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1 The initial settlement in AD 985/6
In AD 985 the Norse language was spoken by the whole or parts of the population in what is today Norway, Iceland, Greenland, Faroes, Shetland, Orkney and the Hebrides. This created a cultural community where the main tie was the common language. If a clan or an individual in Norway or Iceland had to emigrate for some reason, it was natural for them to choose a country where their own language was spoken and where they also might have relatives. Practically all sources which are relevant to the initial Norse settlement of Greenland were written by Icelanders. They had personal ties to Greenlanders and understood the social mechanisms there. It is natural to start this chapter with a discussion of how reliable Icelandic sagas are as sources of the early history of Greenland.
1 The Icelandic sagas as historical sources
Islendingabok and Landnámabok
The oldest written descriptions of the initial colonisation of Greenland were authored by the Icelandic priest Ari Thorgilsson Frodi (1068–1148) in two books, Islendingabok and Landnámabok.
Ari built on oral sources, and he tells us from whom his oral information about Greenland has been received: “this was told to Thorkell Gellison when he was in Greenland by a person who followed Eirik Raudi from Iceland”.1 Thorkell was Ari’s uncle. After his return to Iceland, Thorkell told Ari about Greenland.2 The oral information had been transmitted from a person who had been part of Eirik Raudi’s initial settlement group, to Thorkell Gellison and then to Ari who put it in writing. Ari’s Islendingabok has been preserved; it is short but reliable.
Ari also wrote the first version of Landnámabok and even included sections on Greenland. Landnámabok was further developed and expanded in new versions in the 12th and 13th centuries. It was transcribed several times, and it is not known how much of it was composed in Ari’s time. The oldest extant manuscripts, Sturlubok and Hauksbok, were written in the decades around 1300. Factual information connected to names and places in these manuscripts probably belonged to the oldest version and should be considered as reliable. Other information may have been fiction and must be evaluated individually. The Vinland sagas expanded the information in Landnámabok on Greenland, adding information from others.
As long as the oral tradition on the initial settlement remained in Greenland, it should be seen as reliable, since there would be many persons who could confirm or correct what was being said. The person who told the story had also participated in the first emigration fleet. When Thorkell transferred this information to Iceland, it started a new life there as a written tradition. What Ari wrote about the initial settlement should be seen as the general opinion in Greenland when Thorkell stayed there. When was that?
Thorkell was born in Iceland ca. 1030. If he had talked to a person who arrived in Greenland in AD 985, Thorkell must have visited Greenland early in his life, ca. 1050. He returned to Iceland and lived there as an elderly man until ca. 1090. Ari would then be ca. 20 years old when he listened to his uncle’s tales.3 This is the hypothesis I find to be the most verifiable as it includes all extant information in a coherent narrative. Ari’s extant Islendingabok is not dated but is assumed to have been written ca. 1130.
The main point is that Ari’s narrative is based on an oral transfer of information from Eirik Raudi’s time where all transmitters are known and where the resulting narrative was controlled by the general oral opinion in Greenland less than a century after the events.
Who wrote the Vinland sagas and for what purpose?
The initial settlement in Greenland is given its most extensive description in the two so called “Vinland sagas”. Modern philologists have dubbed them “Eirik Raudi’s saga” (Eiriks saga Rauda) and “The Greenlanders’ saga” (Groenlendinga saga). Many have pointed out that these names are misleading since both take place in Greenland as well as Vinland, and Eirik Raudi is an important character in both.
Philologists agree that both sagas were composed ca. 1220–1250, but the year is not important in our context. It has been discussed whether the author of Eirik Raudi’s saga knew and possibly owned The Greenlanders’ saga or the other way round. The arguments both ways are weak.4 Narratives about the past were widely disseminated orally in the Middle Ages; only the tip of the iceberg was written down in extant manuscripts. The simplest way of explaining similarities and differences between the two Vinland sagas is that the authors built on separate oral traditions. This was supplemented with written sources which were available to them. The philologist Sigurdur Nordal claimed that “These two sagas . . . are so independent of each other that the most natural explanation seems to be that they were written at about the same time but in different parts of the country”. He arrives at this conclusion by comparing details in the two saga accounts. The historian of literature Jonas Kristjansson seems to accept Nordal’s view.5 Handwritten manuscripts could remain in a family’s or lineage’s possession for decades without outsiders reading them.
One cannot be sure whether the authors had visited Greenland. Fostbroedra saga is another of the Islendigasögur, and part of the action takes place in Greenland ca. AD 1020. The author here assumes that it took a couple of hours to row from a chieftain’s farm called Langanes in Einarsfjord to another chieftain’s farm Brattahlid in Eiriksfjord in the middle of the night. An unusually large rowing-boat was used with room for the owner Thordis, her son and 15 servants, and the saga author relates that they rowed in the same boat all the way. The editor of the saga in Islenzk Fornrit points out that this demonstrates ignorance of the geography in this central part of Norse Greenland, since this would only have been possible if there had been a canal through the isthmus between the two fjords near Gardar, and such a canal did not exist. The story had been transmitted in oral tradition for 200 years, and the Icelander who wrote it down ca. 1220–1250 did not have a clear picture of the landscape.6
Why were the Vinland sagas written? “The Greenlanders’ saga” says that travelling to Vinland gave both riches and honour (at su ferd thykkir bædi god til fjar ok virdingar),7 and the Norwegian King’s Mirror says that people voyaged from Norway to Greenland for three reasons: honour, gain and curiosity.8 The main motive for writing the Vinland sagas must have been to give honour to those who had participated.
Eiriks saga Rauda claims that Vinland was discovered by chance by Leiv Eiriksson on a return voyage to Greenland from a visit to Norway. He lost his way and found a land where there grew wild wheat and grapes, but finally found his way to his father Eirik Raudi on Brattahlid. Eirik Raudi and another of his sons, Thorstein Eiriksson, next attempted to explore the new land, but contrary winds prevented them from reaching it.9 The third expedition was organised by the Icelander Thorfinn Karlsefni who visited Eirik on Brattahlid, and there married Gudrid, the widow of Eirik’s son. It was a large-scale expedition of 3 ships, 160 people and many domestic animals. The attempt...
