The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction (16 page)

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were still in use in the final phase of occupation. They were built of
eric

timber, including driftwood and fresh timber – much of which must
a
have been imported from Vinland, Siberia, or Norway. The buildings had pitched timber roofs, their underside lined with branches for insulation, and covered with turf on the exterior.

Despite the survival of wood in the permafrost no furniture was found, suggesting that the last occupants took their most useful belongings with them. Sheep were kept for wool; goats and cows supplied milk, which was kept in barrels. Hare, seal, and caribou were hunted, and fibres from bison and brown bear fur, recovered in a 14th-century weaving room, suggest that these Greenlanders travelled to North America.

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Eirik the Red (
c
.950–1003)

Eirik is the archetypal Viking: a bold leader, aggressive,
pioneering, a visionary democrat, good husband, proud
father, and red-haired. According to
Eirik’s Saga
, he was
born in Norway but his family was forced to flee to Iceland
when his father, Thorvald Asvaldsson, was exiled because of
a murder. In 981–2 Eirik had to flee again because of another
murder and he spent three years in outlawry exploring the
coast of Greenland. In 984–5 he returned and built the estate
Brattahlid, or ‘steep slope’, in the Eastern Settlement. Eirik’s
title was that of ‘paramount chieftain’. His farm is presumed
to lie under Qassiarsuk where a large farm and church were
excavated in 1932. The church has been interpreted as that
sg

built by Eirik’s wife, Thjodhild, who moved out once she
kin

became Christian. Eirik died in 1003, having fallen victim to
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an epidemic brought by a fresh group of immigrants. Accord-Th

ing to the sagas, Eirik had four children: a daughter, Freydis,
as well as three sons, Thorvald, and Thorsteinn, and the
explorer Leif Eiriksson.

To boldly go: Vikings in North America

The idea that Vikings discovered America, some 500 years before Columbus, and there encountered strange savages, appeals to the modern quest for adventure, and has been given a contemporary resonance in the exploration of space, and its fictional counterpart in the TV series
Star Trek
. Unfortunately the archaeological evidence is limited, and some of it has been invented. The narrative of the discovery of America is based upon stories first recorded in the sagas, some 200 years after the event. These were originally read as objective historical documents; then dismissed as medieval 108

fantasy. The current view lies somewhere in between; the sagas probably preserve elements of fact but are likely to have embellished and conflated events. The story of the discovery of America probably represents a semi-mythological account of a sequence of exploration and contact that continued over several decades.

The two primary accounts, in
Greenlanders’ Saga
(
c
.1200) and
Eirik’s Saga
(
c
.1210–30), appear to have been based on the same original material but diverge substantially. In
Greenlanders’ Saga
, Vinland is discovered in two stages. Bjarni Herjolfsson, on his way from Norway to Greenland, is blown off course and accidentally discovers unknown lands south-west of Greenland. Later, in
c
.1000,
The edge of th
Eirik the Red’s son, Leif, sets out with the aim of exploring the land seen by Bjarni. He visits new areas and names them Helluland, Markland, and Vinland, establishing his base in the latter location.

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Leif Eirikson then over-winters with his crew before returning to
orl

Greenland the following spring. His brother Thorvald returns and
d: G

explores the coast, but encounters hostile natives, and in a bloody
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skirmish is killed by an arrow. In
Eirik’s Saga
, on the other hand, no
d an
mention is made of Bjarni and it is Leif who is blown off course and
d Nor
first sets foot ashore. Exploration of the new lands is credited to Thorfinn Karlsefni, an Icelandic trader, but after three winters,
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harassed by native Indians, his party returned home.

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a

The location of Vinland has been much debated. Interpretations range from Labrador to Florida, but the consensus is Newfoundland. Vinland is named as the most southerly of the lands encountered and Helluland may be Baffin Island, making Markland Central Labrador. The name Vinland is problematic. It is mentioned in 1075 by Adam of Bremen, specifically as derived from the presence of wild grapes, which do not grow on Newfoundland.

However, it is possible that Adam made a mistake and it was the Norse word
vinland
with a short, not long ‘i’, meaning ‘natural meadow or pasture’. Alternatively it has been argued that, as there are wild grapes in the New Brunswick or St Lawrence River area, these resources were certainly available.

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Newfoundland’s claim to be Vinland became stronger in the 1960s with the discovery of L’Anse aux Meadows, situated on its northernmost tip. The site provided the first clear archaeological proof that the Vikings reached North America. A small Norse settlement was located on a narrow terrace, cut by a small brook.

Three types of building have been identified. Three large multi-roomed halls are distinctively Icelandic in shape and layout. They have traits which were common at the end of the 10th century, but lack details developed after the 11th century. The halls each contained one or more rooms where people ate, slept, and socialized. Each of these rooms had a hearth in the centre with wall benches along the sides; each also contained a workshop and a large storage room. It has been suggested that goods were being collected here for trans-shipment, including nuts, grapes, and fine hardwood.

Butternuts found in the floor layers are not local and must have come from the area of Quebec or New Brunswick.

sg

kin

Three smaller pit buildings appear to be paired with the halls. As
e Vi

they contained fireplaces they may have been used as
Th

accommodation, possibly for slaves, but the presence of 19 net sinkers in one of the huts suggests this was used as a fishing gear store. One of the larger halls also had a smaller rectangular house, of a type used on elite farms for subordinate labour, built next to it.

On the far side of the brook away from the buildings there was a bloomery, comprising a simple iron-smelting furnace, with a charcoal kiln nearby. Iron smelting was unknown to the native peoples who inhabited this area and radiocarbon dates from Norse rubbish layers give a 95 per cent probability that the site was occupied between 990–1030. There is evidence for earlier and later Indian occupation at L’Anse, but no evidence for contemporaneity or overlap.

From the size of the bench sleeping space in the living quarters it has been estimated that the halls could accommodate 77–92 people in total. The two largest halls each also had a private chamber at one end, of a type used by manor owners on Iceland. The grouping of 110

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e edge of th

16. L’Anse aux Meadows reconstruction

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orld: G

the buildings into three complexes may suggest three ship’s crews,
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each of around 30 individuals. However, the small size of the
d an

rubbish middens and the lack of evidence for building repair
d Nor

suggests occupation was short-lived, although the site must have been intended for year-round occupation as the buildings were
th Am

solid structures rather than booths. There are no byres, stables, or
eric

animal pens, and no cemetery. There were no domestic food bones;
a
the meat consumed was primarily seal and whale. Abandonment was deliberate and orderly with very little material left behind. Only a small number of personal items were recovered and the finds mainly comprised waste associated with either building construction or boat repair, including some 3 kg of iron waste, smithing slag, discarded rivets, and carpentry debris, including a patch, possibly for a small boat.

It seems reasonable to conclude that L’Anse aux Meadows may be the site mentioned in the sagas as settled by Leif. Only a chieftain such as Leif could establish a site like this, and the scale of operations makes it unlikely that it is an unnamed settlement, 111

especially given the effort that must have gone into its construction. At the time it was built the total population of Greenland was only
c
.2,500. If the estimates are correct then L’Anse aux Meadows was occupied by 10–20 per cent of the population of the entire Greenland colony, presumably mostly by men of prime working age. It seems highly unlikely that the Norse had sufficient resources to construct a string of such settlements.

L’Anse aux Meadows could certainly have functioned as a gateway site. The long distance from Greenland to southern resources in America means this is a good spot for over-wintering, allowing the collection of resources before return. The journey from Brattahlid to L’Anse is over 3,000 kilometres; such a voyage would take perhaps a month, leaving only one or two months for exploration as travel would only have been possible from June to September. The
s

site thus probably belongs to the period when the Greenland colony
g

kin

was exploring and assessing what resources were available.

e Vi

However, it had no long-term viability, because of a number of
Th

factors, including the great distances and treacherous seas, the threat of hostile natives, the lack of resources at L’Anse, and the fact that desirable resources were so far away that they were not worth the labour and time required. Lumber and wine could be had from Europe, which also had more to offer in way of luxuries, food, family ties, and the church. In comparison with Europe, the New World had little to recommend it. The Greenland settlement was itself too small to be able to afford a splinter colony and either all had to go to Vinland, or none. When the decision was taken to abandon L’Anse aux Meadows, the North American adventure was abandoned with it.

Given the distances already travelled across the North Atlantic compared with the distance involved from Newfoundland to Greenland, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Norse made landfall in North America. But apart from the effect on the modern American psyche, did their visits have any lasting effects on the 112

native peoples? Both
Eirik’s Saga
and the
Greenlanders’ Saga
describe episodes of peaceful trading between Norse and natives, and in
Eirik’s Saga
Karlsefni and his men trade red cloth for pelts.

While there is no North American site where direct contact can be demonstrated, the quantity and distribution of Norse finds on native sites indicates more contact than recorded in the sagas, and overall the material is consistent with wide-ranging but sporadic contact, rather than long-distance trading of Norse goods obtained by raiding in Greenland. Despite this there was very little cultural borrowing. The cultures were completely alien to each other and evidently neither felt it had anything to gain by copying the other’s technology or behaviour.

Th

e edge of th

Decline and abandonment

e w

The timing of, and reasons for, the abandonment of the Greenland
orl

colonies have been much debated. These questions have taken on
d: G

an importance partly because the colonies represent an unusual
reenlan

Viking failure, and with it, the end of Scandinavian expansion
d an

westwards. In 1497 Newfoundland was ‘rediscovered’ by John
d Nor

Cabot. Was there a real gap in European knowledge of the North Atlantic in-between?

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eric

Ivar Bardarson, a cleric from Trondheim, came to Greenland in the
a

1340s to administer the church from Garðar. When he returned to Norway he reported that by the mid-1350s nothing had been heard from the Western Settlement for several years. Bardarson mounted an expedition to investigate, but his ship found abandoned farms, the animals half-wild, with no trace of any inhabitants. The Western Settlement is therefore believed to have come to a close in the mid-14th century. The last documentary reference to the Eastern Settlement comes from accounts of an Icelandic ship beset by storms and fog during a 1406 voyage from Norway, driven to Greenland. The crew lived among the farmers of the Eastern Settlement for four years, and one of them was married in the stone church in Hvalsey. When they sailed for Norway in 1410 that was 113

the last that anyone heard of the settlement, which is thought to have died out by 1450.