Vikings in North America: Pursuing the Myth of Paradise

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear, W. Michael Gear

Overview

With VIKINGS IN NORTH AMERICA, W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear, renowned archaeologists and bestselling authors of America's Forgotten Past series, discuss the fascinating myths that compelled the first Norse explorers to brave the oceans to reach North American shores.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466892477
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/21/2015
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	587,316
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

KATHLEEN O'NEAL GEAR is a former state historian and archaeologist for Wyoming, Kansas, and Nebraska for the U.S. Department of the Interior. She has twice received the federal government's Special Achievement Award for "outstanding management" of our nation's cultural heritage. Her solo novels include This Widowed Land, the western Thin Moon and Cold Mist, and the apocalyptic thriller Maze Master.

W. MICHAEL GEAR, who holds a master's degree in archaeology, has worked as a professional archaeologist since 1978. He is currently principal investigator for Wind River Archaeological Consultants. His solo novels include the Western classic Long Ride Home, Big Horn Legacy and, as William Gear, This Scorched Earth.

The Gears, whose North America’s Forgotten Past series hit the international as well as USA Today and New York Times bestseller lists, are also the authors of the Anasazi Mysteries. They live in Thermopolis, Wyoming.

Kathleen O'Neal Gear is a former state historian and archaeologist for Wyoming, Kansas, and Nebraska for the U.S. Department of the Interior. She has twice received the federal government's Special Achievement Award for "outstanding management" of our nation's cultural heritage. With her husband, W. Michael Gear, she is the co-author of many books, including the North America’s Forgotten Past series (People of the Songtrail, People of the Morning Star, Sun Born, Moon Hunt, among others); and the Anasazi Mysteries series. She and her husband live in Thermopolis, WY.
W. Michael Gear, who holds a master's degree in archaeology, has worked as a professional archaeologist since 1978. He is currently principal investigator for Wind River Archaeological Consultants. With his wife, Kathleen O’Neal Gear, he has written the international and USA Today bestselling North America's Forgotten Past Series (including People of the Songtrail, People of the Morning Star, Sun Born, Moon Hunt, among others); and Anasazi Mystery Series.

Read an Excerpt

Vikings in North America

Pursuing the Myth of Paradise

---

By W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O'Neal Gear

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 2015 W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9247-7

---

CHAPTER 1

The Troublemaker's Tale

Who were the first Norse and Celtic visitors to North America, and what brought them here?

It sounds strange, perhaps, to say that a couple of bed boards changed the course of world history, but the man who owned the boards was no ordinary tenth-century gentleman. He was a notorious hothead who couldn't seem to stay out of trouble. In fact, the bed boards were just the last straw in a long line of offenses that had managed to get him banished from one region and two countries, and set him on the road to paradise. And we mean that literally.

Who was the troublemaker? He was an immigrant who had recently come to Iceland because he'd been banished from Norway for murder. He was clearly a man of questionable character, and the leaders of Iceland quickly concluded they wanted him gone. So in A.D. 982, the Icelandic Thing, the democratic parliament at the Thorsnes Assembly, met to decide the case involving the loan of a cow and some bedstead boards. The man at the center of the controversy was Eirikr Thorvaldsson, nicknamed Eirikr Raudi for his flaming red hair. He is better known to us as Eric the Red.

Let's talk about the man himself before we discuss the history of Norse voyages to North America. A man's character, after all, sets the stage for his actions, and in this case the man's actions would be the catalyst for legendary voyages in search of the mythical paradise that the Norse called Hvitramannaland, which literally meant "the Land of the White Men."

Eirikr arrived in Breidafjord, Iceland, around the year A.D. 979, where he married Thjodhild, the daughter of Jorund Atlason and Thorbjorg Ship-breast (the Norse had very descriptive names). He established a small farm in Haukadal by Vatnshorn, and probably tried to live within the bounds of society. However, it didn't take long for trouble to erupt. As Eiriks saga rauda, The Saga of Eirikr the Red, tells it:

Eirikr's slaves then caused a landslide to fall on the farm of Valthjof at Valthjofsstadir. His kinsman Filth-Eyjof killed the slaves near Skeidsbrekkur above Vatnshorn. For this, Eirikr slew Filth-Eyjof. He also killed Hrafn the Dueller at Leikskalar. Geirstein and Odd of Jorvi, Eyjolf's kinsmen, sought redress for his killing.

The saga doesn't tell us if Eirikr killed both men by himself, but since he alone is noted as going after the boards, he may have. So if we start counting, Eirikr had killed at least one man in Norway — though we don't know the actual count that got him banished from country — and by 979, he'd killed two more men. That's three murders so far. The saga continues:

After this Eirikr was outlawed from Haukadal. He claimed the islands Brokey and Oxney and farmed at Tradir on Sudurey island the first winter. It was then Eirikr lent Thorgest bedstead boards. Later he moved to Oxney, where he farmed at Erikrsstadir. He then asked for the bedstead boards back without success. Eirikr went to Breidabolstad and took the boards, and Thorgest came after him. They fought not far from the farm at Drangar, where two of Thorgest's sons were killed, along with several other men.

After that both of them kept a large following.

We can add Thorgest's two sons to the murder count, for a total of five, but how many is "several other men"? Let's guess it may have been three or four more, so maybe nine men dead at Eirikr's hands or the hands of those helping him. And we know Eirikr was not alone in the Thorgest fight. He brought companions to help him get the boards. The saga writer tells us:

Eirikr and his companions were sentenced to outlawry at the Thorsnes Assembly.

Eirikr was lucky. He was only found guilty of "lesser outlawry," similar to our charge of manslaughter. The Thorsnes Assembly clearly believed he had some justification for the killings. Eirikr and his companions were only banished from Iceland for three years. Full outlawry would have condemned him to skoggangur, "forest-walking," meaning he would have been banished for life from civilized society, literally condemned to "walk the forest." The crime of lesser outlawry kept his lands and property intact. They were not confiscated, so he could return in the future and take up his life again. As well, he had three years to leave Iceland. So:

He made his ship ready in Eirikrsvog, and Eyjolf hid him in Dimunarvog while Thorgest and his men searched the islands for him.

We presume that his friend, Eyjolf, had to hide Eirikr because he had traveled outside the "enclosure." The enclosure was a designated space, "composed by three sacrosanct homes, no more than one day's journey from each other, where the outlaw was permitted to stay while he arranged passage out of Iceland. He was allowed limited movement along the tracks directly joining these farms, and en route to the ship which would take him abroad. If found anywhere else, the outlaw could be killed without redress."

Obviously, Thorgest and his men hoped to find Eirikr outside the enclosure to take vengeance for the murders of their family and friends.

While Eirikr hid out, he made his decision:

Eirikr said he intended to seek out the land that Gunnbjorn, the son of Ulf Crow, had seen when he was driven off course westward and discovered Gunnbjorn's skerry (Gunnbjarnarsker). ... Eirikr sailed seaward from Snaefellsnes and approached land under the glacier called Hvitserk. From there, he sailed southwards, seeking suitable land for settlement.

It was a bold move. Eirikr Raudi set sail across the northern Atlantic at what was arguably the most dangerous period in history, the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted from around A.D. 900–1300. As sea ice disintegrated and the glaciers collapsed, they spawned massive ice islands — chunks of ice weighing billions of tons that drifted out to sea, where they melted and broke into smaller, but still gigantic, islands. In addition, as ocean temperatures climbed, arctic fog seems to have become particularly brutal. On his first voyage to Greenland with colonists, in A.D. 985 or 986, Eirikr left Iceland with twenty-five ships and around five hundred settlers. Only fourteen ships survived the journey.

What was it like to sail at this time? In the Saga of the Greenlanders, Bjarni describes the experience: Bjarni "set sail once they had made ready and sailed for three days, until the land had disappeared below the horizon. Then the wind dropped and they were beset by winds from the north and fog; for many days they did not know where they were sailing." Later, after Eirikr's son Leifr bought Bjarni's ship, he and his crew often found themselves lost while sailing to Vinland the Good: "... throughout the summer they were at the mercy of the weather and never knew where they were going."

Over the course of years, so many ships became lost at sea trying to cross the Atlantic that official expeditions were established to comb the shorelines in search of bodies. As The Tale of Tosti chronicles, it was the job of those who were "lig-lodin," corpse-lodin, to search the "northern wild regions during the summers, bringing back south for church burial dead bodies of shipwrecked and ice-wrecked mariners whom he found in caves and craters. By their side were always carved runes that would tell of all their misfortunes and torment."

Given these circumstances, why would Eirikr choose to head west across a perilous, iceberg-ridden sea, rather than returning to the civilized world of Europe? Even if Norway and Iceland had banished Eirikr, he could have settled elsewhere and probably built a good life for himself and his family. Was he a madman? Or just desperate to escape the bonds of civilization and find a place where no laws existed?

While both may be true to some degree, this story is actually a lot more interesting. You see, for most of his life Eirikr Raudi had been immersed in the widespread and mesmerizing tales of an earthly paradise that lay far to the west. The Norse called it Hvitramannaland. The Celtic term was Tir na bhFear bhFionn, and the British referred to it as Albania-land. All meant "the Land of the White Men."

Like others before him, Eirikr Raudi may have believed he could find it.

The Land of the White Men

From a European perspective, the myth of paradise goes back well over 3,000 years, and probably has its roots in the biblical concept of the Garden of Eden.

In Genesis 2:8 the site of the Garden of Eden, miqqedem, is usually translated as meaning "in the East," which many early people understood to mean that Eden was in Mesopotamia. However, the phrase could also be translated, "from of old," as in Psalms 77:6, 12; 78:12; 143:5 and Proverbs 8:22–23. The confusion over whether miqqedem had a temporal meaning rather than a geographical one led to some interesting historical problems. Many people longed to find Eden. But if you were searching for Eden, which way did you go? East or west?

The book of Genesis added to this confusion because, "In Genesis 2-11 the Yahwist depicts the movement of primeval humanity in an easterly direction from the garden (Gen 3:24; 4:16; 11:2). This movement is reversed in Gen 12:4 when Abraham begins his journey westward from Haran to Canaan. It is possible that the Yahwist does not place Eden in Mesopotamia but somewhere W (west) of that land, allowing for an easterly migration after the expulsion."

How do we know Eirikr was familiar with the story of the Land of the White Men? Because everyone around him was.

Irish hermits steeped in the lore of Tir na bhFear bhFionn were the first inhabitants of Iceland, arriving there perhaps as early as A.D. 795. Keep in mind that Irish Christendom was heavily influenced by the eremitical traditions of Christians in Asia Minor and Egypt, the early heart of the monastic movement, which placed great value on the virtue of solitude as a kind of penitential exile. It "drove its adherents to live on isolated rocks off the Irish coast or make long voyages in the North Atlantic. They used a simple boat made of skins stretched over a wooden framework, the so-called curach (a word related to Latin corium, 'skin')."

This powerful need to seek salvation through exile sent devout Irish monks in search of lonely outposts where they could diligently seek God. The Norse called these hermits papar and said they preferred the symbol of the anchor, for the Fisherman, to that of the cross. Hence, they were also known as anchorites.

Ari the Wise mentions anchorites in his Íslendingabók, written sometime between 1122 and 1133, and says that when Norsemen first arrived in Iceland, they found Irish monks already living there, but the monks left because they would not stay in the presence of heathens. In his excellent study The Conversion of Iceland, Strömbäck writes that monks who refused to be persecuted or to live with heathens, "once more set sail over the wide ocean, perhaps seeking fresh isolation in Greenland or perhaps setting course to the south, back to the lands they had left." We would add, here, that they may also have set their sights farther west, on the shores of North America; hence we have the story of St. Brendan and his legendary visit to America.

And we know for certain that Celts were present on the earliest Norse voyages.

Ancient vellum manuscripts called The Book of Settlements record the presence of anchorites on the North Atlantic journeys. There are five extant versions of this book, the oldest of which is the Sturlubók, translated by Sturla Thordarson between A.D. 1275 and 1280. The Sturlubók records that among those with Eirikr the Red on the journey to Greenland in A.D. 985 or 986 was an anchorite from the Hebrides. As well, The Saga ofEirikr the Red documents that on Karlsefni's journey to North America in 1003, he carried anchorite slaves from Scotland.

But probably all of the Christian colonists who traveled to Greenland during the tenth century were well-versed in the story of the Land of the White Men. Some of these colonists were Norse, but many of the settlers in the Breidafjord area of western Iceland, where Eirikr Raudi lived, were of Gaelic or British descent. How do we know? Anthropological genetics. DNA studies of modern Icelanders show that they have "a significant amount of Celtic ancestry, perhaps as much as 10 to 20%." Even more significant, while 75% of male ancestors of Icelanders came from Scandinavia, "the proportion of female ancestors from Scandinavia was only 37.5%. Most of the women, then, who settled in Iceland in the ninth and tenth centuries were from the Celtic parts of the British Isles."

As well, the linguistic and oral history of Iceland demonstrates a strong "Celtic strain in Icelandic language, making one wonder whether Celtic literary tradition may be partly responsible for Icelanders' prodigious creation of stories and sagas, which were probably not part of their Norwegian heritage. Icelandic language, as well, is closer to the Old Norse of Viking times than any other Nordic language, partly as a result of geographic isolation."

But what was Tir na BhFear BhFionn, Hvitramannaland, Albania-land? The Land of the White Men was a magical place that resided at the distant edges of the ocean, a paradise made manifest in an earthly geographical region, supposedly filled with strange creatures and bursting with animals, grapevines, forests, and unending happiness.

Celts had two terms for it. They either called it Tir na bhFear bhFionn or Irland hid mikla, Greater Ireland.

According to the Landnámabók,The Book of Settlements, Ari Marsson sighted it in A.D. 982 or 983 by sailing six days west of Ireland:

Their son was Ari, who drifted to White Men's Land, which some people call Greater Ireland. It lies in the ocean to westward, near Vinland the Good, said to be a six-day sail west from Ireland. Ari couldn't get away and was baptized there. This story was first told by Hrafn Limerick-Farer, who spent a long time at Limerick in Ireland. Thorkel Gellisson said some Icelanders got the story from Earl Thorfinn of Orkney, who said that Ari had been recognized in White Man's Land, and couldn't get away from there. ...

Interestingly, this last feature of the story, that Ari couldn't get away, bears a striking resemblance to Norse descriptions of the Fields of the Undying, the Odainsvellir. Once a person reached the mythical paradise of Odainsvellir, he could not return to this mundane world.

In Eiriks saga rauda, The Saga of Eirikr the Red, the Land of the White Men is mentioned in Thorfinn Karlsefni's story about his visits to Vinland and Markland, which took place around A.D. 1006 or 1007:

Now, when they sailed from Vinland, they had a southern wind, and reached Markland (Labrador) and found five Skraelingar (aboriginal Americans); one was a bearded man, two were women, two children. Karlsefni's people caught the children, but the others escaped and sunk down into the earth. And they took the children with them. ... They (the kidnapped children) said, moreover, that there was a land lying on the other side of their country, and the people there dressed in white garments, uttered loud cries, bore long poles, and wore fringes. This was supposed to be Hvitramannaland (the Land of the White Men). Then they came to Greenland and remained with Eirikr Raudi during the winter.

Where they, no doubt, told him their tales about the location of the legendary Hvitramannaland.

By the 1500s, maps even existed of this mythical paradise:

Sir Erlend Thordsson had received from abroad a geographical map of this Albania, or land of the white men. Which is located across from Vinland the Good, and which was formerly called by merchants great Ireland. ...

Other mariners also documented its location.

The Eyrbyggja Saga details the difficult journey of Gudleif Gudlaugson around A.D. 1029. Gudleif was trying to sail from Dublin to Iceland, but was driven off course and out into the open sea, where he and his crew became lost. When they finally sighted land, they had no idea where they were. Then the local inhabitants came to meet them, and the Norse (appropriately) thought they were speaking Irish. Greater Ireland and the Land of the White Men seem to always have been associated with the same place, paradise. So it especially surprised Gudleif when the natives attacked and captured his entire crew and marched them inland to a court to be tried and sentenced. The saga does not tell us what crime they had committed, but the experience of Jacques Cartier on July 24, 1534, may give us a clue.

Captain Cartier and his crew entered Gaspe Harbour on an overcast foggy day, a typical summer day. He met the native inhabitants and presented them with gifts as a gesture of goodwill. A few days later, Cartier ordered a group of French sailors to erect a thirty-foot cross on the shore; then they returned to their ship. Shortly thereafter a canoe of four natives paddled out to their vessel to speak with Cartier. The chief's name was Donnacona. This is the official account of that first meeting:

... pointing to the cross he made us a long harangue, making the sign of the cross with two of his fingers; and then he pointed to the land all around about, as if he wished to say that all this region belonged to him, and that we ought not to have set up this cross without his permission.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Vikings in North America by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O'Neal Gear. Copyright © 2015 W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents

Cover,
Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Introduction,
The Troublemaker's Tale,
The Land of the White Men,
European Preconceptions of Native America,
First Contact: Who Did the Norse Actually Meet in the Land of the White Men?,
Climate Change: What Happened to the Greenlanders?,
Endnotes,
Tor and Forge titles by W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear,
About the Authors,
Copyright,