The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings

by Lars Brownworth

  Thanks to some clever Viking innovations like using irrigation as cold protection for their crops, the colony eventually swelled to four thousand inhabitants.110 So many settlers arrived that a decision was made to establish a second colony a hundred and seventy miles to the northwest.111 Erik was naturally chosen as the Gothi of the Eastern Settlement, and established a meetinghouse for an island-wide ‘Thing’ at Brattahlíð.

  In the summer months, when the warmer weather made travel more palatable, some of the colonists would journey nearly a thousand miles to the north in search of walrus, seals, and beached wales to harvest.112 These voyages resulted in enough of a yield that even accounting for the vagaries of sea travel, Erik became a wealthy man.

  Trips back to Iceland and Norway were not frequent, but enough ships made the voyage in both directions that contact was maintained. In addition to the continuous trickle of immigrants who had left Scandinavia and found Iceland overcrowded, there were also relatives who would come to visit, or colonists who gave up and returned.

  Although Erik himself never left Greenland again, his children inherited his wanderlust and made several trips back to the homelands. By his wife Thjodhildr, Erik had at least three sons, the oldest of which, Leif, made the dangerous crossing from Greenland to Norway in the summer of 999.

  The purpose of his visit isn’t known, but he brought his wife as well, perhaps intending to settle there. He managed to find employment with King Olaf Tryggvason as a member of the royal bodyguard. Olaf had need of such men, because he was in the middle of a campaign to forcibly christianize Norway, and there was considerable resistance. The king ultimately failed in his attempt – and lost his life in the bargain – but he made one important convert. Some time in the winter of 999 Leif accepted the new faith, and was baptized together with his wife.

  Before he died, Olaf convinced Leif to return to Greenland as an evangelist and spread Christianity. Leif agreed, but on the return trip was caught in a storm and blown badly off course. When the winds died down, and the fog lifted, Leif caught sight of land, but was confused when he saw heavily wooded hills instead of the barren, rocky coast he was expecting. Realizing that he was somewhere west of Greenland, he turned around and sailed in the opposite direction. Unknowingly, Leif Erikson had glimpsed the New World.

  His attention for the moment, however, was the afterlife. When he reached Brattahlíð, he set about the business of conversion, starting with the Eastern Settlement. He found an eager audience for his message, but success came at the price of splitting his family. His mother Thjodhildr became a devout Christian, but his father Erik the Red, a proud pagan, was horrified. Tensions escalated further when Thjodhildr built a church at Brattahlíð, and informed her husband that she would no longer sleep with him until he abandoned his gods – a tactic which the sagas inform us ‘was a great trial to his temper.’113

  Fortunately for familial relations, Leif announced a new project that diverted attention from the religious dispute. There was an undiscovered country to the west, and he was going to explore it. He invited his father along – Erik’s success in Greenland had made him a sort of good luck totem – but the patriarch, already in failing health, declined.114

  Leif Erikson was not the first Viking to spot the Americas. That honor belonged to Bjarni Herjólfsson, son of the second most wealthy inhabitant of Greenland. Herjólf had been one of the original settlers, a close companion of Erik in Iceland. He had done quite well for himself there, but had been unable to convince his son Bjarni to join him on the island. This was probably because Bjarni was already a successful merchant in Norway, and had no desire to start over on an overcrowded island. He did agree, however, to visit his parents each year, a promise he appears to have kept. In 986, however, when he arrived in Iceland for his annual call, he found no trace of his father, just a rumor that he had left for Greenland.

  Bjarni immediately decided to go after him, but was faced with a serious navigational problem. Neither he nor anyone else in Iceland had been to Greenland, or even knew how to get there beyond the vague understanding that it was to the west. There was no map, no compass, not even a description of what the colony looked like. Nevertheless, he set out with a volunteer crew, and not surprisingly, got completely lost and overshot his goal.

  His first glimpse of land was of rolling hills covered with trees, a sure sign that he was in the wrong place. To men used to Iceland and expecting Greenland, the sight of so many trees was astonishing. They were everywhere, a vast, unbroken green carpet from the edge of the beach to the gently sloping hills in the distance. The Norsemen named it Markland, ‘Tree Land’, and continued north, not wanting to stop and explore.115

  They next came to an island dominated by curious flat stones so large that two men could lie heel to head without touching the edges. The only sign of life they saw were the polar-foxes that darted away from the ship when they neared the shore. The Vikings called this Helluland, ‘the Land of Flat Stones’.116

  Again, Bjarni didn’t allow exploration of the island because he was anxious to find his parents. This time, his sail caught favorable easterly winds, and after four days, they finally reached Greenland. Bjarni was reunited with his father, and – probably not willing to go through the harrowing journey again – decided to stay on the island permanently. His story of a new country to the west was treated as a curiosity, but there was little interest initially in pursing it.

  Even Bjarni was content to let the issue drop. He was a trader, not an explorer, interested in cargoes and profits, not setting up colonies or fighting off natives. When his father died some time later, he inherited the estate and settled down to a life of farming.

  A decade later, when Leif Erikson announced his intention to sail west, Bjarni still had no interest in going along, but he sold Leif his ship, and pointed him to the surviving members of his crew – most of whom signed up for the expedition.117 All told there were thirty-five men, a large number for a single vessel. This was to be a journey of exploration; both to find a suitable place for a colony, and more importantly, to find a source of raw materials. If the land were really as tree-rich as Bjarni claimed, then all of Greenland’s resource problems were solved. Although Leif was not aware of it, the very survival of Greenland’s colonies were also at stake.

  Chapter 14

  Vinland

  “Be warned by another’s woe.”

  - Njáls Saga

  The land he was looking for was tantalizingly close. On a clear day, a man could climb the highest mountain of the Western Settlement and – provided he knew where to look – could see the cloud banks in the grey sub-Arctic sky that touched the North American continent. The crossing would be much easier for the Vikings than going back to Iceland, and Leif had the advantage of veterans who knew the way.

  He decided to sail Bjarni’s route in reverse. The old crew had no trouble retracing their course, and with a few days of easy sailing they cast anchor off the coast of Helluland. Leif and a small group rowed ashore, but after a quick survey realized that the land was unsuitable. There was no grass, and virtually no plants of any kind, just a gradually sloping hill of slate that reached all the way to the glaciers – which they called ice mountains – in the distance.118

  Returning to the ships, Leif and his men had a brief discussion and decided to sail south, to see if they could find better land.119 To the southwest they caught sight of the heavily wooded hills and white beaches of Markland, but again decided to keep exploring. Two days later, they spotted an island, and since the weather was good, rowed ashore. The sight of wild, green grass was a welcome change to the frozen coasts they were used to, and in the first rush of excitement of men who had been cooped up on a ship too long, they claimed the dew was the sweetest thing they had ever tasted.

  As soon as they had found a safe place to beach their ship, Leif and his men disembarked with their hammocks, and began work setting up a camp. Although it was only the beginning of Autumn, they decided to spend the w
inter there, and Leif proposed a plan for systematically exploring the land around them. The men were split into two groups of sixteen, with Leif floating between them. Each day one of the groups would go out in a different direction, while the other would stay at camp. The only rules were that the men were not to go so far that they couldn’t return the same day, and they were to stay together at all costs.

  The island, probably modern Newfoundland, was overflowing with abundance. Not only was there virtually unlimited timber, but the salmon in the rivers were both larger and in greater numbers than they had ever seen before, and the forests were teaming with game. The winters seemed milder – Leif claimed that there was no frost – and there was enough wild pasture to support farm animals without the need to make hay. Most astonishing of all, the Vikings noticed that winter days had more hours of sunlight here than they did in Iceland or Greenland. This was a rich country, ready to be exploited.

  The most exciting discovery, however, came after Leif and his men had settled into a routine. One evening it was discovered that Tyrker, Leif’s foster-father, had gone wandering off from the main group and had lost her way. The distraught Leif immediately gathered a search party of twelve men, but just as they were setting out, Tyrker appeared.

  He was obviously in good spirits, and announced that he had made a discovery. He had found some type of wild wheat growing, and had then stumbled across some wine berries. The word he used has traditionally been translated as ‘grapes’, which has led to confusion since grapes don’t grow that far north. The Vikings, however, referred to any berry as a ‘wine berry’. Tyrker had probably come across cranberries or gooseberries. Either way, the Norsemen immediately started fermenting them into a heady wine and got rather drunk toasting themselves and their new find.

  From that time on, the focus became gathering supplies to return home. The two groups no longer went exploring, instead, one gathered berries, while the other cut timber and loaded it on the ships. The new country, named Vinland by Leif for its berries, was far superior to Greenland or even Iceland. Not only was it lush, but it was also apparently uninhabited.

  When they had gathered as much timber as they could carry, they shoved off, towing their rowboat – now filled to the gunwales with berries – behind them. They had several days of fair wind, and when they were approaching the skerries off Greenland, Leif spotted several figures clinging to the rocks. Sailing closer, he recognized that it was a group of marooned sailors from Iceland who had missed Greenland and crashed into the treacherous rocks. Somehow, he fit the fifteen survivors onboard, and even managed to salvage the remains of their cargo.

  Given the relatively small number of colonists on Greenland, the absence of anyone sailing in their direction, and the sheer implausibility of someone stumbling onto their tiny skerry, the men had given themselves up for lost. The appearance of Leif out of the vast ocean, arriving within the rapidly diminishing window of time they could survive, won him the sobriquet ‘Leif the Lucky’ from the grateful sailors, and they spread the story throughout Greenland.

  Leif undoubtedly intended to go back and found a colony, but didn’t get the chance. Sometime before, probably during the winter, his father Erik the Red had died. There is some doubt about the cause, but in 1002 some fresh colonists from Iceland had brought the plague with them, and Erik was probably one of the many who died. The colony needed a leader, and Leif was the natural candidate. His duties prevented any new trips west, and he never again set foot on North American shores. The responsibility for further exploration and colonization fell to his siblings.

  As a sign that he was passing the torch, Leif gave his ship to his brother Thorvald, and the latter gathered volunteers to start a colony. He was not quite as charismatic as his father or brother, and only managed about a hundred people, but hopes were high as the expedition set off.

  At first all went well. Thorvald found Leif’s old camp without difficulty, and spent the winter fishing and gathering timber.120 In the Spring, he equipped a boat and began to explore the western coast, taking careful notes on possible settlement sites. As he investigated one island just off the coast, however, he discovered a wooden hut that looked like it had been used to store grain. It was clearly not Viking workmanship, but there was no other sign of human habitation, so Thorvald and his men returned to their camp. It was a slightly disturbing finding. Someone had obviously discovered this land before them. The only question was if they were still there.

  The answer was provided the next summer when Thorvald explored the opposite direction. A sudden squall drove their ship onto the beach, damaging the keel. Not wanting to stay there, they limped along until Thorvald spotted a suitable harbor. The site was pleasant enough to encourage Thorvad to think it would make the perfect site for a colony. As they walked back to the ship, they noticed three mounds on the beach that hadn’t been there before. On closer inspection they turned out to be canoes, each with three strange looking men hiding beneath. A short struggle ensued where eight of them were captured, but one of the strangers managed to escape in a canoe.

  None of the prisoners understood Norse, so the Vikings called them Skrælings, ‘screamers’ or ‘screechers’, for the strange noises they made.121 After they had killed the captives, they climbed a nearby hill to look around, and noticed what looked like the huts of a small village in the distance.

  While they had been exploring, the Skræling who had escaped returned, this time with ‘a countless fleet of canoes’. The two sides attacked each other, but after the first clash, the Skræling’s fled. The only Viking casualty was Thorvald, who had been struck with an arrow in the armpit. He managed to pull it out, but the wound proved fatal and his men buried him – with some irony – on the same beach that he had wanted to make his home.

  Thorvald’s expedition had been reasonably successful, but his loss – he has the dubious distinction of being the first European killed in North America – crippled the survivor’s morale. They spent that winter gathering wood and berries, and as soon as the weather improved, they returned to Greenland to report what had happened.

  By this time it was clear that if Lief and his father had been lucky, the rest of the family was decidedly less so. The thought of Thorvald’s body mouldering in some distant land was too much for his siblings to bear, so the youngest brother Thorstein decided to retrieve it. He set out with a crew of twenty-five, but as soon as they were out of sight of land, they got hopelessly lost, drifting for almost a month. When they were finally driven to shore in early winter, they discovered that they were still in Greenland, having only made it as far as the Western Settlement.

  The rest of the crew found homes among the other settlers, but Thorstein and his wife wintered on board their ship, a brutal experience that cost Thorstein his life. After his death, there was no one willing to take up the cause.

  If salvaging Thorvald’s body had lost its luster, at least Vinland still remained tantalizing. The need for timber, pasture, and resources was a constant concern, and the western land promised a nearby solution. So in the summer of 1009, Leif sanctioned a second major attempt at colonization.

  The expedition was led by Leif’s brother-in-law Thorfinn Karlsefni, who had married the dead Thorvald’s widow, Gudrid. There was always a supply of people looking for greener pastures, and Thorfinn seems to have recruited volunteers by highlighting, among other things, the alcohol that could be made with the abundant wine berries.

  This turned out to be a popular pitch, as more than two hundred people enlisted to join him, making it necessary to outfit three ships to fit them all. Among the passengers was Leif’s half-sister Freydis, an illegitimate daughter of Erik the Red who had inherited more of his fiery temper and dominant personality than any of his sons. Not wanting to miss the wealth or reputation that could be gained by the trip, she had browbeaten her reluctant husband into joining, and was determined to make him one of the leaders in spite of himself.

  Once again, the Vikings found Leif’s
old camp, and moved in to exploit the nearby resources. That first winter was a particularly brutal one, killing off most of the livestock that they had brought with them. Morale was not improved by the conspicuous lack of berries. They were able to gather enough to make a small brew, but it was hardly the lavish ‘banquets of wine’ that they had been promised.

  Virtually the only bright spot in that harsh winter, at least for Thorfinn, was that his wife Gudrid gave birth to his first child. The boy, named Snorri by his father, was the first European born in North America.122

  When spring arrived, the colony began to split up. One group returned to Greenland, while the rest relocated to a different site.123 Thorfinn built a stockade, probably because he was aware of Skrælings in the area, but they seemed peaceful enough. After a while a group showed up wanting to trade, which Thorfinn was happy to do – with the exception of weapons which he forbid any Norseman to sell on pain of death.

  The bartering was conducted amicably, but three weeks later a huge number of Skrælings suddenly burst out of the woods and attacked the stockade.124 They quickly overran the walls, but were brought up short by two unusual sights. The first was the Viking’s penned up bull – the lone male survivor of the previous winter – that was now agitated and bellowing fiercely. The Skrælings had never seen such an animal before and were suddenly uncertain. The second sight, was probably equally terrifying. The Vikings had been caught by surprise and were wavering between resisting and fleeing. Out from her sleeping quarters, however, had come Freydis, and she stood, sword in hand and bellowing like a Valkyrie, rallying the Vikings. They formed a makeshift shield wall and charged, scattering the Skrælings.