The Norse Atlantic Saga: Being the Norse Voyages of Discovery and Settlement to Iceland, Greenland, and North America

380 Pages·1986·29.29 MB·English

by  Gwyn Jones

THE NORSE
ATLANTIC SAGA
Being the Norse Voyages of Discovery and
Settlement to Iceland, Greenland,
and North America
GWYN JONES
A New and Enlarged Edition, with contributions by
Robert McGhee, Thomas H. McGovern and
colleagues, and Birgitta Linderoth Wallace
Oxford New York
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Oxford University Press 1964, 1986
First published in 1964
Second edition published simultaneously in hardback
and as an Oxford University Press paperback 1986
Reprinted 1986
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Jones, Gwyn, 1907-
The Norse Atlantic saga: being the Norse voyages
of discovery and settlement to Iceland,
Greenland, and North America.—New and enl.ed.
1. Norse literature
I. Title II. McGhee, Robert
839'6'08 PT72210.E5
ISBN 0-19-215886-4
ISBN 0-19-285160-8 Pbk
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Jones, Gwyn, 1907-
The Norse Atlantic saga.
Bibliography: p. Includes index.
1. Iceland—Discovery and exploration.
2. Greenland—Discovery and exploration. 3. America—
Discovery and exploration—Norse. I. Title.
G302.J6 1986 909'.09821 85-21781
ISBN 0-19-215886-4
ISBN 0-19-285160-8 (pbk.)
Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd.
Bungay, Suffolk
Preface
The Norse Atlantic Saga, a narrative and descriptive account of
the Norse, or Viking, voyages of discovery and colonization
westward across the North Altantic Ocean, to Iceland, Green­
land, and the eastern seaboard of North America, was first pub­
lished by the Oxford University Press in 1964. This new edition
has been substantially enlarged and reshaped, and in the event
reset, to take account of the many gains in knowledge and inter­
pretation made during the intervening twenty-two years.
Scholars have continued to study the documentary and carto­
graphical evidence, with consequences as gratifying as the new
editions of sagas, annals, and supportive texts listed in the Sup­
plementary Note to Appendix VIII and, at the other extreme,
as creditable as the final discrediting of the Vinland Map.
Advances in underwater archaeology, together with the techni­
cal skills of Scandinavian boatbuilders and sailors, have
extended our knowledge of the Norsemen’s ships and seafaring
arts and demonstrated in decisive fashion the practicability of
their Atlantic crossings. Our picture of the life and death of the
Norse colonies in Greenland is at once more detailed and more
coherent than it was, and our knowledge of the culture and
habitat of the Ancestral or Archaic Indians and the Palaeo-
Eskimos of North America, though still far from complete, has
become decidedly more secure. And, finally, we know beyond
all doubt that the Norsemen did reach North America and
establish a short-lived but identifiable base at L’Anse aux
Meadows in northern Newfoundland.
These considerations, along with others as diverse as new
light on the modes and sites of paganism in Iceland and the not
always beneficial relationship in later centuries between farm­
ing practice and Church ownership of land in Iceland and
Greenland, are responsible for the main overall difference
between this Norse Atlantic Saga and its predecessor. The docu­
mentary evidence remains, as it ever must, both indispensable
and precious, for not only was it this which set the subject in
train and established its historical and geographical context, but
for as long as man retains his deep-rooted interest in his past it
vi Preface
will continue to illuminate the findings of science and techno­
logy with that extra dimension of human interest which named
persons and recorded actions, whether factual, prototypal, or
even in part fictive, seem, however unfairly, to enjoy in fuller
measure than the chronicles of anonymity. This in no way
diminishes the importance and interest of the scientific evi­
dence, embracing as it does the findings of archaeology, anthro­
pology, and the entire palaeo-ecological complex, which by
virtue of the ever-increasing accuracy and refinement of their
techniques are now seen to be our main, and perhaps our only,
source of new enlightenment. My acquaintance with northern
archaeologists and their fellows, which I have always held to be
one of the crowning blessings of my working life, began with
Kristján Eldjárn and Sigurður Thórarinsson in Iceland in the
late 1940S, continued with Jørgen Meldgaard, C. L. Vebaek,
Knud Krogh, Bent Fredskild, and H. M. Jansen in Greenland,
Olaf Olsen in Denmark (who with Ole Crumlin-Petersen raised
the Skuldelev ships from the waters of Roskilde Fjord in the
early 1960s, and is now Denmark’s State Antiquary and Direc­
tor of her National Museum), the Norwegians Helge and Anne
Stine Ingstad, and more recently Robert McGhee of the
Archaeological Survey of Canada (National Museum of Man,
Ottawa), the anthropologist Thomas H. McGovern of Hunter
College, New York, and Birgitta Wallace of Parks Canada
(Archaeology, Historic Properties) and presently Director of
the L’Anse aux Meadows Project. Evidence of the learning
and generosity of all these (as of many others) will be found
plentifully ip the pages that follow, and the last-named three,
with their contributions on pp. 281-3, 268-76, and 285-304,
have conferred authority and the voice of first-hand experi­
ence where a non-archaeologist, however well-provided for in
other areas, could at best contribute piracy and plagiarism.
True, these have never been offences for which authors have
swung at the yard-arm, but the entry and subsequent progres­
sion of European man first into the Island Countries of the
Western Atlantic, and then into the New World, is of such
importance and interest to the peoples of bðth continents that
I count myself most fortunate in being allowed to convey to
my readers the authoritative summaries of fact and inter­
pretation presented in Appendixes IV, V, and VII by three
Preface vi i
of the foremost contributors to our present state of know­
ledge.
Among further changes are the four-parted Introduction,
designed to make the volume more self-contained because
more self-explanatory; the updating and expansion of the three
chapters of Part One, The Story; such checking of the trans­
lations (pp. 141-248) as my re-readings of the texts have sug­
gested; while only half of the original six Appendixes have
survived among the present eight. There are four new plates
(nos. 26-9); the number of text-figures has increased from four­
teen to thirty, and of maps from five to eight.
Which brings me to my debts and obligations. Various of
these are expressed in context; others were listed in my original
Preface. Here I can only repeat from my History of the Vikings
my consciousness of my many Viking-style raids on other men’s
riches, and trust that every bibliographical reference will be
held indicative of gratitude and esteem. To the roll-call of
archaeologists and their colleagues already mentioned I offer
the same warm thanks as ever. Alas, that in a few cases my
words will not be heard. If I single out the three friends who are
also my contributors, that is their due and my happiness. Peter
Schledermann, Pat Sutherland, Magnús Einarsson, and Wil­
liam E. Taylor, Jr., of Canada; Eleanor Guralnick and Robert
T. Farrell of the United States; Hilmar Foss and Ólafur Hall-
dórsson of Iceland; and my colleagues and neighbours Harold
Carter and Ifor Enoch here in Wales, have all shown me much
kindness. Gott ey qldum mqnnum, gott ey œrum mqnnum! But
my warmest thanks I owe to Mair, my wife, who—to echo King
Alfred’s heartfelt sentence of long ago—amidst the other vari­
ous and manifold cares of the kingdom, helped me provide a
reputable typescript for the press, and thereafter read proof and
shared with me the making of the Index.
Among institutions I owe thanks to the British Council, the
Archaeological Institute of America and its Chicago Society,
the Canadian Archaeological Association, the Smithsonian
Institution, the Universities of Cornell, Iowa, Wisconsin, and
McMaster, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the
Museum of Science and Industry of Chicago, for travel, hospi­
tality, the opportunity to air my own views and listen to those of
others, and a deal of scholarly contact otherwise beyond my
vi i i Preface
reach. My debts to the National Museum of Denmark and to
the sister colleges of the University of Wales at Aberystwyth
and Cardiff have grown with the years. Among newer friends
and for access to recent scholarship it is a pleasure to mention
Parks Canada and its helpful researchers.
I am grateful to Peter Fisher (translator) and Hilda Davidson
(commentator) for the use of generous extracts of copyright
material from their translation of and commentary upon Saxo
Grammaticus’s History of the Danes, 2 vols. (D. S. Brewer:
Rowman and Littlefield, 1979 and 1980). The Board of Regents
of the University of Wisconsin System, the Editor of Arctic
Anthropology, and the international team drawn from Green­
land, Iceland, Great Britain, and the United States (their
names will be found on p. 268) have by an international act of
benevolence made me free of the material reproduced in
Appendix IV. My obligations in respect of artists and illus­
trations are in general expressed where the plates, text figures,
and maps are listed. Robert McGhee’s ‘Remarks’ at the conclu­
sion of Appendix V are reproduced by permission of the
Society for American Archaeology from American Antiquity,
49. i (1984).
Gwyn Jones
1986
Contents
Introduction HOME TRUTHS AND FAR HORIZONS
I. Causes and Effects i
II. Ships and Seafaring 5
III. History and Historiography 14
IV. The Northern World-Picture 16
Part One THE STORY
1. Iceland 29
I. Before the Norsemen 29
II. The Norse Discovery and First Settlement 37
III. The Stripling Republic 43
IV. Life and Literature 57
V. The Republic Ends 66
2. Greenland 73
I. Discovery and Settlement 73
II. Decline and Fall 87
3. Vinland the Good 115
Venture and Withdrawal 115
Part Two THE SOURCES
4. The Book of the Icelanders 143
5. The Book of the Settlements 156
6. The Greenlanders’Saga 186
7. Eirik the Red’s Saga 207
8. Karlsefni’s Voyage to Vinland (Part of the Hauksbók
version) 233
9. The Story of Einar Sokkason 236
X Contents
APPENDIXES
I. (a) Ohthere’s Northern Voyage 251
(b) Saxo Grammaticus’s Description of Iceland
and Norway 254
II. The Only King who Rests in Iceland 258
III. Ungortok the Chief of Kakortok 262
IV. A Winter Too Many: Nipaitsoq V54 (by Thomas
H. McGovern and colleagues) 268
V. The Norse Greenlanders and Arctic Canada
(with Remarks by Robert McGhee) 276
VI. Of Spies and Unipeds 283
VII. The L’Anse aux Meadows Site (by Birgitta
Linderoth Wallace) 285
VIII. Texts and Editions 304
Index 321