THE MOST COMPLETE ACCOUNTS of early Norse voyages to America are “The Greenlanders’ Saga” and “Eirik’s Saga.” Both were written long after the events they describe and both are copies or variations of earlier accounts that have been lost.
“The Greenlanders’ Saga” is part of a large vellum codex known as the Flateyjarbók, which was commissioned sometime between 1382 and 1395 by a wealthy Icelandic farmer named Jon Hakonarson who lived—as the title indicates—on a flat island. The book was carefully preserved by his descendants until one of them gave it to an Icelandic bishop, who gave it to the king of Denmark. It is now in the Royal Library.
There are two versions of Eirik’s saga. One occurs in Hauksbók, which dates from about 1334 and was written by a certain Hauk Erlendsson “the Lawman” with the help of two secretaries. Erlendsson was descended from one of the first Norsemen to visit America; he was quite proud of this fact, and scholars believe he revised history somewhat in order to make his family seem still more illustrious. The other version appears in Skálholtsbók, probably written during the second half of the fifteenth century, and because it is later than Erlendsson’s version it was at first assumed to be less accurate. But apparently the opposite is true; the Skálholtsbók copyist, no doubt descended from a long line of impoverished and lusterless clerks, did not care about history. He only wanted to produce a satisfactory duplicate so that he could get paid. At any rate, if you read medieval Norse and wish to compare them, both are in Copenhagen’s Arnamagnaean Library.
“The Greenlanders’ Saga” and “Eirik’s Saga” recount many of the same events, though not all, and occasionally they contradict each other, which makes historical detective work just that much more difficult. Considering this, as well as the sparse evidence from other sources, and the obscurities, and the centuries that have elapsed since Leif and his half sister Freydis and Thorfinn and the others went adventuring, and the fact that both sagas are either variants or perhaps inaccurate copies of lost manuscripts—considering these handicaps, only an arrogant and simpleminded historian would claim to have deduced the truth absolutely.
Even so, the sagas are not fiction.
It is well known that scholars fight like spiders in a bottle over the interpretation of artifacts and crumbling parchment, and medieval Norse explorations have particularly excited their testiness, making it almost impossible for an ignorant reader to know which gray eminence to believe. All the same, this seems to be more or less what happened:
In A.D. 985 or 986 a young Icelandic trader named Bjarni Herjolfsson returned from Norway to spend the winter with his father, as he customarily did every second year. But when he got to the farm it was deserted, and neighbors told him that his father had accompanied Eirik Raude, Eirik the Red, to Greenland. Bjarni, according to one translation, was “taken heavily aback” by this news, and instead of unloading his cargo he decided to sail on to Greenland. Having never been there, he asked where it was to be found and what it looked like; and after being told that it lay somewhere to the west Bjarni asked his crewmen if they were prepared to go there with him, because Greenland was where he meant to spend this winter.
They said they would go with him.
He told them that the trip might be considered foolhardy, since none of them had been to the Greenland Sea. But they told him they would go, if that was what he had in mind.
After taking aboard supplies they left Iceland, not in one of those classic dragonships with brightly painted shields overlapping the rail but in a broad-beamed wallowing merchant ship called a knarr. They sailed west “until the land sank into the sea.” Then, we are told, “the fair wind dropped, and there was a north wind and fog, and they did not know where they were going. Day after day passed like this. Then the sun came out again, and they were able to get their bearings from the sky.”
Presently they saw land. They asked each other if this could be Greenland. Bjarni did not think it was, but they sailed closer. The country was low, with many trees and small hills.
They turned away and sailed north.
Two days later they sighted another coast. The crew asked if this might be Greenland. Bjarni did not think it was, for there were said to be huge glaciers in that country while this was flat and heavily forested. The crew wanted to put ashore because they needed water, but he refused.
They continued sailing north.
After several more days they sighted land for a third time. They saw mountains and glaciers, but again Bjarni refused to stop, saying the country had an inhospitable look. So, once more: “they turned their prow from the land and held out to sea with the same following wind.”
The wind freshened. They sailed four days and nights until they saw yet another coast.
“From what I have been told,” said Bjarni, “this most resembles Greenland. Here we will go ashore.”
They put in that evening at a cape and found a boat nearby. Bjarni’s father, Herjolf Bardsson, was living on this cape, which has been known ever since as Herjolfsnes.
“The next thing that happened,” says the narrator of “The Greenlanders’ Saga,” “was that Bjarni Herjolfsson came from Green land to see Earl Eirik”—which refers not to Eirik the Red but to Earl Eirik Hakonarsson who ruled Norway from A.D. 1000 to 1014. During this visit Bjarni described the lands he had seen when he was blown off course fifteen years earlier and people at the court rebuked him for his lack of curiosity, telling him that he should have gone ashore.
The following summer he was back in Greenland. His embarrassment at court must have been the subject of considerable gossip; but more important, the sagas tell us that “there was now great talk of discovering new countries.” Eirik the Red’s son, Leif, then bought Bjarni’s ship and signed up a crew of thirty-five.
Old Eirik was asked to lead this voyage of exploration, just as he had led the colonists from Iceland to Greenland. He consented reluctantly, observing that he was not able to stand bad weather as he used to. But on the day they were to embark, while they were riding horseback to the ship, he was thrown and injured his foot.
“It is not fated that I shall discover more lands than Greenland, on which I live,” he said. “We can go no further together.”
Eirik Raude then returned to his farm, called Brattahlid, or Steep Slope, while Leif and the crew went aboard. Among the crew was a southerner, probably a German, named Tyrkir, who is identified in some accounts as Leif’s godfather.
They followed Bjarni’s route backward, coming first to the inhospitable country. “They made for land, lowered the boat and rowed ashore; but they saw no grass there. The uplands were covered with glaciers, and from the glaciers to the shore it was like one great slab of rock.” Leif called this barren plateau Helluland. The leading candidates for Helluland seem to be Baffin Island and Newfoundland.
Next they came to the forest land, which they named Markland. It sounds agreeable, “with white sandy beaches shelving gently toward the sea,” yet according to the sagas Leif and his men stayed only a short time before hurrying back to their ship as fast as they could. The sagas do not explain why they were anxious to leave. Nor do we know exactly where they were, though it must have been either Labrador or Nova Scotia.
Two days later they reached an island and went ashore. The weather was fine. They saw dew on the grass, which they tasted, “and they thought that never had they tasted anything as sweet.” After this they returned to the ship and entered the sound which lay between the island and a cape projecting northward from the mainland.
They sailed westward