The Vikings in America

The Vikings in America by Roger Pocock

Roger Pocock's The Vikings in America traces the Norse discovery and colonization of the American continent, beginning with the political upheavals in Norway that set the saga in motion. When Harold of the Fair Hair consolidated his rule over all Norway, those who opposed his kingship departed for Iceland rather than submit to his authority. There they found Irish monks already settled, men who had come seeking spiritual exile. From Iceland the Norsemen heard rumors of a great Irish settlement farther south along the American coast, the first whisper of a continent beyond the western sea. The Icelanders lived by fishing, cattle-keeping, and raiding, until a sea captain named Gunbjorn sighted an unknown land two hundred and fifty miles to the west, a discovery that made the Icelanders restless. The most restless among them was Red Eric, a man of violent temperament who had committed enough murders to be deported as a public nuisance. Exiled and exultant, he set out to find Gunbjorn's land. He discovered a place of green lowlands backed by glacial mountains and, after wintering there twice, returned to Iceland to recruit settlers, naming the place Greenland because a fair name would draw people. Twenty-five ships set out; the sea took most of them, but the survivors established colonies. Shortly after the colonists departed, a young captain named Bjarni arrived in Iceland seeking his father, only to learn the old man had sailed for Greenland. Bjarni pursued him without knowing the route and, blown off course, sighted a low, well-timbered coast that was clearly not Greenland. Recognising his error, he declined to land and eventually found his way to his father's house. The Greenland colonists were furious that he had not gone ashore, for they badly needed timber and had found little driftwood. His sighting gave them cause for an expedition, and Leif, son of Red Eric, bought Bjarni's ship, assembled thirty-five men, and sailed west. His father rode down to the shore to join him but was thrown by his pony, an omen so bad that Eric turned back. Leif Ericsen sailed without him. The voyage discovered Stoneland along the Labrador and Newfoundland coast, Woodland corresponding to Nova Scotia, the long beaches of Massachusetts, and finally Narragansett Bay, where the crew built winter quarters, grazed cattle, found wild grapes, and where Leif's old German foster-slave Tyrkir made wine and became magnificently drunk. Leif returned to Greenland carrying timber and raisins. While Leif was away visiting Norway, where King Olaf converted him to Christianity, his brother Thorwald made a second voyage to Wineland the Good. After wintering at Leif's old house he sailed south, encountered a party of nine sleeping natives near the site of New York, killed eight for sport, and allowed the ninth to escape and raise the tribes against them. In the battle that followed Thorwald was shot in the eye and died, and a later brother came to retrieve his body, which some believed was the same armored skeleton found centuries afterward at Cross Point. A few years after Thorwald's death, Thorwald's widow married a wealthy Norwegian named Thorfin Karlsefne, who organised the most ambitious expedition yet. He took his wife and four other women, a Scottish boy and girl described as very savage, an Irishman, sixty crewmen, and cattle. They built a fort, traded red cloth with the natives for skins, fought several battles, and were once entertained by the spectacle of their red bull driving the natives away in shrieking terror. It was during this stay that Mrs. Karlsefne gave birth to Snorri the Firstborn, whose sons later became the first two bishops of Greenland. After Karlsefne returned, one of Eric's daughters led another voyage, and eventually Leif came home from Norway bringing a priest. His wife built a church at Brattelid to old Eric's thorough disgust, and both Greenland and Vinland became Christian, though Eric himself never converted. As long as Norway maintained the trade, Vinland exported timber and dried fruit while Greenland sent hides, sealskins, walrus-rope, and ivory to Iceland and Europe in exchange for iron and new settlers. Then catastrophe arrived in the form of the Black Death. In 1349 the last timber ship from Nova Scotia had barely returned to Europe when plague struck Norway, severing the colonial connection. A gap of fifty-two years follows in the record. When news of Greenland resumes it tells of western villages destroyed by Eskimos, plague killing two-thirds of Iceland's people, a terrible winter destroying most of their cattle, and English fishermen ravaging what remained. Still some contact persisted; a vicar of Garde managed to marry a local girl to a young Icelander seven years after these disasters. In plague-stricken England, Bristol lacked even enough living people to bury its dead, and labor was so scarce that unharvested crops rotted in the fields. An English squadron consequently raided Iceland, Greenland, and possibly Vinland for slaves, carrying the colonists into captivity. England eventually paid compensation to Denmark and returned the people to their homes, but in 1448 the pope wrote to a Norse bishop about their pitiful condition. That same year, in Bergen, the German merchants of the Hanseatic League invited the forty master mariners of the American trade to dinner and murdered them, ending the quarrel over a trade boycott and, with it, all knowledge of the western route. From that time, no one knew the way to lost America.

By Roger Pocock · First published 1906 · Genre: Historical Fiction, History, Adventure · 1,720 words

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A. D. 984

A reverent study of heroes in novels, also in operas and melodramas, where one may see them for half-a-crown, has convinced me that they must be very trying to live with. They get on people's nerves. Hence the villains.

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Vikings · Norse exploration · America · Pre-Columbian history · North America · Medieval history · Scandinavian history · Exploration · Historical non-fiction · Leif Erikson · Vinland · Norse seafaring

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