Norsemen in America

NORSEMEN IN AMERICA

NORSEMEN IN AMERICA. Generations of American schoolchildren have been taught that America was "discovered" by the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492 and that the first European colonies were established in the following years. This view of the history of European activities on the North American continent both reflects a relatively narrow view of history centered upon the colonial powers of western Europe during the period beginning in the fifteenth century and ignores a tradition in Scandinavian history about earlier North American expeditions mounted by the Norse.

The Norsemen, under economic and political pressure, were great explorers and launched expeditions to Britain, Iceland, and Greenland from the end of the eighth century through the beginning of the eleventh century. They were able to do this because of their long tradition of seafaring and the technological developments in maritime design that marked this period in Norse history. They established a permanent colony in what is now Iceland sometime around the year 870. This colony survived and became the basis for the modern Icelandic nation. The Norse also established what was intended to be a permanent colony in Greenland about a century later. Greenland, however, was climatically far less hospitable than Iceland, and because of this and possibly because of inter-family feuds, the Greenland colony failed within a century.

There is both literary and archaeological evidence to suggest that at about the same time that the Norse established their Greenland colony they also ventured across the North Atlantic and made their way to the North American coast. Most likely the Norse made landings somewhere along the Canadian coast and may well have established small colonies there. Literary sources refer to these as Vinland, Helluland, and Markland, Vinland being the best known of the three. Adam of Bremen, in a history dated about 1075, refers to Vinland. More importantly, there are several Scandinavian sources that give more details.

Both Groenlendinga saga ("Saga of the Greenlanders") and Eiríks saga rauda ("Saga of Erik the Red") make explicit references to Norse explorations in Vinland. The information contained in these sagas is rather detailed, although its historicity must be questioned since both sagas are the results of long oral traditions and were not reduced to writing until two centuries after the events related. Nevertheless, the picture that emerges from the sagas is quite fascinating. It would appear that the Norse settlers in Greenland decided to mount several expeditions across the Atlantic. The most notable member of these expeditions was Leif Eriksson, whose father, Erik the Red, had established one of the most important Greenland farms, Brattahlid.

Although we have strong literary evidence for Norse incursions into North America, there is no way to discover the exact sites of Vinland, Markland, or Helluland from these literary sources. However, the archaeological evidence can be of great help in this matter. Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad excavated what was quite clearly a Norse settlement on the northern tip of Newfoundland at what is now known as L'Anse aux Meadows. These excavations during the 1960s and 1970s provided confirmation, at least in the generalities, of the Scandinavian sources' claims of Norse settlements in North America. Unfortunately the archaeological evidence does not disclose whether the L'Anse aux Meadows site was intended to be a permanent settlement, a temporary stopover point, or a way station for other expeditions. We do know that whatever the use, it did not last long.

Norse artifacts have been found around the L'Anse aux Meadows site and at other locations, but these have been few, for example, a pin with strong Viking and Celtic influence found in Newfoundland and a Norse coin from the reign of King Olaf Kyrre (1066–1093) in Maine at the remains of a Native American village.

The question of Norse exploration in North America took on a more public aspect with the controversy surrounding the 1965 publication of the so-called Vinland Map. This map, which is alleged to date from the fifteenth century and to document pre-Columbian Norse voyages to North America, has engendered two quite heated debates. The first relates to the authenticity of the map itself, with some scholars strongly supporting the map and its authenticity and others, notably scientists and those using various dating techniques, claiming that the map is a later forgery. The second debate, despite the evidence at L'Anse aux Meadows, goes to the very question of whether the Norse did indeed reach the North American coast before Columbus. Nevertheless, most scholars agree that the archaeological and historical evidence strongly supports an at least temporary Norse presence somewhere in North America prior to 1492.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fitzhugh, William W., and Elisabeth I. Ward, eds. Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution/National Museum of Natural History, 2000.

Roesdahl, Else. The Vikings. Translated by Susan M. Margeson and Kirsten Williams. London and New York: Penguin, 1992; 2d ed., 1998.

Wooding, Jonathan. The Vikings. New York: Rizzoli, 1998.

Karenbeth Farmer

M. H. Hoeflich

Gwyn Jones