Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1940, Page 137

THE VINLAND VOYAGES
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strongly impressed itself upon the popular mind and hence re-
mained almost unaltered in the two forms of the tradition.
I have pointed out elsewhere it being noticeable that in the
mediaeval historical literature of Iceland very little is told about
happenings in the Greenland colony except such cases where
some Icelanders were concerned, or involved, who could have
brought the story to Iceland. This fact can make us suspicious
of the detailed accounts incorporated in the Tale of the ex-
peditions of Leif Eriksson and his brother Thorvald, and even
that of Bjarni Herjolfsson. Some of their companions may, of
course, have returned to Iceland, but we know of none. The
story of Freydis’ expedition is so palpably fictitious that it need
not detain us here. On the other hand the Saga narrates in
detail only things in which Icelanders were directly concerned,
or which they had observed. It knows just the bare facts about
Leif’s accidental discovery of Vinland and his saving of a ship-
wrecked crew from which he derived his nickname, the Lucky.
It knows that Thorstein Eriksson started on an expedition to
explore the country discovered by his lucky brother, but it knows
nothing of his plan to recover the body of his other brother
Thorvald for burial in consecrated ground which doubtless is a
later invention. It informs us about his landing in Greenland
after his unsuccessful voyage and the conversation between him
and his father on that occasion, but Gudrid presumably witnessed
it, or heard of it, and could tell about it afterwards.
The most manifest difference between the Saga and Tale is
to be found in the number of the voyages to the newly dis-
covered lands, the former mentions three, the latter six — in
both cases Thorstein’s unsuccessful one being included. Excepting
the voyage of Freydis in the Tale, Bjarni’s voyage of the same
source remains the most suspicious one. Although his father and
his family are known from other sources he is himself mentioned
nowhere else. He is said to have left Iceland in the late summer
to seek Greenland with which he was entirely unfamiliar and
to which his father had emigrated in the spring of the same
year. He lost his way, saw three countries, one after the other,
estimated at a distance their contours and qualities, but stub-
bornly refused to land in any of them declaring that the descrip-
tion of Greenland which had been given to him fitted none of
them, although the third was mountainous and covered with
glaciers and consequently, one would think, bore obvious resemb-
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