“As we reached what seemed a safe and quiet haven,” Antonio went on in his letter, “we saw a large number of natives crowding the shore, armed and ready to strike at us to defend the island. Zichmni instructed all of us to show peaceful intentions. The natives sent over ten of theirs, who spoke ten different languages; we understood none of the men except one, who said he came from Iceland. The man was brought before Zichmni, who asked to know the name of the island and its ruler.”
At this point Antonio’s tale took a baffling turn into mythology. “The man said the name of the island was Icaria, and all the kings who ruled the island were called Icarus, like the first king, who was the son of Daedalus, king of Scotland. Wishing to sail further, Icarus had left his son behind to rule the island in his absence in accordance with the laws that are currently in use there. But Icarus perished in a great storm and this is why to this day they call their sea the Icarian Sea.”
Nicolò the Younger claimed he was quoting Antonio’s letter verbatim, but this was not the language of a fourteenth-century Venetian merchant—his fingerprints were all over this section of the story.
Icaria, of course, was the island of Ancient Greece named after Icarus, son of Daedalus, the clever Greek architect who designed the labyrinth for Minos, king of Crete. Out of favor with Minos, Daedalus fashioned a pair of wax wings for himself and his son Icarus in order to fly to Sicily. But Icarus flew too close to the sun. His wings melted, and he fell into the sea and drowned. His body washed ashore on an island that was named after him to remind everyone of the perils of human hubris.
I could not understand why Nicolò the Younger had chosen this bizarre variation of the Icarian myth—and with a Scottish twist no less! But references to antiquity appeared frequently in sixteenth-century travel narratives and charts, the River of the Amazons being perhaps the most famous example. The use of imagery borrowed from Ancient Greece was not just a literary device; it was probably a way for the author to gloss over his own confusion about the new geography.
It occurred to me that Icaria might be Nicolò the Younger’s distorted transcription of Acadia, the old name for Canada’s maritime region. Some linguists say the place-name was derived from caddie/quoddie, a word used by native tribes to designate a fertile region. But others say it is not derived from a native term at all and that it was introduced into the language by Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524: while sailing north of the Chesapeake Bay, he called the coastal region Arcadia because it brought to his mind the pristine beauty of mythical Arcadia—again Ancient Greece! Then the “r” was dropped when Verrazano’s diaries were transcribed, and Arcadia became Acadia or Acadie, as the French possessions along the coast of Canada were known.
In any case, the Icaria that was floating in the Zen map between Engronelant, Estotiland, Frisland and Islanda appeared to be a sizable island. Geographers have claimed it was everything from county Kerry in Ireland (Richard Henry Major) to St. Kilda, the last of the Hebrides (Frederick Lucas). But Zen devotees have usually identified Icaria as Newfoundland—albeit a Newfoundland that had clearly drifted much too far out into the ocean.
LET US get back to the scene on the crowded shore. The throng of natives stood there facing down Zichmni and his men. They wore nothing but shabby animal skins and kept their bows and arrows at the ready. “The interpreter told us the natives were satisfied with their God-given state and did not wish their lives to change,” Antonio wrote, describing the tense encounter. “For this reason they did not welcome foreigners. They wished to warn Zichmni against any temptation to break their laws, adding that we would face certain ruin because they were ready and willing to lose their lives to protect those laws.”
Despite their hostile attitude, the natives conveyed through the interpreter their curiosity about the newcomers. They asked Zichmni to leave one of his men with them, assuring him that he would be well treated. According to Antonio, the Icarians were especially keen to have one of the Venetians stay on with them “so they could learn our language and our customs just like they have learned those of other countries from the ten or so foreigners who live among them.”
The passing reference to the “foreigners” living among the natives brought to my mind the later adventures of the French navigator and explorer Jacques Cartier. Stopping in Newfoundland on his way to and from the St. Lawrence in the 1530s, he spoke to the natives and recognized a number of words from European languages, including Breton, Gascon, Provençal, Catalan and Italian. Today we know that fishermen sailed from Europe to fish off the Grand Banks in the fifteenth century; the words Cartier recognized were probably traces left by those fishermen in Newfoundland. But it may be that European fishermen reached Newfoundland as early as the fourteenth century, which would account for the “foreigners” mentioned by Antonio.
Zichmni reacted prudently in the face of the natives’ overwhelming force—there is no mention that he left any of his men on the island, Venetian or other. After gathering as much information as possible on the topography of the island, the coastline and the natural havens where he might weigh anchor and attempt another landing, he ordered his crew to set sail and move on. But as soon as he thought his small fleet was out of sight, he reversed course and followed the coast until he found a bay suitable for landing. The men went ashore “in great hurry” to gather driftwood and fetch fresh water. But a few natives living in the area saw the Europeans and alerted their fellow tribesmen with smoke signals. Soon a large number of them, heavily armed, appeared right above the landing site. “They rushed down to shore shooting arrows and killing and wounding many of our men,” Antonio wrote. “There was no point in our trying to make peace with them: the more the battle raged on, the fiercer and crueler they became. We were forced back onto the boats and out of the bay.” They rounded the cape and sailed south, always hugging the shore. Zichmni wanted to attempt one more landing to replenish the stock of supplies before taking to the high seas. But the natives were relentless. “A vast and well-armed multitude continued to follow us on land, passing over rivers and mountains. As we rounded another cape pointing north, we found ourselves trapped in treacherous waters filled with sandbars and bristling shoals. For ten days we could not extricate ourselves from that dangerous sea and often risked losing our fleet. Fortunately, we had very fine weather. As we rounded the easternmost cape, we saw more natives at the top of the cliffs and along the shore. They shrieked and yelled and continued to fling arrows from a great distance. Their hostility showed no sign of abating. We nevertheless decided to find a good harbor and make one last attempt to communicate with them. It was all in vain, for the people—in this they were truly like wild animals—never laid down their weapons and showed every intention of fighting us to death if we attempted a landing. Zichmni saw that if he persisted in his attempt, we would soon find ourselves without supplies. As the wind finally picked up the fleet headed out to sea.”
If Zichmni and his men were indeed leaving Newfoundland behind, their contact with the North American continent was limited to that hurried landing to gather driftwood and fresh water. In 1497, a full century later, another Venetian, John Cabot,6 reached Newfoundland aboard the Matthew after searching in vain for a shortcut to China. Although he made history, Cabot’s foray ashore was just as hasty, for he feared being eaten by the natives. After quickly planting the banners of the king of England and of Saint Mark, he rushed back on board and sailed to England, where Henry VII awarded a prize of £10 “to him that found the New Isle.” Four years later his son, Sebastian Cabot, returned to Newfoundland and this time stayed long enough to round up three natives who were “clothed in beast skins and ate raw flesh and spoke such speak that no one could understand” and brought them back to England.
All that was in the future. Zichmni, meanwhile, was apparently in no hurry to return home. His fleet sailed northwest for six days (i.e., toward Labrador). Then the weather changed and a strong southwesterly breeze—Antonio used the Venetian word garbino—started blowing in the
direction of Greenland.7 “The sea grew rougher but for four days we managed to sail fast before the wind until at last we sighted land. We made our approach warily because the sea behind us was in great turmoil and the land we had reached was unknown to us.”
* * *
1 Nicolò the Younger writes that Messer Nicolò went on to explore the eastern coast of Greenland before turning south, but he gives no additional information on that particular journey, and my feeling is that he was still confusing Greenland with Iceland. However, some scholars think Messer Nicolò may have sailed west and explored parts of eastern Greenland before returning home.
2 Isabella survived all her children, including Henry; the earldom and all her estates were inherited by her grandson, William Sinclair.
3 Here Nicolò the Younger contradicts himself, having just written that all except the fisherman had been gobbled up by the natives.
4 Jerónimo Aguilar sailed to America with Juan de Valdivia, the Spanish conquistador. They were shipwrecked off the coast of Jamaica and twenty men drifted to the coast of Yucatán in a small boat. Most were dead by the time they touched land. The survivors were captured by the Mayan people. Five of them, including Valdivia, were sacrificed at a feast and their bodies were devoured. Aguilar was to be sacrificed at the following feast and was held in a cage with a companion. The two managed to escape and they surrendered to another Mayan chief who took them on as slaves. Hernán Cortés, who freed them in 1519, during his first expedition to Mexico, employed Aguilar as an interpreter during his conquests.
5 From the French L’Anse aux Méduses, Jellyfish Bay.
6 John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), born around 1450 in Genoa, moved to Venice with his family when he was still a boy and became a Venetian citizen in 1476. He traveled to the eastern Mediterranean and became a skillful navigator. He moved to London around 1484. Like many great seamen of his day he was obsessed by the notion of finding a northwestern passage to Cathay. News of Columbus’s discoveries prompted Henry VII of England to authorize a voyage from Bristol to search for new lands. After one aborted trip in 1496, he sailed again in 1497 and reached Newfoundland in the mistaken belief that he had reached the northeast coast of China. A second expedition in 1498 was probably lost at sea.
7 Frederick Pohl says the fleet sailed in a southwest direction, and after four days reached Nova Scotia. He goes on to assert that Zichmni/Henry Sinclair established a base camp in Nova Scotia, entered into a close relationship with the Micmac Indians, and went on to explore the coast of New England. This reading of the Zen narrative forms the basis for the claim that Sinclair was among the first Europeans to explore North America. A few years ago members of Clan Sinclair unveiled a memorial in the shape of a Viking ship’s prow on a hill overlooking Guysborough Harbour, at the end of Chedabucto Bay, in northeastern Nova Scotia. And at Halfway Cove, a few miles up the road, the Prince Henry Sinclair Society of North America has placed a fifteen-ton granite boulder to commemorate what the society believes was the actual landing place of the expedition. Pohl’s interpretation with regard to the direction taken by the fleet can be traced to an erroneous translation in the first English edition of the Zen narrative, published in London in 1616 by Hakluyt, who described “the wind changing to the Southwest.” Two centuries later, in the second English translation, Richard Henry Major repeated the error (“the wind changing to the south west”). But the original Italian text is clear: the wind was blowing from the southwest and the fleet was sailing ahead of the wind in a northeastern direction, toward Greenland.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Engroneland
THE WESTERN coast of Greenland was so sparsely populated at the end of the fourteenth century, the landscape still so pristine, that at first glance a mariner might well have believed he was coming into uncharted territory. There were no hostile natives crowding the shore to repel the intruder, no villages in sight along most of the coastline, no immediate sign of human presence. But a bird’s-eye view of the territory would have shown the newcomer that he was not alone. The Inuit, who had first migrated to Greenland from the north some three thousand years earlier, had advanced all the way down the coast, to the southern region, where the last of the Norse settlers lived a precarious existence in a few scattered farms—all that remained of the once prosperous colony founded by Erik the Red.
The sagas say that Erik, or Eirik as he was known, an Icelandic outlaw, sailed west around AD 980 looking for land sighted by stray navigators and made landfall on the eastern coast of Greenland. He then headed south and, rounding the cape, discovered that the climate was warmer and the territory more hospitable on the western coast. After spending three years exploring fjords and meadowlands, he sailed back to Iceland to recruit more settlers. He called the country he had discovered Greenland, for he thought that men would be much more eager to go there if the place had an attractive name. The marketing trick worked: as many as twenty-five ships sailed with him although only fourteen arrived at their destination.1
Erik settled at Brattahlid, a pleasant tract overlooking Eiriksfjord (today’s Tunulliarfik) with rich pastures for raising sheep and cattle. Archaeologists digging at the site have uncovered a large farmstead with at least three major buildings scattered in grassy fields filled with bluebells and poppies that slope to the edge of the water.
The other settlers established farmsteads in nearby fjords. The land was good and the fishing waters and hunting grounds were plentiful. More Icelanders migrated to Greenland in the following decades and the Norse colony eventually grew to have a population of about 6,000. The Eastern Settlement was actually in the lower part of the western coast and occupied an area that went roughly from Brattahlid down about a hundred miles to Herjolfsnes. The smaller Western Settlement—where the population, at its peak, was about 1,500—developed further north, near the area of today’s capital, Nuuk.
Sometime in the twelfth century the Norse settlers began to interact with the Thule Inuit; they called them skrælings—“scruffy wimps.” The Thule Inuit were themselves, in a manner of speaking, newcomers to Greenland, having migrated from Alaska and Canada sometime between AD 900 and AD 1000. Theirs was the third great migration from the north. The Saqqaq Inuit had settled in Greenland as early as 2500 BC, followed by the Dorset Inuit around 700 BC. Nearly two thousand years later, the Thule Inuit colonized the eastern coast of Greenland, then moved down the western coast, eventually coming into contact with the Norse settlers, who were pushing north in search of new hunting grounds.
During the heyday of the Norse settlements, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Greenland was an important link in the trade chain that stretched across the North Atlantic from Norway to North America. Greenlanders specialized in exporting exotic luxury goods to Europe: narwhal horns, walrus tusks, polar bear and white and blue arctic fox furs, and the prized white falcons for which European and Arab princes paid extravagant prices. Other staples were dried caribou meat, walrus and seal skins, cod liver oil, seal blubber, eiderdown and the coarse warm wool spun and woven by Greenlandic women during the long winters. Greenlanders traded their goods for iron and pitch as well as malt and honey. They had a great need for timber as there were no trees in Greenland, but in time it became simpler to mount logging expeditions to Labrador than to wait for ships carrying Norwegian wood.
Detail of the Carta da navegar published in 1558 by Nicolò the Younger showing Engronelant (sic). It was the most accurate depiction of Greenland published until that time. (illustration credit 7.1)
Greenland became the Church’s westernmost outpost. A bishop’s see was established at Gardar in 1124 and a cathedral was erected there around 1200. In all, five churches were built in the Eastern Settlement, as well as a Benedictine nunnery and an Augustine monastery, and two more in the Western Settlement. Most of these buildings have long disappeared and only a few large stones that formed the outer wall of the Gardar cathedral remain in place. At Hvalsey however, which is a day’s walk from Gardar, the four walls
of the old church are still standing on a steep hill overlooking the fjord. One can easily picture the old Norse folk from nearby farmsteads gathering for Sunday Mass as the bells ring out festively.
The decline of Norway in the fourteenth century gradually brought trade with Greenland to a halt. As fewer and fewer ships arrived, the Greenlanders turned inward, living off their products and their meager trade with the Inuit. Inevitably, the Church lost touch with its remotest flock. After Bishop Alf died, about 1378, at the time of the Great Schism, several bishops were named to replace him, but none made the trip out to Gardar. With the onset of the Little Ice Age, the five-century-long cooling period that took place roughly from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, climatic conditions worsened steadily and farms struggled to survive in an atmosphere of gloomy isolation.
In her novel The Greenlanders, Jane Smiley movingly describes the decline of one family in the vanishing Norse colony. The story begins in the second half of the fourteenth century. The winters get colder, food becomes scarcer and a series of diseases—the “coughing illness,” the “vomiting illness,” the “joint illness”—further decimate the dwindling population. Family feuds weaken the community and the chieftains eventually cease to participate in the Thing—the yearly assembly. Even the Church, once an aggregating force in the Greenland colonies, degenerates into an agent of division. And then, one day, Bristol ships sail into Eiriksfjord. English marauders come ashore and go on a rampage. They desecrate the cathedral in Gardar, kill the churchmen, rape the women and steal all the food they find, dealing a deadly blow to a doomed community.
Irresistible North Page 13