Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.1964, Page 66

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ÁRBÓK FORNLEIFAFÉLAGSINS
sea than along the coast of Iceland during the summer time. Currents rush
readily off points and nesses, and off Hornstrandir alone there are eight such
currents in waters which had a lively traffic in ancient times. Off Straumnestá
and Látrabjarg the sea is almost as rough as it can possibly be in Icelandic waters.
Eirik the Red and his followers were well acquainted with all this, as well as
with frozen sea, which would have been ecpecially familiar to them in the inner
firths of Breiðafjörður. Besides, the people of Breiðafjörður were as expert as
any at carrying cattle by sea and knew precisely how to distribute animals
between the boats and how to handle them on board. It is obviously easier to
transport animals if they can be distributed among a fleet of many boats with
several different crews working together than if the voyage is to be carried out
with perhaps no more than two boats. All this should be kept in mind when trying
to weigh the two alternatives, fishing boats or knerrir, against each other. On
the former a provisional shelter for man and beast could easily have been made,
and it may further be mentioned that in later times tenoarings and twelve-
oarings were sometimes turned into deck-boats.
If the theory of the present author as to the craft used by Eirik and his followers
is correct, then the number of participants in the expedition will probably have
to be reduced from the one hitherto favoured. Such a reduction need not, however,
contradict the well established number of farms in the Eastern and Western
Settlements, for additional settlers probably arrived in Greenland from Iceland
in the course of the decades following the year 986, though the sagas are admittedly
rather silent on this point.
The author finally stresses his conviction that the fleet of the Greenland-farers
very probably consisted of boats similar to the tenoarings of the Saga period and
of the Age of the Sturlungs, the mediaeval tenoaring of Breiðafjörður, known from
documents, and the tenoaring of the 19th century. These boats had nothing of
the glamour of the Viking ships, but nevertheless bore witness to the technical
resources of an insular people and their ability to manoeuvre such vessels, both in
sheltered waters and on the high sea.