After the song, and the congratulations, the trader asked Snorri if he might meet her.
‘Vinland!’ he said to Hekja. ‘I was down there, just last year.’
Hekja started. ‘How are they all? Freydis? And the colony?’ she asked eagerly.
The old man barked a laugh. ‘Colony? There’s no colony there now. Ruins, that’s all we found.’
‘No!’ cried Hekja.
Snorri took her hand. ‘It doesn’t mean that they’re dead,’ he said quietly. ‘They may have gone back to Greenland. Or even to another place in Vinland, safe from Skraeling attacks. I’ll contact my uncle, get him to send a ship to Greenland next summer. I’m sure we’ll have news of them then.’
‘Of course,’ said Hekja, numbly. She walked over to the palace window, and stared out at the neat fields, trying to remember the smell of Vinland forests, the sound of Freydis’ laughter or the look on her face all those years before, when she told a frightened thrall how the albatross soared across the world. Freydis, the generous, the ruthless, the visionary.
Suddenly Hekja knew that what Snorri said was true. And now at last she knew the song that she should sing for Freydis.
Somewhere, far from land, Freydis was still sailing, her eyes fixed on a great bird overhead, waiting for the clouds on the horizon that would be a new land, with jewels hanging from the trees.
AUTHOR NOTES
This story is based on real events, told in the ‘Gräenlendinga Saga’ and ‘Eirik’s (Erik) Saga’, about two hundred years after they happened. When the sagas contradict each other I’ve chosen bits from each. In other places I have simplified events.
Perhaps no one in history has ever been described in two such different ways as Freydis Eriksdöttir. In one saga Freydis is a dutiful, courageous wife—I didn’t make up the scene where she charges the Skraelings, nine months’ pregnant and sword in hand. In the other saga she is a villain, killing five women with an axe. I have assumed that both stories have some grain of truth.
We shall never know what Freydis Ericsdöttir was really like. There is no doubt she was an extraordinary woman. I suspect she has been lost to history mostly because the later male writers didn’t know what to make of her.
Thorvard, Leif the Lucky and Erik the Red (or Eirik Raudi) were real people too, and the places they travelled to also exist. Hikki and Hekja are mentioned in the sagas as two Scottish runners who were taken on Leif’s first voyage to Vinland, but nothing else is known about them. I have placed them on Freydis’ voyage instead. Finnbogi too was a real person but there is no reason to think he was a villian. I may have done a brave adventurer a real injustice.
No one is sure where Vinland is. Viking long house remains have been found at L’Anse aux Meadows on the Newfoundland coast. But the coast there doesn’t fit the detailed descriptions of Vinland in the saga, and wild grapes don’t grow there. The grapes may have been other berries that could be made into wine—or maybe Leif Erikson was boasting about the lushness of the new land, just as his father had called his icy wastes Greenland.
But it is likely that the long house remains are from another Greenlander voyage, and Vinland is further south where wild grapes do grow and the winters are milder than in Newfoundland. Or maybe the weather was very much warmer for a brief period in the years when the Vikings travelled up and down the coast of what is now Canada and the United States, and the land was very different.
I have tried to keep the Vinland in this book close to the description in the sagas, rather than place it at any known bit of land today. The ‘Skraelings’ are based on descriptions in the sagas and also from accounts of 15th and 16th century European explorers. However, cultures—and areas occupied by various Native American nations—would have varied enormously between about 1000 AD, when Vinland was ‘discovered’, and the 15th century, and almost certainly changed even more in the next five hundred years as well.
And if I have only come within whistling distance of the truth, perhaps I have done no worse than the saga singers, all those centuries ago.
Dates No one knows exactly when Leif Eriksson and the others went to Vinland. It may have been anywhere from 987 to 1011 AD. Our only information comes from the ‘sagas’, which were written as entertainment rather than as an exact history (and were almost certainly rewritten for political and religious purposes too), and like the other information in them their dates can be contradictory. But very roughly:
982 AD: Erik and his followers are outlawed for three years in Iceland. Erik had already been outlawed in Norway.
986 AD: Erik leads twenty-five ships of immigrants to Greenland. Fourteen ships reach the new land, with 400 colonists. The other boats sink or turn back.
1000 AD: Leif ‘The Lucky’ Eriksson travels to Vinland, stays the winter and returns again a year later.
About 1002 AD: Freydis Eriksdöttir leads an expedition to Vinland to trade or colonise, or is a member of another expedition with her husband Thorvard and Erik’s son, Thorvald. The expedition returns a year or three years later, though in one version Freydis stays behind.
About the Author
Jackie French’s writing career spans 15 years, 39 wombats, 120 books for kids and adults, 15 languages, various awards, radio shows, newspaper and magazine columns, theories of pest and weed ecology and 28 shredded-back doormats. The doormats are the victims of the wombats, who require constant appeasement in the form of carrots, rolled oats and wombat nuts, which is one of the reasons for her prolific output: it pays the carrot bills.
Jackie’s love of history began as a child and has been the inspiration for the series of books that began with Somewhere Around the Corner, Daughter of the Regiment, Soldier on the Hill, The White Ship, Valley of Gold and Tom Appleby, Convict Boy. Jackie feels that the past was not only a fascinating adventure, but also holds the clues to understanding our own time.
Jackie’s most recent awards include the 2000 Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers for the critically acclaimed, Hitler’s Daughter, which also won the 2002 UK Wow! Award for the most inspiring children’s book of the year; the 2002 Aurealis Award for Younger Readers for Café on Callisto; ACT Book of the Year for In the Blood; and for Diary of a Wombat with Bruce Whatley, the Children’s Book Council Honour Book, NSW Koala Award for Best Picture Book, Nielsen Book Data / ABA Book of the Year Award, the Cuffie Award for favourite picture book (USA) and the American Literary Association (ALA) for notable children’s book, among other awards.
Visit Jackie’s website www.jackiefrench.com
or
www.harpercollins.com.au/jackiefrench
for copies of her monthly newsletter
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OTHER TITLES BY JACKIE FRENCH
Wacky Families Series
1. My Dog the Dinosaur • 2. My Mum the Pirate
3. My Dad the Dragon • 4. My Uncle Gus the Garden Gnome
5. My Uncle Wal the Werewolf (June 2005)
6. My Gran the Gorilla (January 2006)
Phredde Series
1. A Phaery named Phredde • 2. Phredde and a Frog Named Bruce
3. Phredde and the Zombie Librarian
4. Phredde and the Temple of Gloom
5. Phredde and the Leopard-Skin Librarian
6. Phredde and the Purple Pyramid
7. Phredde and the Vampire Footy Team
8. Phredde and the Runaway Ghost Train (November 2005)
Outlands Trilogy
In the Blood • Blood Moon • Flesh and Blood
Historical
Somewhere Around the Corner • Dancing with Ben Hall
Soldier on the Hill • Daughter of the Regiment
Hitler’s Daughter • Lady Dance • Valley of Gold
How the Finnegans Saved the Ship • The White Ship
Tom Appleby, Convict Boy
Fiction
Rain Stones • Walking the Boundaries • Sum
merland
The Secret Beach • Beyond the Boundaries • A Wombat Named Bosco
The Book of Unicorns • The Warrior - The Story of a Wombat
Tajore Arkle • Missing You, Love Sara • Dark Wind Blowing
Ride the Wild Wind: The Golden Pony and Other Stories
Picture Books
Diary of a Wombat • Pete the Sheep
Adult Fiction
A War for Gentlemen
Non-fiction
Seasons of Content • How the Aliens From Alpha Centauri Invaded
My Maths Class and Turned Me into a Writer
How to Guzzle Your Garden • The Book of Challenges
Stamp, Stomp, Whomp (and other interesting ways to get rid of pests)
The Fascinating History of Your Lunch
Big Burps, Bare Bums and other Bad-Mannered Blunders
To the Moon and Back • Rocket Your Child into Reading
The Secret World of Wombats (August 2005)
Copyright
Angus&Robertson
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia
First published in Australia in 2005
This edition published 2010
by HarperCollinsPublishers Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
A member of the HarperCollinsPublishers (Australia) Pty Limited Group
www.harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Jackie French 2005
The right of Jackie French to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
French, Jackie.
They came on Viking ships.
ISBN 0 207 20001 4 (pbk.).
ISBN 978 0 7304 4476 3 (ePub)
1. Vikings – Juvenile fiction. I. Title.
A823.3
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They Came On Viking Ships Page 22