travel thread
The Westward Voyages
The first leg: Ingólf casts his high-seat pillars into the sea off the new land and settles where they drift ashore. The westward push begins with Iceland and a devout trust in the drift of sacred wood.
Ingolf and the high-seat pillars
The first settler, by tradition, is Ingólfr Arnarson. Driven from Norway by a deadly feud, Ingólfr and his foster-brother Hjörleifr made an exploratory voyage and then set out to settle the new land for good — in the summer, the book notes, when Harald Fairhair had been twelve years king.[1] As Ingólfr's ship neared the coast, he performed the act that became the founding gesture of Iceland: he cast his high-seat pillars overboard, the carved posts of his chief's seat, and vowed to make his home wherever the gods caused them to drift ashore.[2]
It is a small ritual with a vast meaning. Ingólfr would not simply choose his own ground; he let the gods choose it for him, trusting the drift of sacred wood on the sea to mark where he belonged. The pillars vanished, and it took years of searching before they were found — but found they were, in a smoky bay on the south-west coast. The whole later world of the sagas grows from this one devout, patient act: a man throwing the seat of his authority into the ocean and following it to a new home. In that gesture the heathen piety, the trust in fate, and the claiming of land that run through the entire corpus are all present at the very first moment.
The source text · 2
Chapter. VI. That summer when Ingolf set out with his companions to settle Iceland, Harald Fairhair had had been for twelve years King over Norway. There had elapsed from the creation of the world six thousand and seventy three winters, and from the Incarnation of our Lord eight hundred and seventy four years. They held together until they sighted Iceland, then they separated. When Ingolf sighted Iceland he cast overboard his high seat pillars for an omen, and he made the vow that he would settle there wherever his high seat pillar came ashore.— landnamabok
Ingólfr sets out to settle, twelve years into Harald's reign (Ellwood 1898).
Chapter. VI. That summer when Ingolf set out with his companions to settle Iceland, Harald Fairhair had had been for twelve years King over Norway. There had elapsed from the creation of the world six thousand and seventy three winters, and from the Incarnation of our Lord eight hundred and seventy four years. They held together until they sighted Iceland, then they separated. When Ingolf sighted Iceland he cast overboard his high seat pillars for an omen, and he made the vow that he would settle there wherever his high seat pillar came ashore.— landnamabok
Ingólfr casts his high-seat pillars overboard for an omen (Ellwood 1898).
Further west: Eirík the Red, outlawed from Iceland, sails on and names a green land to draw settlers — the founding of the Greenland colony, the staging-post for the boldest voyage of all.
The outlaw who named a green land
Erik the Red came to Greenland the way many saga-founders come to a new country: as an outlaw with blood on his hands, with nowhere left in the settled world. Driven from Norway, then outlawed from Iceland for killings, he sailed west into the unknown and found a vast ice-rimmed land — and settled it.[1]
And he named it, with a settler's cunning, Greenland — reasoning, the sagas say, that men would be the readier to go there if it had an attractive name. It is one of history's first recorded acts of marketing, and it worked: ships followed him out, and a colony grew on the world's cold edge, with Erik's seat at Brattahlíð. The Norse reach now stretched a full ocean past Iceland.
The source text · 1
There was a man named Thorvald, the son of Asvald, the son of Ulf, the son of Yxna-Thoris. His son was named Eirik. Father and son removed from Jadar (in Norway) to Iceland, because of manslaughters, and occupied land in Hornstrandir, and dwelt at Drangar.— eiriks saga rauda
Erik outlawed, sails west, settles Greenland (Sephton 1880).
Leif the Lucky sights and lands on Vínland — forested, vine-grown, mild: a new continent reached by longship, the farthest west the Norse ever sailed.
Leif the Lucky and the new faith
Erik's son Leif sailed to Norway and joined the body-guard of King Óláfr Tryggvason, who charged him with a mission: carry Christianity back to Greenland. Leif thought it a hard errand but took it on.[1]
On the voyage home he was tossed far off course and came upon lands no one expected — fields of wild wheat, vines in full growth, great timber for building. He gathered tokens of all of it, rescued a shipwrecked crew on the way, and reached Greenland having both found a new world and saved lives: men called him Leif the Lucky. He preached the new faith; Erik took coldly to abandoning the old gods, but his wife Þjóðhildr embraced it at once and built the first church in Greenland — and would no longer share a bed with her heathen husband, much to his temper.[2]
The source text · 2
He joined the body-guard of King Olaf Tryggvason, and the king formed an excellent opinion of him, and it appeared to him that Leif was a well-bred man. Once upon a time the king entered into conversation with Leif, and asked him, "Dost thou purpose sailing to Greenland in summer?"— eiriks saga rauda
Óláfr Tryggvason charges Leif to bring Christianity (Sephton 1880).
Leif reached land in Eiriksfjordr, and proceeded home to Brattahlid. The people received him gladly. He soon after preached Christianity and catholic truth throughout the land, making known to the people the message of King Olaf Tryggvason; and declaring how many renowned deeds and what great glory accompanied this faith. Eirik took coldly to the proposal to forsake his religion, but his wife, Thjodhild, promptly yielded, and caused a church to be built not very near the houses. The building was called Thjodhild's Church; in that spot she offered her prayers, and so did those men who received Christ, and they were many. After she accepted the faith, Thjodhild would have no intercourse with Eirik, and this was a great trial to his temper.— eiriks saga rauda
Leif the Lucky; Þjóðhildr's church; Erik stays heathen.
The shock of the New World: the Skrælings, the people already there, met first in wary trade and then in violence. The Norse are not the first to this shore, and the encounter goes badly.
The people already there
It was not unguarded. One morning they saw hide-canoes on the water, the men in them brandishing strange staves that whirled with the sun. These were the Skrælingar — the native people of the land, the saga's name for them — and the first meeting was wary but peaceful: a white shield raised for truce, and then, the next spring, a market. The Skrælingar prized the Norsemen's red cloth above all and traded furs and grey skins for it, taking even a finger's breadth bound round the head when the cloth ran short.[1]
What they wanted most, Karlsefni would not sell: swords and spears. He forbade it. The saga is recording, without quite saying so, the first sustained contact between Europeans and the peoples of North America — and it begins, as such things did everywhere, with cloth and fur changing hands across a careful line.
The source text · 1
Now when spring began, they beheld one morning early, that a fleet of hide-canoes was rowing from the south off the headland; so many were they as if the sea were strewn with pieces of charcoal, and there was also the brandishing of staves as before from each boat. Then they held shields up, and a market was formed between them; and this people in their purchases preferred red cloth; in exchange they had furs to give, and skins quite grey. They wished also to buy swords and lances, but Karlsefni and Snorri forbad it. They offered for the cloth dark hides, and took in exchange a span long of cloth, and bound it round their heads; and so matters went on for a while. But when the stock of cloth began to grow small, then they split it asunder, so that it was not more than a finger's breadth. The Skrælingar (Esquimaux) gave for it still quite as much, or more than before.— eiriks saga rauda
First trade with the Skrælingar; red cloth for furs (Sephton 1880).
And the land that could not be held: too far, too few, too dangerous, the Vínland colony is abandoned. The Norse touched a new continent and let it go — the westward voyage reaches its limit and turns back.
The land that could not be held
The colonists weighed it and saw the truth: the land was choice and good, but they would live there always under war and terror from the people who had it first. So they made ready and sailed away, back toward their own country.[1]
It is the quiet hinge of the whole story. The Norse reached North America around the year 1000 — five centuries before Columbus — found it fertile and rich, and left, because a few shiploads of settlers could not hold a continent against the people who belonged to it. Guðríðr bore Karlsefni a son, Snorri, in Vínland — the first child of European descent born in the New World — and then carried him home. The wine-land stayed a memory and a name, and the völva's prophecy came true another way: from Guðríðr, who ended her days a pilgrim and an anchoress, sprang the great line of bishops the saga was written to honour.[2]
The source text · 2
[Karlsefni and his company] were now of opinion that though the land might be choice and good, there would be always war and terror overhanging them, from those who dwelt there before them. They made ready, therefore, to move away, with intent to go to their own land. They sailed forth northwards, and found five Skrælingar in jackets of skin, sleeping [near the sea], and they had with them a chest, and in it was marrow of animals mixed with blood; and they considered that these must have been outlawed. They slew them. Afterwards they came to a headland and a multitude of wild animals; and this headland appeared as if it might be a cake of cow-dung, because the animals passed the winter there. Now they came to Straumsfjordr, where also they had abundance of all kinds. It is said by some that Bjarni and Freydis remained there, and a hundred men with them, and went not further away. But Karlsefni and Snorri journeyed southwards, and forty men with them, and after staying no longer than scarcely two months at Hop, had come back the same summer. Karlsefni set out with a single ship to seek Thorhall, but the (rest of the) company remained behind. He and his people went northwards off Kjalarnes, and were then borne onwards towards the west, and the land lay on their larboard-side, and was nothing but wilderness. And when they had proceeded for a long time, there was a river which came down from the land, flowing from the east towards the west. They directed their course within the river's mouth, and lay opposite the southern bank.— eiriks saga rauda
The colony abandons Vínland — it cannot be held (Sephton 1880).
The spae-queen thanked her for the song. "Many spirits," said she, "have been present under its charm, and were pleased to listen to the song, who before would turn away from us, and grant us no such homage. And now are many things clear to me which before were hidden both from me and others. And I am able this to say, that the dearth will last no longer, the season improving as spring advances. The epidemic of fever which has long oppressed us will disappear quicker than we could have hoped. And thee, Gudrid, will I recompense straightway, for that aid of thine which has stood us in good stead; because thy destiny is now clear to me, and foreseen. Thou shalt make a match here in Greenland, a most honourable one, though it will not be a long-lived one for thee, because thy way lies out to Iceland; and there, shall arise from thee a line of descendants both numerous and goodly, and over the branches of thy family shall shine a bright ray. And so fare thee now well and happily, my daughter."— eiriks saga rauda
Guðríðr's foretold line of descendants.
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