kings (cf. p. 20), which again does not apply either to Indians or to Eskimo, while the elves and huldre-folk have kings. It was mentioned earlier (p. 20) that the name "Vaetilldi" or "Vethilldi" may be Vaetthildr, compounded of the word "vaettr"

or "vettr" (fairy).