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What the Sagas have to say about Leif Eriksson
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Sagas cannot be said to be historically accurate documents. Rather, they are records
based on oral storytelling whose intent is to entertain, celebrate famous exploits
and help people remember their heritage and traditions.The Icelandic Sagas were commited
to writing in the 13th century, and include the Graenlendinga Saga and Erik's
Saga. Together they recount the life and exploits of Leif Eriksson's father,
a petty chieftain, and all his offspring.
Most of what we know about Leif Eriksson is based on these "Vinland Sagas."
How much in them is fact and how much is fiction, we may never know. But they do
include some tantalizing clues which archeologists have followed and confirmed, giving
us a fuller picture of the life and times of the Viking Age.
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The south of Greenland, photographed by the crew of Snorri last August
Photo Credit: Andy Marshall
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Let the saga begin
Around 970 A.D., at the height of the Viking Age (800 - 1050), there lived in Iceland
a lad named Leif. It was a harsh age ruled by law, but in which men often lived by
the sword. Sometimes they took the law into their own hands...and lost.
In 982, Leif's father, Erik the Red, was exiled from Iceland for murders he committed
while defending his property. Erik and a loyal band of followers sailed west over
the North Atlantic to explore a land sighted by an earlier voyager. With him, he
took his livestock, possessions and his wife, Thjodhild, young Leif; their other
son, Thorvald and daughter, Freydis. After a difficult crossing, they came to the
new island's rocky shores.
Did the right name make the difference?
They built a base of operations, explored, and chose sites for future settlement,
subsisting on caribou, fish, and milk from the cows they brought with them. Though
there is archeological evidence that the area was populated by a native culture during
an earlier period, there is no evidence to confirm whether Erik and his party encountered
any inhabitants of the island. They had probably migrated further north to more fertile
hunting grounds.
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Rainbow over the
coast of Greenland
Photo Credit: Andy Marshall
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Three years later, when his term of exile was complete, Erik returned to Iceland
to recruit settlers to colonize the island he had alluringly named Greenland. Even
if it was purely a public relations ploy, it worked. On the journey back to Greenland,
Erik was accompanied by 25 ships - though only 14 of them made the journey successfully.
In them were several hundred settlers - including farmers and skilled workers of
all kinds - and all the basic tools, supplies, and livestock required to create a
thriving colony.
Though Erik remained a practicing pagan, his wife Thjodhild, was the patron of the
first Christian church in Greenland, built near their farm near Brattahlid. The settlements
they established in Greenland apparently survived for nearly five hundred years.
Would Leif be Lucky?
In time, the colony flourished, trading furs, hides, rope, cable oil, woolens and
sea ivory (from the tusks of walrus) with Norway and Iceland. In return, they imported
corn, iron, timber, garments and other luxuries.
The sagas recount that on one such journey, a seafarer named Bjarni Herjolfsson,
who was seeking to join his father in Greenland, found his ship blown off course.
He sighted a wooded country with low hills but did not land there. When he reached
Greenland he shared news of the sighting. And again when he traveled to Norway.
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A timeless Greenland fjord as seen last August
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Leif Eriksson, now grown, and himself a sailor and leader of men, heard Bjarni's
tale, bought his ship and engaged a crew to explore the land that Bjarni had sighted.
The year? Around 1000 A.D., the turn of the last millenium.
Land, ho!
As Leif and his men headed west, they found three land masses, or islands. One which
was covered with stones, Leif named Helluland, probably Baffin Island. One, covered
with forest, he named Markland, probably northern Labrador. And the third, further
to the south, he called Vinland, because it is said that they discovered wild grapes
there.
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L'Anse aux Meadows, much as Leif and his men might have found it
Photo credit: Environment Canada Parks Service,
Canada
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According to the saga, they came into a sound between an island and a headland
jutting out to the north. Just beyond, lay a river where the salmon were plentiful,
and near the river, a lake. There, they found good grazing land and settled in for
the winter. The sagas note that in Vinland, even in mid-winter on the shortest day
of the year, the sun was visible six-plus hours a day - considerably longer than
in Greenland and Iceland.
Leif and his men established a base at the headland of this site and explored farther
afield for potential settlement areas. According to the sagas, when they returned
to Greenland the following spring, they brought with them a ship loaded with timber,
and towed a boat filled with wild grapes.
Leif's return
On his return, Leif was no longer simply Erik's eldest son and primary inheritor
of his family's farm and estate, he was now called Leif the Lucky, for he had discovered
a new land and new resources. The sagas tell us that he returned to Greenland the
next spring with a boatload of timber, towing another boat filled with grapes from
"Vinland," and that he remained there.
Leif's explorations led to three more voyages to Vinland over the next several years
- all by members of his family or kinsmen. One led by his brother, Thorvald; another
by Thorfinn Karlsefni, who had married his widowed sister-in-law, and yet another
led by his sister, Freydis. The first European child born in the New World was born
to Gudrid, the wife of Thorfinn Karlsefni. His name was Snorri. (The name W. Hodding
Carter gave the Viking knarr in which he and his crew will soon set sail.)
Unfortunately, the land they sought to settle was already inhabited by Native Americans,
who the Norse called skraelings, or savages. Though they seem to have initially
formed a friendly basis for trading, skirmishes began to escalate, and the surviving
Europeans eventually retreated back home to Greenland. Vinland was left behind, but
not forgotten.
How much of this saga is true...
Among the most provocative questions in the sagas is the precise location of Vinland.
A latitude of between 60° and 70° N can be deduced from the sagas mention
of the long period of daylight on mid-winter's day.
In 1914, Newfoundland businessman William Munn suggested that L'Anse aux Meadows,
a small fishing village on the shore of the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland,
was the site where Leif Eriksson and his men first stepped ashore the New World.
In the following decades, others undertook excavations several miles from there,
with no result.
In fact, the more popular the prospect of Vikings having settled the New World became,
the more far-fetched were the claims. A majority of them were discovered to be fabrications
or were eventually disproved. Still, the possiblity was too tantalizing to leave
unexplored. After all, had not Heinrich Schliemann's excavation of Troy in 1870 followed
literary clues?
...and where is Vinland?
When Norwegian writer and adventurer Helge Ingstad announced in 1960 that he had
discovered remains of an ancient European site near L'Anse aux Meadows, he was met
with a combination of excitement and skepticism. Over the next seven years,
archeological excavations were undertaken at the site under the supervision of Ingstad's
wife, archeologist Anne Stine. Coupled with further excavations by Parks Canada archeologists
from 1973 - 76, the remains of eight turf-walled structures much like those built
by the Norse in Greenland and Iceland, and 130 artifacts were discovered. But alas,
no signs of wild grapes (though there may have been berries).
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Excavations at L'Anse aux Meadows
Photo credit: Environment Canada Parks Service,
Canada
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The largest building was nearly 75 feet long. Three others were large, multi-roomed
dwellings with stone hearths. The rest are smaller outbuildings, one of which may
have been used as a smithy or forge that was likely used to make tools and nails
for shipbuilding and repair.
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A boat repair patch found during the L'Anse aux Meadows excavations
Photo credit: Environment Canada Parks Service,
Canada
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This spindle whorl and bone
needles were also found
Photo credit: Environment Canada Parks Service,
Canada
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Also among the artifacts were a hand-carved stone oil lamp, a spindle whorl, a
pin for fastening a cloak, and numerous nails and other signs that indicate the site
was probably a base camp for further exploration to the south. This may - or may
not - have been Leif's camp, but scholars presently consider it the most likely candidate.
In 1977, L'Anse aux Meadows was designated a National Historic Site by the Canadian
government, and on September 8, 1978 was recognized as one of the world's major archeological
properties and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In L'Anse aux Meadows you can see...
Those who wish to study and explore the historic reconstruction based on the excavations
at L'Anse
aux Meadows National Historic Site may visit the Visitor's Center, which is open
from mid-June though late-September.
If all goes as planned, the site will also house Viking Voyage 1000's Snorri, donated
by The New Vinland Foundation. And dedicated by the foundation's founder - W. Hodding
Carter - the expedition leader who with a crew of nine sailed her "home."
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