The Farfarers

by Farley Mowat

  During the winter of 980–81, while Erik was enmeshed in his blood feud with Thorgest, a Christian missionary arrived in Iceland from Norway. He was styled Bishop Frederik, and was accompanied by a soldier of fortune named Thorvald Kodranson, who served as the cleric’s bodyguard.

  Thorvald seems to have had his work cut out for him. Those who proselytized for White Christ in pagan Iceland were seldom greeted warmly. Not only were most doors shut to them, but arms (in both senses of the word) were often raised against them. Nevertheless, Ari Marson, who had by now become a leader of the important Reyknessing clan, befriended the missionary.

  Although Ari himself was apparently not yet ready to embrace Christianity, his son Gudleif did so and became the sword-swinging champion of yet another missionary, who played a catalytic role in the eventual conversion of Iceland to the new religion.

  Along with other principal men of the district, Ari would have attended the Thing of 981 which dealt with the feud between Erik and Thorgest. Almost certainly Ari would have been on Erik’s side, if only because he was a relative. When Erik was banished abroad, he chose to go to Greenland and Ari could have accompanied him on what promised to be a profitable Viking venture.

  Although we are not given a date for Ari’s arrival in Albania, we can construct a time frame within which it must have occurred. We know that Thorfinn Skull-splitter, Earl of Orkney, knew of Ari’s capture and that the earl himself died in 988. We also know Ari was still in Iceland in the winter of 980–81. Since news of Ari’s capture could hardly have reached Earl Thorfinn in less than two years from the time of the event, I conclude that Ari became a prisoner in Albania between 981 and 986, which embraces the period of Erik’s Greenland exile.

  One wonders why Ari was treated so leniently by his Alban captors. Why, instead of cutting his throat, did they let him become a prominent man in their society? Perhaps it was because he was pro-Christian. It is stated that he was baptized in Albania.

  For whatever reasons (love of an Alban woman? rejection of the bloody mores of Norse culture?), Ari became a de facto Alban.

  The sagas dealing with Ari also help locate Albania/Hvítramannaland which, the sources make clear, is one and the same. The Annals relate that several lands lay south of Greenland. These included the western shores of Baffin Bay and Hudson Strait.3

  We are told that, to the south of Skraeling country, which was Baffin Island and northern Labrador, lay Markland (Woodland), the forested portion of Labrador. South of Markland was Vinland (Grassland) which, most authorities now agree, must have been eastern or northeastern Newfoundland.4

  Next to [Vinland] and a little beyond [behind?] lies Albania, which is Hvitramannaland.

  Note that Alba/Albania is next to Vinland, not south of it. Translators disagree as to the precise meaning of the qualifier. Some say “a little back from”; others opt for “a little behind”; and still others, “somewhat behind.” Regardless of which one accepts, it is clear that Alba, like Vinland, was in Newfoundland.

  This is confirmed on a map drawn early in the seventeenth century by Icelander Jon Gudmonson, working from earlier maps which are now lost. Immediately south of the Strait of Belle Isle, Gudmonson depicts a land mass which can only be Newfoundland. It bears the single legend: ALBANIA. Not only does Gudmonson’s map show us where Alba was then believed to lie, it dates his original source to sometime before the twelfth century, after which Albania is generally replaced on Scandinavian maps by Vinland in honour of Leif Erikson’s famous voyage.

  If Norse scribes then and later were less than precise as to Alba’s exact location, European merchant mariners certainly knew where it was. Landnámabók tells us that Hrafn, a Norse seafarer living in Ireland, was the first to get wind of Ari’s whereabouts, and the context makes it clear he had heard the news from traders who had seen Ari in Albania. The Annals entry is even more specific. It states categorically that Irishmen and Icelanders recognized Ari in Albania. “Irish men” could have meant merchants from English ports who took their westward departures from Ireland. The Icelanders referred to may have been the crew of a ship skippered by Gudleif Gudlaugson, of whom we will hear more in due course.

  In the spring of 1997, Robert Rutherford, an artist friend, sent me a reproduction of a painting he had made of the eastern Newfoundland outport of Cupids. Rutherford had depicted the magnificent view from the crest of Spectacle Head, which dominates Cupids and its environs. In the foreground were some structures that looked uncommonly like tower beacons.

  “Thought you’d twig the cairns,” he said when I phoned him. “They caught my eye first thing when I visited Cupids. I’ve seen nothing like them in Newfie, or anywhere else in Canada for that matter. They remind me of neolithic stuff in Orkney and Shetland.”

  According to Ginevra Wells of the Cupids’s Historical Society, the three towers—grouped within a hundred yards of one another—have suffered more from the ravages of man than of nature. Visitors have been in the habit of removing stones from the structures and carrying small ones away as souvenirs.

  The largest tower rises, as a slightly tapering cylinder nearly five feet in diameter, to four feet in height before constricting to a diameter of four feet for the balance of its height. The total height is now about seven feet but was originally somewhat higher, perhaps eight feet in all. The double-cylinder outline is of a piece with the odd outlines of several Arctic beacons, and may have been a factor in conveying a specific message to the beholder.

  The second-largest tower has a base diameter of approximately four feet. It also is cylindrical for about half its height, then tapers steeply to two feet in diameter at just under seven feet tall.

  The third and smallest is barely six feet high and three in diameter. Narrowly conical, it gives the impression either of being an afterthought or of having been demolished, then partially reconstructed.

  Ancient beacons of unknown origin overlook the village of Cupids on Conception Bay, Newfoundland.

  The stones must have been carried up to the crest from a considerable distance away. The nearest source, a talus slope, lies nearly three hundred feet below the site and can only be reached by a circuitous and difficult route. The beacon stones themselves are thickly lichen-covered and convey an impression of extreme age.

  Nothing seems to be known about the “cairns”’ origins, antiquity, or purpose. Local residents say they “have always been there.” “Always” is a long time in Cupids, which is one of, if not the earliest of, the post-Columbian European settlements in North America, having been officially founded in 1610 by John Guy on behalf of the London and Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers. However, there is a persistent belief that a family by the name of Dawes homesteaded the cove as early as 1550.

  Unlike most such enterprises undertaken by the seventeenth-century English in Newfoundland, Seaforest Plantation (as Guy mellifluously named his settlement) was not primarily intended as a shore station for the exploitation of marine wealth. It was designed to be a pastoral endeavour demonstrating that the New Founde Land could nurture agrarian enterprises.

  Guy surveyed much of the eastern part of the island in search of the best site for such a project. He found what he wanted at Cuper’s Cove in Conception Bay, so called because coopers (barrel makers) for the fishing trade were accustomed to set up summer shop there in order to take advantage of the cove’s remarkably fine stands of hardwoods.

  Cupids, as it would eventually become, also offered exceptional farming opportunities, including a stretch of highland meadow unique in eastern Newfoundland. This natural commons, stretching almost four miles to the south, is called The Grasses, and still pastures cattle. And Cupids’s gardens remain unmatched in eastern Newfoundland for their productivity. Cupids was the logical choice for a pastoral settlement.

  Although Cupids has probably been continuously inhabited for the last four hundred years, nowhere in the historic record have I been able to find any mention of its distinctive beacons. And distinctive they sur
ely are. A modern mariner with knowledge of them, but without charts or other means of locating the place, would experience little difficulty finding it. A mariner in search of Cupids Cove a thousand years ago would have been able to find it just as readily, if the beacons had been standing then.

  They may well have been.

  The Alban crofters into whose hands Ari Marson fell during the brief skirmish in southern Crona had long been preparing to emigrate. They wasted no further time. Almost before the longboat filled with Erik Rauda’s Vikings was out of sight, they were loading two little ships that had been lying hidden in the recesses of the fiord.

  There were those amongst them who were for leaving Ari behind—with his throat slit. He was saved by the discovery that he was wearing a small silver crucifix around his neck. Limping from an arrow wound in his thigh, he was hustled aboard and bound to a thwart.

  Laden to their marks, the little vessels sailed at midnight. Three score people crowded aboard scarcely left room for five cows, a favoured bull, three ponies, a dozen sheep, and the dogs—barely enough livestock to provide a new start in a new land.

  Luck was with the emigrants at first. The voyage across the Labrador Sea was uneventful. Having raised the peaks of the Torngats, they coasted southward to the beacons marking the location of Okak harbour.

  When they entered the port they found it vibrant with activity. Dozens of small craft streaked the surface like so many water-striders, circling a bulky English merchantman riding at anchor in midstream. Five valuta vessels were crowded alongside her, their crews vigorously engaged in trading while the merchant skipper entertained the principal local men in the after cabin, bargaining with them for a pilot to the new Alba in the south.

  A crowd of Tunit and Albans gathered as the two ships from Crona nosed onto one of the prepared landing beaches. At the sight of a Norseman being led ashore bound and haltered, some of the onlookers were for stoning him to death, but the majority were willing to let the priest decide his fate. The difficulty was that Alba in the West possessed only one cleric and he was then far away to the south on the Great Island, where he might remain for months.

  Ari’s captors shrugged. They were themselves headed for the Great Island and the Norseman had given no trouble so far. In fact, one of the women, a widow with four children, was beginning to look upon him with considerable interest.

  Early in August a small fleet of southbound vessels departed Okak Bight. It included the English merchantman, three local valuta ships (one of which was carrying immigrants), and the two recently arrived Cronian vessels.

  Two days out of Okak a westerly gale caught the flotilla as it was about to round the out-thrust northern lip of Hamilton Inlet. The valuta vessels and the merchantman were able to find shelter among the off-lying islands, but the two Cronian ships, whose masters were unfamiliar with the coast, were swept offshore.

  They never did rejoin the convoy. They spent the next several days and nights driving east under bare poles, while strong currents carried them south. It was a hard passage. Overburdened with people, cattle, and chattels, the little ships were often awash with spray and solid water. When finally the wind fell out, they found themselves drifting in a death-cold pall of fog.

  Every living thing aboard was wet and chilled. The stench from the slopping bilges was almost palpable. There was no fodder for the cattle, and precious little food for people. Moreover, the skippers had no idea of their whereabouts. Nor would they have until the sun broke through the murk long enough to let them calculate the latitude. Meanwhile, there was nothing to be done but wait for the fog to part and a favouring wind to rise.

  On the fifteenth day at sea, the sun at last burned through. Slack sails filled with a gentle nor’east breeze. The skippers took sun sights and found they had reached the latitude in which, so they had been told, the new Alban settlement lay. They laid a westerly course.

  Dawn of the following day revealed a massive headland jutting out of the sea to the south, and a land horizon rippling distantly to the westward beyond a glittering expanse of open water.

  The ships drew together while the skippers conferred. It seemed possible that the headland might mark the eastern cape of the Strait of Swift Waters, which, they knew, led to the Inland Sea. There was little choice but to investigate. It was urgently necessary that cattle and people should be put ashore to refresh themselves.

  So the vessels bore southwesterly and that same evening made a landing on the west coast of the headland. After a few days’ rest, they continued south and west until it became apparent that this was no strait, but an enormous bay. Disconcerted, they coasted around its foot and headed northward up its western shore.

  One day they opened the mouth of a cove that seemed to offer everything they might have wished in a new home. Here was vibrant forest rich in maples, birches, and other exotic trees. They went ashore at the head of the cove, landing on an estuarine meadow of alluvial soil the like of which few Albans had ever seen before. To the south were broad expanses of open highlands given over to grass.

  There was abundant natural food here for men and beasts. Berries, even wild grapes, abounded.5 The bottom of the cove was alive with fishes, lobsters, mussels, and scallops. Salmon thronged the river that ran into the head of the cove from a nearby lake filled with trout. Within yards of the landing place, the cattle found themselves knee deep in strand wheat and succulent beach peas.

  The immigrants had been disheartened by the discovery that the “strait” was a dead-end bay, and by the realization that they might have to retrace their course to Okak. The temptation to spend what remained of the summer in this seductive cove was strong. After all, what could the new Alba to the west offer that might surpass this place?

  So they lingered from day to day, roaming a luxuriant countryside, revelling in fragrant forests and fruit-laden slopes. Even when the high flight of geese told them summer was over, they still procrastinated. In the end they determined to spend the winter where they were. Search for the new Alba could be renewed next summer.

  While children herded the cattle to the highland plateau, there to lay on fat against the coming winter, men and women worked together to build homes at cove head. Although for the most part these were of traditional design, posts were used instead of stones to give vertical strength to sod walls supporting wood-raftered, sod-covered roofs.

  During the winter, which was mild enough that cattle could survive and even thrive in the open, men explored the surrounding countryside. They found many deep inlets along the northwestern coast of the bay, but none which offered amenities comparable to those of their own cove.

  One party, venturing a long way to the west, came to the shores of what at first they thought might be the elusive strait, but which, on further investigation, revealed itself to be yet another dead-end bay.

  Of singular significance was the failure of the scouts to find signs of human occupation, old or new, Alban or native. It seemed to the fifty-odd people from Crona that they had stumbled on a portion of paradise as yet unclaimed by humankind.

  When spring came, crops were planted in the deep soil at cove head. What had been implicit was now established. These people would search no further for a home. Their new Jerusalem was here.

  Early that summer one of the ships, manned by a bare-needs crew, was sent off to make contact with other Albans, if she could. She returned just before autumn having found and crossed the mouth of the Strait of Swift Water and reached Okak. There her people had exchanged furs for more cattle.

  One task remained before the little community snugged itself in for the second winter. Every available pair of hands was set to the gathering, sorting, and carrying of flat stones up to the high crest of the ridge protecting the settlement from the north. Here a crew, supervised by one of the elder men, raised three tower beacons. Visible to any vessel approaching from the northward, they proclaimed the message.

  “ WE ARE HERE!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY - SEVEN
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br />   ALBA - IN - THE - WEST

  After losing the two Cronian emigrant vessels off Hamilton Inlet, the remainder of the little fleet continued on its way. Ten days after leaving Okak, the three valuta vessels and the English merchantman reached the entrance to Tusker Bay. Here they parted company. One valuta vessel turned into the bay, heading for its clan croft on the shores of Two Gut Pond. The remainder bore west across the mouth of the broad inlet, turned south along the outer coast of Port au Port peninsula, and entered the great sweep of St. George’s Bay. They came to anchor behind Flat Island at the bottom of the bay.

  The island was a scimitar of sand some seven miles long, covered with natural meadows upon which many shaggy little cattle and ponies grazed. The anchorage, as the master of the merchantman was glad to know, provided the best shelter to be had along the entire southwestern coast of the Great Island.

  The emigrants aboard the valuta ship were delighted to hear that a strip of arable land extended for thirty-five miles around the foot of the bay, and to be assured that its quality exceeded that of anything they had ever known.

  Good land was but one of many gifts the region had to offer. The summers were long, hot, and sunny, yet with enough rainfall to green all growing things. The winters were nothing like as severe as in Crona, and there was a limitless supply of wood and even outcroppings of coal.

  Timber had always been a singularly precious commodity to the northern islanders. In the vicinity of St. George’s Bay hardwoods and softwoods were to be found of a size and an abundance previously undreamed of.

  Country food abounded. At the appropriate seasons the numerous brooks and rivers draining into the bay ran riot with shad, gaspereau, eels, trout, and salmon. Capelin spawned on the beaches in such profusion that breaking waves could pile the glistening roe as high as a man’s knees. Spawning runs of herring and squid made the bay waters seethe right to the edge of the landwash; and huge cod that followed the bait fish could be speared from shore rocks without getting one’s feet wet.