USA > Maine > A history of the discovery of Maine > Part 7
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Here, at this anchoring place, it happened that they one day saw a "Onefoot,"* who, being hidden behind some trees, killed with an arrow one of Thorfinn's men, and then ran off to the north. After this unhappy event, Thorfinn continued his voyage to the north. But finding no trace of his friend Thorhall, and thinking that they now had come to the country of the "Onefoots," ; he did not like to expose his men to further dangers, and returned to the south. " He and his men, however, agreed on this point, that all these
* "En Eenfoding" (Unipes ").
t " Eenfodingeland " (" terra Unipedum ").
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THORFINN'S VOYAGE TO VINLAND.
tracts to the north were continuous with those in the south at Hop, and that it was all one and the same country."
The "endless forests" which Thorfinn saw in the north, the river-mouth where he anchored, and where he saw the "Onefoot," might have been somewhere in the inner parts of the Gulf of Maine, on the coasts of the present States of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, or Maine. How far, on this excursion, he went to the north, we cannot say. But, as he believed that he had now come to the dangerous "country of the Onefoots," we may put down this as one of the names under which our coasts of New Hampshire and Maine may have been designated by the Northmen.
The reports of the Northmen of their voyages are not near so full of fabulous and mythological phantasms and errors, marvellous and superhuman events and beings, as those of the Spaniards and other more southern nations. They are, on the contrary, remarkable for their straight-forward, unos- tentatious simplicity and matter of fact clearness. But there are a few exceptions. Sometimes they report, that the "Skrellings," in the midst of a battle or on their flight, sud- denly disappeared, " being swallowed by the earth," and similar incredible things. The "country of the Onefoots" may also be called one of these exceptions. The Northmen believed in the existence of such a nation and country, as the Spaniards believed in the existence of the Amazons. They believed they had discovered the country of the One- foots at several times,* and so Thorfinn thought he had found it here in the north of Vinland (New Hampshire and Maine).
Thorfinn, not having found his man Thorhall, returned to his companions whom he had left on the coast of Straumfiordr (Buzzard's Bay). He there staid with them till the next .
* See Rafn, I. c. p. 158.
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winter. It was his third winter in Vinland, but not a favor- able one to the continuation of the enterprise. Discontent and dissension broke out among the settlers, the causes of which I may leave here undiscussed. Thorfinn, therefore, in the following spring, 1011, with his wife, Gudrida, and his American son, Snorre, then three years of age, left the country together, and with a good southerly wind returned to Greenland. It is not quite clear, but it appears to me probable, that a party of his men remained behind and con- tinued the settlement in Vinland. The reports are some- what contradictory on this point. Thorfinn, also, carried with him two boys, aborigines of Markland, to whom the Northmen afterward taught the Norse language, and who then gave them some particulars about the interior of their country, and about the manners and kind of living of their countrymen. The old Northmen, in this respect, followed the practice, which, in later times, was adopted by many discoverers.
Thorfinn never returned again to Vinland. He had brought from thence many valuable things collected in the country, and during his traffic with the aborigines,-furs and skins of different animals, specimens of rare wood of seve- ral sorts, and probably other products not specified in the reports.
When he arrived with this cargo in Greenland (at the end of the year 1011), two brothers of the name of Helge and Finnboge had come out from Norway. They were probably attracted by the rich plunder of Thorfinn, and, persuaded by some of his companions, resolved to make a voyage to Vinland, which now began to be named "Vinland the good" (Vinland det goda). They associated for this purpose with that enterprising woman,. Freydisa, who had been out with Thorfinn, and who knew and liked "the good Vinland."
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THORFINN'S VOYAGE TO VINLAND.
They made with her a bargain, that they would share with her equally in all the profits this voyage might yield. They sailed in the year 1012 to Vinland. The particulars of their voyage have no great interest for us, because it does not appear that they touched, in any way, the north- ern parts of Vinland. Freydisa and her companions got into trouble and disagreement, probably about the "profits of the undertaking." They came to arms, and the two brothers, Helge and Finnboge, were slain in a fight. Frey- disa and her companion's soon after returned to Greenland, very probably with a good booty of furs, etc. They arrived in Greenland in the spring of 1013, where Thorfinn then lay, ready to sail with his cargo for Norway. (All commercial operations appear to have been very slow in old Greenland.) It is very probable, though it is not exactly stated, that Frey- disa sold a part of her stock to Thorfinn, to take to the Euro- pean market. At all events, " Thorfinn's ship was so richly laden, that it was generally admitted a more valuable cargo never before left Greenland."
Thorfinn sailed to Norway, staid there the next winter, and sold his American products .* He appears to have made by them a good profit. Amongst others, a "Southern man," a German merchant of the city of Bremen, in Saxo- nia, who happened to be present in Norway, offered to Thorfinn, for a piece of American wood, half a mark of gold. Thorfinn was astonished at this high price being offered to him by that "Southerner," but gave his wood for it. " He did not know that it was 'Mosur' he had brought out from Vinland."f This " Mosur," or " Mausur" was a kind of wood then considered to be so precious, that
* Rafn, 1. c. p. 73.
t Rafn, I. c. p. 74.
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king's sometimes had goblets made of it, trimmed with silver and gold .*
Thorfinn, probably with a full purse, sailed as before, accompanied by his wife Gudrida and his son Snorre, in the spring of 1014, from Norway to Iceland, where he bought an estate. and where he now settled and resided for the remainder of his life, with Snorre, his son. After the death of Thorfinn, and after Snorre had been married, Gudrida, the widow-mother, made a pious pilgrimage to Rome, where, probably, as an extraordinary person, she was received with distinction, and where, of course, she spoke to the pope or his bishops about the beautiful new country in the far West, " Vinland the good," and about the Christian settlements made there by the Scandinavians. She after- wards returned to her son's estate in Iceland, where Snorre had built a church, and where, after all her adventures, she lived long as a religious recluse.
From Thorfinn and his son, Snorre, a numerous and illus- trious race descended, among whom may be mentioned the learned bishop Thorlak Runolfson, born in the year 1085, of whom it has been made probable, that he was the person who originally compiled the accounts of the voyages of his great grandfather.
The results which these early exploring, searching, and trading voyages of Thorfinn and Gudrida have for our sub- ject, may, in short, be summed up thus :
The coast of Maine, in the year 1008, was, for the first time, coasted along by European ships from north to south.
Thorhall the Hunter, in the year 1008, made his exploring
. The American " Mosur" is said to have come from a kind of maple tree, called in New England the "birdseye, or curled maple." See upon this, Rafn, 1. c. p. 42 seg.
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expedition from Straumfiordr (Buzzard's Bay) to the north- ern parts of Vinland (coast of Maine), but was beaten back by a heavy north-western gale.
Thorfinn, in the year 1009, made a searching expedition in quest of his man Thorhall, to the northern parts of Vinland, but appears not to have gone far north, for fear of the Skrel- lings, whom he thought to be monstrous "Onefoots." He gave their name to the country, which probably included New Hampshire and part of Maine, and which he believed to be continuous with the south of Vinland.
Thorfinn, during his stay of more than three years in Vin- land, had collected furs, skins, precious woods, and other American products. He brought them over to Europe (Norway), and sold them at a good price. Thus were New . England and its products made known in Europe.
These discoveries were also undoubtedly made known by mariners from Germany, Ireland, and Scotland, and by other adventurers, on their return to their native countries. The Northmen themselves would not be slow in spreading the fame of their bold expeditions and the wonderful discov- eries they had made.
That in Denmark and the northern part of Germany, very soon after the expeditions of Thorfinn, the " Vinland" of the Northmen became known, is proved by the testimony of a famous contemporary historian of the North. The bishopric of Bremen, founded by Charles the Great, com- prised within its ecclesiastical jurisdiction and diocese, for a long time, the whole north of Europe,-Denmark, Scandi- navia, Iceland, and Greenland. The town where this bishop resided (Bremen), therefore, was sometimes called the Rome of the North ; and the earliest historian of this bishopric, Adam of Bremen, in his celebrated and important work, " Ecclesiastical history of the north of Europe," paid great
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attention to the political, military, and commercial events of the Northmen. He wrote this work about fifty years after Thorfinn's return from Vinland, and, having himself traveled a good deal in Denmark, he added to it " a 'description of Denmark and of the regions beyond Denmark," and in chapter thirty-nine of this description, he says that Sueno, the King of Denmark, to whom he paid a visit, and with whom he had a conversation on the northern countries, men- tioned to him, among many other islands which had been discovered in the north-west, " one which they had called Vinland, because the vine would grow there without cultiva- tion, and because it produced the best sort of wine. That besides, plenty of fruits grow in this country without planting, is not mere opinion, but I have this news from very authen- tic and trustworthy relations of the Danes. Beyond this island, however, no habitable country is found ; on the con- trary, everything to the north is covered with ice and eternal night."
Adam of Bremen's work was written soon after the middle of the eleventh century, issued in the year 1073, dispersed in several copies, and probably read by many learned persons. So we may say, that, even at this time, a discovery of America was proclaimed, and a short description of New England given to the reading public of Europe.
Besides this Adam of Bremen, there was another contem- porary historian, Ordericus Vitalis, born in England, and afterwards bishop of Rouen in Normandy, who appears to have known something of Vinland, and to have mentioned it in his ecclesiastical history, which was written about one hundred years after Thorfinn's exploring expeditions .*
* See about this, Rafn, Antiquitates Americans, p. 337.
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EXPEDITIONS TO VINLAND AFTER THORFINN.
8. EXPEDITIONS FROM GREENLAND AND ICELAND TO VINLAND SUBSEQUENT TO THOSE OF THORFINN KARLSEFNE.
After Thorfinn Karlsefne's expeditions, the Northmen from Iceland and Greenland appear to have gone several times to the shores of America. Some of them were driven by storms to more southern parts of the continent. Others made ex- ploring expeditions toward the arctic regions, to the northern parts of Baffin's Bay. The history of these voyages, under- taken to regions very distant from our territory of Maine, has no immediate interest for us.
But the Vinland expeditions did not cease, though we have only scanty information and a few scattered reports on all that happened in Vinland after Thorfinn Karlsefne. The first discovery of this beautiful country, praised so much for its mild climate and fertility, and usually by the Icelandic his- . torians called the good country, must, at the beginning, have struck the Northmen with great surprise : their historians, consequently, reported amply and fully on this memorable event. The three sons of Erik the Red, Thorfinn and his heroic wife, Gudrida, being distinguished by birth and social position, and some of them the heads of a large progeny, their descendants took pride and pleasure in describing and recording the exploits and adventures of their ancestors.
After Thorwald and Thorfinn, a voyage to Vinland may not have been considered as very remarkable. The way to it was found, and became, as it were, a beaten track, easy for everybody. The voyages to this country were no extra- ordinary exploring expeditions to a new region, but only commercial undertakings, probably to gather furs, wood, and other commodities for Greenland. They, therefore, were not chronicled and amply described. But sometimes we find them occasionally mentioned.
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So in the year 1121, the voyage to Vinland of a bishop of Greenland, by the name of Erik, is mentioned in the Ice- landic annals. This priest is said to have sailed to Vinland for missionary purposes. The fact, that such a high ecclesi- astical functionary as a bishop should go to Vinland, appears to be good proof, that, since Thorfinn's time, Northman set- tlers had remained there, or, at least, that Northman traders, engaged in trafficking, fishing, and wood-cutting had tarried there, and that a constant intercourse with the colony had been maintained. The beauty of the country, so often praised by the Icelanders, and the profits which they had derived from some of their Vinland expeditions, must have been a great inducement to the colonists and traders to retain possession of the country, and not readily abandon it. Of the results of Bishop Erik's expedition we, unhappily, have no particular information.
After this remarkable voyage of the bishop we hear nothing of Vinland for more than a hundred years, nor of countries to the south-west of Greenland. Then we have again a brief notice, that, in the year 1285, two Icelandic clergymen, Aldabrand and Thorwald Helgason, who are often mentioned in Northern history, visited, on the west of Iceland, "a new land," and that some years afterwards, the king of Denmark, Erik the Priest-hater, sent out a ship under the command of a certain Rolf, to pay a visit to this "New- land," which is supposed to have been our Newfoundland.
Again, not quite a hundred years after this event, we find, in the ancient Icelandic Annals, the following very remarka- ble, though short report : " In the year 1347 a vessel, having a crew of seventeen men, sailed from Iceland to Markland." The dry and brief manner in which this is reported, seems to prove that this vessel of 1347 was not driven to " Mark- land" (Nova Scotia) by chance or by storms, but that the
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EXPEDITIONS TO VINLAND AFTER THORFINN.
expedition was intentional, undertaken probably for the pur- pose of getting timber and other supplies from that country. The whole affair is mentioned as a daily occurrence, and " Markland" as a perfectly well-known country. On the voyage homeward from Markland, the vessel was driven out of her course by storms, and arrived with loss of anchors on the west of Iceland. From such an account it would appear, that the intercourse between Iceland, Greenland, and Vin- land had been kept up to as late a date as the middle of the fourteenth century.
We have very scanty information on the trading and fishing expeditions of the English, Portuguese, and French to the coast of Newfoundland during the sixteenth century, and they are only occasionally alluded to, though there is no doubt that they yearly occurred. We are much better informed of the expeditions of the Cabots, Cortereals, and Verrazano, which preceded those fishing voyages, and showed them the way. A comparison of the case of these fishermen with that of the Northmen will serve to make the views and supposi- tions above developed still more probable.
We cannot prove that in all this time the coast of Maine was seen again by the Northmen. But that this was the case, is not improbable from what has been said. The name of Markland (the country of the woods), in the northern geog- raphy, may have sometimes comprised the coast of Maine ; which, at a later time, was often included in the same geo- graphical denomination with Nova Scotia.
From the middle. of the fourteenth century down to the modern discovery of America, beginning with Columbus and Cabot, we hear no more of Scandinavian undertakings in this direction. The heroic age of the Northmen, and their power and spirit of enterprise, had long ago passed by. Iceland, the
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starting-point and mother republic of the western colonies, had become a subordinate and neglected dependency of the kings of Norway and Denmark. The Greenland settlements and bishopric by degrees had been weakened, and at last had completely disappeared, in consequence, as is believed, of epidemics, and of attacks from the Esquimaux, who came over in great numbers from Labrador; so that even their neighbors of Iceland lost sight of this country. In this manner the entire connecting chain between Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland was broken, and the Amer- ican portion remained to be discovered anew.
9. NEW ENGLAND CONSIDERED BY THE NORTHMEN TO BE A PART OF EUROPE.
The heroic exploits and great undertakings of the North- men in Iceland and Greenland, called into existence among them many enthusiastic and talented literary and scientific men, who strove to praise and to describe their exploits in writing. Iceland had, in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- turies, her poets, historians, and geographers. With them, who had discovered and conquered a great part of the globe, geography, in fact, must have been a favorite occupation ; as it had been, for similar reasons, with the Arabs.
The Icelandic geographers described not only their own home, but gave also descriptions of the entire globe, so far as their knowledge had reached. They also depicted the globe on rough maps, and had their own systems and views on the arrangement and connection of the different great parts of the world.
The feature of this Icelandic geography, which interests us here most, is their idea on the question, what position on the globe should be ascribed to their discoveries in Green- land, Markland, Helluland, and Vinland. They appear not
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VINLAND THOUGHT A PART OF EUROPE.
to have had the conviction, that they had arrived on another continent, in a "new world"; which, after the later discovery of America by Columbus and others, became soon the con- viction of modern geographers.
The Icelanders, on the contrary, thought that all these western countries made a part of Europe, and they affirmed this very clearly in their geographical works. And this conception, strange as it may appear to us at first sight, was quite natural from the stand-point of the Northman geographers in Iceland. . Their original home, Norway, stretched far out to the north. Beyond this, toward the north-east, they had seen other European countries,-the northern parts of Russia (Biarmia, Novaja Zemlia). Per- haps on their excursions they had even come in sight of the mountains of Spitzbergen. So they saw, in all directions toward the north-east and the north, countries which they thought to be continental with each other as well as with Europe. To the north-west they found Greenland, which they considered to be a continuation of this chain of north- ern European countries. On many old Scandinavian maps, therefore, we see Greenland depicted as a large penin- sula running out from some part of Russia, and encircling, with a large bend, the whole northern half of the Atlantic, and with its southern end (Cape Farewell) coming down to more southern latitudes. It is well known that Spitzbergen, at a later date, was considered to be a part of Greenland, and was even called " Greenland" or " Eastern Greenland." So by this gigantic " Greenland," a bridge was constructed from Europe to the other countries discovered in the western world.
The conception, that these southern countries, Helluland, Markland, Vinland, with Greenland, Iceland, Norwegia, be- longed to the same tract or circle of North-European coun-
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VINLAND THOUGHT A PART OF EUROPE.
tries, was so much more natural, because all these countries, so far south as the coast of Maine, in their nature and con- figuration, have the greatest similarity. Indented, rocky coasts, with the same geological features (granite rocks), long inlets, fiords, numerous coast islands, were to be found everywhere, as in Norway and Iceland. The products of these tracts, also, were not strikingly different from those in Northern Europe,-firs, oaks, and other European trees in the forests; salmon and other fish in the rivers; and on the coast different sorts of cod-fish and whales, as on the coast of Norway. Nay, had not the German, Tyrker, discovered vines and grapes like those in Germany? The Scandina- vians might, therefore, well think that they had found noth- ing very new, but only the extension and continuation of their own Norwegian home.
Columbus and his followers, when, at a later date, they arrived in the West Indies, within the tropics, became soon aware that they had something new before them. Having their imagination full of oriental notions, they saw in Amer- ica even more new things, differences, and peculiarities, than really existed.
It would be easy to show and prove by many quotations from the books of modern travelers, that those who came from Great Britain, or other parts of Northern Europe, were not much surprised by the differing features of the north- eastern parts of the new world; but, on the contrary, were impressed by their similarity to what they had left. We might, indeed, speak of a Scandinavian America, which would extend as far south as New England, and more par- ticularly the State of Maine.
From all this we may easily explain the alleged fact, that the old Icelandic geographers knew nothing of a fourth part of the world ; that, like the Greek Ptolemy, they recog-
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nized only three continents, and ascribed all their discove- ries on the other side of the ocean to Europe.
An Icelandic geographer, in giving a description of the globe, thus expresses himself: " From Biarmaland (North- ern Russia), the land goes out toward the north to unin- habited deserts (Nova Zembla, Spitzbergen), until Greenland commences. From Greenland toward the south lie Hellu- land (Newfoundland), Markland (Nova Scotia, Canada), and not far from this, Vinland, which, as some think, stretches out toward Africa. England and Scotland form one and the same island, and Ireland is a very large island. Iceland is also a large island on the north of Ireland. All these countries are in that part of the world which is called Europe."* The same, in similar words, has been said by other northern geographers. t
It is well known that modern geographers, for a long time after they had acknowledged South America to be a separate continent, considered the north-eastern regions of America to be a part of Asia. So we may say that New England and the neighboring region were at first considered as a Euro- pean country, then as a section of Asia, till at last they came to be put upon their own American feet.
In the appendage to this chapter I shall give a few Scan- dinavian maps, which will illustrate the views of the Ice- landic geographers on these regions.
10. REMINISCENCES OF THE NORTHMEN AMONG THE INDIANS OF NEW ENGLAND.
One would think that the extraordinary appearance of white men, of a much superior race, in immensely large
* See this piece of Icelandic geography quoted in Rafu, Antiquitates Americanæ, p. 289.
t See them quoted, and extracts given from their works, in Rafn, I. c. p. 200 seq.
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ships, with iron tools and weapons, would have made a great impression on the barbarous natives of Vinland. They saw their guests come and go very often during the course of several centuries. They had battles, traffic, and converse with them. They admired their large tame animals, saw them constructing colossal ships and houses. Perhaps they mixed also in marriage with those of them who made a longer stay, and produced a mixed race of European and American blood. All this must have been remembered a long time after the final disappearance of the strange settlers.
The name of "Skrellings" was given by the Scandina- vians, particularly to that race of Americans whom we now call " Esquimaux," at present the inhabitants of the arctic regions ; and the name generally is said to signify "the small people " (homunculi) ; which signification applies very well to the Esquimaux, who are of a small contracted figure, but not so well to the tall Indians of the Abenaki or Algonkin race, which modern discoverers found on the east coast of North America.
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