THE NORSE IN NORTH AMERICA
The Norse made the first documented European voyages to North America, and there is evidence of these visits in the medieval sagas, a collection of stories that tell the history of the Icelandic people. The Icelandic sagas relate how the Norse captain Leif Eriksson and his brother Thorvald were blown off course during a voyage from Norway to Greenland and landed to the west of Greenland, and also describe Thorfinn Karlsefni’s attempt to colonize a place called Vinland. The sagas are a valuable source of details about these early voyages; however, historians have long expressed skepticism about their accuracy.
Norsemen ventured far from their homeland in Scandinavia to found settlements on the Greenland coast. One of them, the trader Bjarni Herjolfsson, was blown off course and subsequently discovered a wooded coastline, almost certainly that of Newfoundland. Although Herjolfsson did not go ashore, this discovery made him the first European to set eyes on the continent of North America.
Herjolfsson’s account encouraged Leif Eriksson to undertake a southward voyage of exploration, starting around the year 1000. (1) In the course of his travels, Eriksson landed in a place he called Stoneland, which was probably the rocky, barren Labrador coast of North America. (2) Eriksson’s party finally landed in Vinland, where they spent a winter in rough Viking huts in a seemingly frost-free land of abundant vines and wild grapes. (3) They established the first European colony in North America at Vinland, the precise location of which remains a subject of scholarly dispute to this day. (4) The Norsemen returned home in the spring, abandoning the rude settlement that, a few years later, would serve as home base for Thorfinn Karlsefni of Greenland.
Around 1004, the expedition led by Thorfinn Karlsefni set off southward, evidently with a longer stay in mind, as women and cattle accompanied the sailors. Karlsefni and his party passed two years in Vinland, exploring the coast and fighting the local aboriginal tribes, whom they called “skrelings.” Thorfinn Karlsefni was killed in a bloody encounter with a native group, and continued threats from hostile tribes may have thwarted the Norse attempt at colonization. For some reason, they departed their settlement at Vinland, although Greenlanders continued to make occasional visits there in later years, using it as a fishing camp.
Until the twentieth century, the Icelandic sagas were the primary source of information about the Norse exploration of North America. They served as inspiration for Norwegian explorer and writer Helge Ingstad, who in the early 1960s traveled the coasts of eastern North America searching for evidence of Vinland. Encouraged by an alternative interpretation of “vin” as meaning “meadow” rather than vine or wine, he discovered a grassy site on the northern tip of Newfoundland that local people had believed was an aboriginal site haunted by ancient ghosts. There, Ingstad excavated the remains of eight sod huts, together with artifacts of Norse origin such as a bronze pin and sewing tools. He concluded that the grassland called L’Anse aux Meadows was, if not Vinland, then certainly a Norse settlement of some kind.
Huddled for protection from the wind, the cluster of sod-built structures at L’Anse aux Meadows was no temporary camp. Sod walls and sod roofs built over a timber frame indicated dwellings that were substantial enough for permanent occupation. The eight huts included three long, narrow buildings with features similar to those found in Norse structures in Greenland and Iceland. Other smaller buildings, probably used for storage and workshops, included a forge that used iron ore extracted from peat bogs—evidence of the first iron working in North America.
Glossary:
- sod: soil held together by the roots of grass