Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1940, Page 138

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LE NORD
lances to the Greenland which had been described to him. After
this he descried the fourth land which he immediately identified
as Greenland and finally and luckily landed before winter set
in at the very place where his father had settled. The story has
all the earmarks of a fairy tale, that of the lucky boy who suc-
ceeds by his superior intelligence and good fortune. When we
consider that it was penned some three hundred years after it is
supposed to have taken place and that Bjarni, as stated above,
is mentioned nowhere else, I think we can safely relegate it to
the class of fabulous tales. Whether it is an embellishment of
some obscure historical event is, of course, impossible to say.
The best and most logical story of any of these voyages is
that of Karlsefni’s in the Saga. In it are in fact united the
features of four expeditions of the Tale, those of Leif, Thorvald,
Karlsefni and Freydis. It has been maintained that the Tale is
here more original and trustworthy because of the tendency of
oral tradition in such cases to combine various voyages into one
rather than to keep them apart. I do not think this theory holds
in the present case; Freydis’ voyage must anyway be looked upon
as spurious. It is highly improbable that she would have under-
taken such an expedition after both Thorvald and Karlsefni
had met with hostility from the natives. Furthermore, it has
been charged that the Saga shows partiality towards Karlsefni
and Gudrid, but this contention can hardly be sustained. Sympa-
thy, perhaps admiration, for the latter may, to be sure, be noticed
there, but it goes nowhere so far as to cause any distortion of
facts. I am of opinion that the Saga was penned by one of their
descendants, or at least at the suggestion of some of these, and
that it really represents the tradition as preserved in the family.
When we compare certain features of the expedition of Karlsefni
as told in the Saga and the Tale, we realize that they are more
plausible in the former. One of these is the bartering scene which
is almost ridiculous in the Tale, while in the Saga it is so realistic
that even the most sceptical critics of these voyages have to
admit that it could not have been invented but must be based
upon observations of a primitive people. Equally telling is the
episode about the Skraeling who found the axe and tried it
against a stone and then threw it away; there again the Tale
has lost the decisive reason for his despising it, and instead given
another very improbable. And so we could go on comparing to
the disadvantage of the Tale. Yet the possibility is not excluded