The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.1981, Side 38

36
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
AUTUMN, 1981
then, with his axe, his adz, his whipsaw and
his oxen, built the 85-ton brigantine Cara-
doc. He died before she was launched; his
son Sandy loaded her with lumber and hired
one Captain Gillis to sail her. Sandy went
aboard with his son William to carry a cargo
of lumber to Liverpool.
Gillis and Sandy had a falling-out at sea,
and the captain locked the owner in a cabin.
William got him out, but when the ship
arrived in Liverpool the Livingstones were
arrested for mutiny. In the end, the captain
got the ship, Sandy made his way home, and
William— Harry’s father— shipped out for
India as a cabin boy. William had seven
brothers, all of whom were seamen, and the
family built at least three more large vessels
at Big Bras d’Or.
“Any intelligent search for Vinland,”
says Harry, “must begin with the Norse
ships.” For him, that’s a natural perspec-
tive. How fast were the knorrs, how close to
the wind could they sail? Knowing what he
does about wind and weather and sailing,
Livingstone concludes that Bjarni Herjolfs-
son, whose directions Leif followed, is very
unlikely to have gone south of Nova Scotia.
What about Newfoundland, Farley
Mowat’s candidate for Vinland? Living-
stone praises Mowat for “combining his
knowledge of weather conditions and sea-
faring on the Atlantic Coast with a thorough
study of the sagas, and mixing both with
common sense.” But he thinks Mowat
“may have allowed his old love for New-
foundland to affect his judgment.” Most of
Mowat’s Westviking is solid stuff, in
Livingstone's view, but most of its evidence
fits Cape Breton at least as well as New-
foundland.
“If we assume that Cape Breton Island
was Bjarni’s ‘first land’ and Leif’s Vin-
land,” declares Harry, “many of the con-
tradictions in the sagas disappear.”
“Here we have the low-lying land for
Bjarni’s landfall, from Canso to Flint
Island. Here we have the ‘rivers flowing
westward’ — the Cheticamp, the Margaree,
and others. Here we have the long sandy
beaches, the. furdustrandir of the sagas, at
Bay St. Lawrence and Aspy Bay. Here we
have the ‘wild wheat’ still growing along the
beaches of the Bras d’Or Lakes. And then
look at that remarkably accurate description
of Bird Island and the entrance to Big Bras
d’Or in the Erik the Red saga; ‘They laid the
ship’s course up into the fjord off whose
mouth there lay an island. This island they
called Straumsey. There were so many birds
here that a man could hardly put his foot
down between the eggs. They held on into
the fjord and called it Straumfjord.”
‘ ‘They were used to strong tides, but they
evidently thought Straumfjord had excep-
tionally strong tides — and of course the
Bras d’Or certainly has that. With a full
moon, the rising tide runs about six knots,
and the falling tide, carrying the fresh water
from all the broods and streams, runs even
faster.”
Harry smiles with the pride of a patriot.
“And if Leif came to Cape Breton in
June, of course he’d think he’d found the
promised land. The scenery is magnificent,
and the timber they needed for shipbuilding
grew right down to the water’s edge — not
only evergreens, but also beech, birch,
maple, white ash, oak.
“And what about the grapes? Farley
makes a pretty good case that grapes did
grow in Newfoundland a thousand years
ago, when the climate was warmer. They
don’t occur wild, not now, north of southern
New Brunswick — but they will grow, even
now, if you plant them in Cape Breton, and
they won’t grow in Newfoundland.
“No, I think Leif was here. And this
point at Nyanza is just the kind of spot the
Vikings always chose. It’s not the only suit-
able spot in the Lakes, but it’s the first one
you’d come to through the Big Bras d’Or.”
He kicks the ground, the centuries of leaf-
mould and humus that may conceal shards
of pottery, the ruins of a smithy, the outline