The Far Traveler - Nancy Marie Brown
Page 27
Next I tried chronology. Thjodhild’s mother, Thorbjorg Ship-Breast, must have been the youngest of her siblings, for her brother-in-law, Gold-Thorir, was making waves in western Iceland before the year 930. The big names in 982 are Snorri of Helgafell, Illugi the Black, Thord Gellir of Hvamm, and Olaf the Peacock.
The chieftain Snorri of Helgafell was then nineteen, just coming into his power. Eirik has a very slight connection to Snorri: Through his wife he is distantly related to Thorbrand of Swan Fjord, whose four sons are Snorri’s foster-brothers. (How distantly? Her cousin’s son married the sister-in-law of Thorbrand’s wife.) Thorbrand’s sons are Eirik’s staunch supporters. Snorri will soon marry the daughter of Killer-Styr—another of Eirik the Red’s friends—but the saga treats it as a great triumph of Killer-Styr’s political skill simply to win Snorri’s promise not to meddle in Eirik’s case. Killer-Styr has no good reason to support Eirik the Red, and no one else in his large and aggressive family joins him.
Illugi the Black at this time was newly married and throwing his weight around. He had just trounced Killer-Styr and his kinsmen in a dowry dispute; young Snorri had brought the two sides to a truce, rather to Illugi’s advantage, and Illugi had pledged Snorri his friendship. Illugi the Black did not take sides in Eirik’s quarrel, though if pressed he would have recalled his kinship, through his mother-in-law, to Thord Gellir. His father-in-law was that Asbjorn the Wealthy against whom Gudrid’s father, Thorbjorn Vifilsson, held a grudge.
Thord Gellir’s power was waning (he may have already died; he fades out of the stories in the 970s), and his three sons were not living up to expectations. One, Eyjolf the Gray, had spent the last sixteen years hunting down Gisli the Outlaw—the chieftain Snorri’s uncle, but also the killer of Snorri’s father—and had just been repudiated by Snorri for setting on the man fifteen to one.
The bastard Olaf the Peacock, rather than any of Thord Gellir’s sons, was now the leader of the Dales. He was the only chieftain on whom Eirik had any claim—through his wife’s mothers second husband’s son or through Killer-Styr’s son’s father-in-law, who was Olaf’s half-brother—but since neither he nor any other chieftain took Eirik’s side, the Hvamm clan’s diminished power was enough to win the case and to outlaw Eirik from Iceland for three years.
[>]—two households—around thirty people altogether: The average size of a Viking household circa 1000 is hotly disputed by scholars. Thirty is the number of “friends” The Saga of Eirik the Red says went to Greenland with Gudrid’s father. Orm of Arnarstapi and his wife are the only ones named. In my reading of the sagas, as well as my discussions with archaeologists Birgitta Wallace, John Steinberg, and Mjoll Snaesdottir, I find thirty to be one large household or two smaller ones. In Eyrbyggja Saga, for example, we learn of a sickness that killed “more women than men.” In the translation by Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards (1973), we read: “Six people died one after another, and the hauntings and night-walkings drove others away from the farm. There had been thirty servants there in the autumn, but eighteen of them died, five more ran away, and by mid-winter there were only seven of them left.” The word translated as “servants,” however, is hjóna, which means “the domestics, family, household,” according to the Cleasby-Vigfusson dictionary. The dictionary notes that modern Icelandic distinguishes between hjón meaning “man and wife” and hjú meaning “servants,” but Old Norse doesn’t. So the thirty would have included the unmarried farmer and his mother, who kept house for him. Archaeologists trying to estimate the size of a Viking household from the sleeping area of their longhouses have come up with an estimate of twenty-five to thirty people for a large farm. Gunnar Karlsson in his History of Iceland (2000), however, notes that the population estimate of 40,000 for twelfth-century Iceland, which is widely quoted by archaeologists and which is based on a census recorded by Ari the Learned in The Book of the Icelanders, takes “the large households that are sometimes described in sagas to be either fictional or restricted to a small top layer of society”; it assumes, instead, that “the average household may not have numbered more than eight people: a couple, three children, one elder, and two farm-hands.”
[>]—No further expeditions were sent: The Saga of the Greenlanders tells of an expedition led by Leif Eiriksson’s bastard half-sister Freydis, whose two ships arrive in Vinland after Gudrid and Karlsefni (with only one ship in this version) have left. An argument arises, and Freydis has one entire ship’s crew put to death—she herself beheads the five women. I consider this episode fiction—the saga author’s attempt to fill in a gap and explain how a whole shipload of Vinland explorers from Greenland was lost. In this I follow Richard Perkins, who writes, “It seems to me unlikely that Freydis ever existed, let alone ever led an expedition to Vinland. ... I would suggest that Freydis is an entirely fictional figure, invented to act as a foil to the pious Gudrid.” He defends his argument by noting, among other things, that “Freydis’s descendants are obscure or nonexistent.” Even more telling is the lack of any revenge taken upon Freydis or her men, once they return to Greenland, for the killing of their countrymen.
[>]—half a mark of gold: According to Bruce Gelsinger’s Icelandic Enterprise (1981), half a mark of gold was equal to at least 1,500 yards of homespun cloth. Yet in Egil’s Saga, King Aethelstan of England gave Egil two gold arm-rings, each weighing half a mark, and a good cloak in reward for a poem. Olaf the Saint, who reigned from 1014 to 1030, fixed the landing tax at half a mark, or four ounces, of silver; before that, according to Ari the Learned in The Book of the Icelanders, it fluctuated between four and five ounces. In the 1200s, a mark of gold was worth eight times as much as a mark of silver.
[>]—the cousin, Amor Old-Woman’s-Nose: Karlsefni had many relatives in Skagafjord who could have provided him with horses. I chose Arnor not only because of his wonderful nickname, but because he lived closest to the harbor at Kolkuos. It is hard to tell if he was still active in 1010. In one saga, he is called the most important leader in the north in 981; another finds him still feuding in 1030. He does appear to have a close connection to Gudrid’s family, however. His son Asbjorn marries Ingunn, the daughter of Gudrid’s cousin Yngvild of Laugarbrekka. The descendants of Asbjorn and Ingunn—known as the Asbirnings—are the most powerful family in Skagafjord in the years 1180 to 1245. During this same time, Gudrid’s great-great-grandson Brand Saemundarson was bishop of Holar (1163 to 1201) and was possibly compiling Gudrid’s saga.
[>]—the Vikings’ ell: A modern dictionary will give a length of 45 inches for an ell, but the word has been used for various lengths over the centuries. The original ell, or as the Cleasby-Vigfusson Icelandic-English Dictionary calls it the “primitive ell,” was the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. This ell, of about 18 inches or half a yard, was used in Iceland until the 1200s. The Cleasby-Vigfusson entry for alin reads: “About this year, by a law of bishop Paul, the ell was doubled into a stika, a stika being precisely = 2 ells = an English ell of that time. To prevent the use of bad measure, a just and lawful stika (yard) was marked on the walls of the churches.”
[>]—Gudrid came to Rome: The sagas do not say when Gudrid took her pilgrimage, only that it was shortly after Snorri married. My estimate that she left Iceland after 1025 and returned before 1030 is based on Snorri’s expected age at marriage and on the political situation in Europe, particularly in Norway and Rome. Snorri was born in approximately 1005. Olaf the Saint, who ruled Norway from 1014 to 1030, encouraged pilgrimages; in the period 1025 to 1027 he was courting the Icelanders and would likely have helped Gudrid sail from his kingdom to Denmark. Although King Knut of Denmark and England was trying to overthrow Olaf, not until 1028 did it become open war. Knut also encouraged pilgrimages, going so far as to negotiate reduced tolls in central Europe for pilgrims from his kingdoms. The next interlude of peace in Norway was not until the reign of Magnus the Good (1035 to 1047), when Gudrid would be fifty and Snorri thirty. In addition, I would hope that Gudrid saw Rome durin
g Pope John XIX’s reign, from 1024 to 1032. The pope who ruled after him, from 1032 to 1045, was the infamous Benedict IX, considered “a disgrace to the Chair of Peter,” who sold the papacy so that he could marry. Between 1045 and 1049, seven popes (one is called an antipope) fought for the chair, as political factions within Europe struggled for control of the Church. If she had seen Rome while it was a battleground, I do not think the experience would have strengthened Gudrid’s faith or inspired her to become a nun. Finally, it is logical to assume that huge numbers of well-armed travelers would be taking the various Pilgrim Ways to Rome for the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor in 1027, making that time the safest for a woman from Iceland to travel.
Sources
RECOMMENDED READING
Two scholarly conferences—one in Iceland and one in Newfoundland—and an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., celebrated the thousand-year anniversary of the discovery of Vinland. The exhibition catalog, which is beautifully illustrated, is the best place to start to learn more about Gudrid and her times; the conference proceedings assume some prior knowledge of the subject matter.
Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, edited by William Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000). See also http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/, where you can learn to play hneftafl.
Approaches to Vinland: a conference on the written and archaeological sources for the Norse settlements in the North-Atlantic region and exploration of America, edited by Andrew Wawn and Thórunn Sigurðardóttir (Reykjavík: Sigurðar Nordal Institute, 2001).
Vinland Revisited: The Norse World at the Turn of the First Millennium. Selected Papers from the Viking Millennium International Symposium, 15–24 September 2000, Newfoundland and Labrador, edited by Shannon Lewis-Simpson (St. John’s, Newfoundland: Historic Sites Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2003).
To learn more about the sagas, I recommend Gísli Sigurðsson’s The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). Gisli notes that Gudrid acquired the nickname viðförla—variously translated as “the Far-Traveler,” “the Wide-Traveled,” or “the Far-Farer”—long after the Middle Ages. He has not been able to trace the first appearance of her nickname.
MEDIEVAL TEXTS
The Saga of the Greenlanders (Grænlendingasaga) and The Saga of Eirik the Red (Eiríkssaga rauða) have been translated many times. The most recent are by Keneva Kunz in Sagas of Icelanders: a selection (2000) and Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson in The Vinland Sagas (1965). Excerpts in this book, along with all of the epigraphs and most selections from other medieval texts (except as listed below), are my own translations.
[>]: Wood-Leg’s lament from Grettir’s Saga, trans. Ole Crumlin-Pedersen in “The Sporting Element in Viking Ships and Other Early Boats,” Sailing and Science, ed. Gisela Sjøgaard (1999)
[>]: sailing directions from Hauksbók, trans. Judith Jesch in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory McTurk (2005)
[>]: the wave rune poem from The Saga of the Volsungs, trans. Jesse Byock (1990)
[>]: the story of Grettir’s Bath from Grettir’s Saga, trans. Denton Fox and Hermann Palsson (1974)
[>], [>], and [>]: excerpts from Adam of Bremen’s History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, trans. Francis J. Tschan (1959)
[>]: the destruction of Lindisfarne from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Gwyn Jones, History of the Vikings (1968)
[>]: the attack on Constantinople from The Works of Luidprand of Cremona, trans. F. A. Wright (1930)
[>]: Simeon of Durham’s account of the attack at Tynemouth, trans. David M. Wilson, ed., From Viking to Crusader (1992)
[>]: Dudo of Normandy (excerpts), trans. Else Roesdahl in The Vikings (1991)
[>]: the story of Unn the Deep-Minded from Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements), trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (1972)
[>]: the hafgerðing from The King’s Mirror (Konungs Skuggsjá), trans. Laurence Marcellus Larson (1917)
[>]: Greenland traveler’s verse, “I see death in a dread place,” from The Book of Settlements, trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (1972)
[>], [>]: advice to a merchant from The King’s Mirror (Konungs Skuggsjá), trans. Laurence Marcellus Larson (1917)
[>]: description of the monks from Richer’s Histoire de France, trans. Richard Erdoes, A.D. 1000: Living on the Brink of Apocalypse (1988)
[>]: description of the mass from “The Story of Thorvald the Far-Traveler,” trans. Einar Ó. Sveinsson, Age of the Sturlungs (1953)
[>]: the blessing of the ale from Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, trans. Thomas DuBois in Nordic Religions in the Viking Age (1999)
[>]: verses from “Words of the High One” (Hávamál), trans. W. H. Auden and Paul B. Taylor in Norse Poems: Edda Sæmundur, selections (1981)
[>]: Old Norse Homily Book (excerpts), trans. Anders Hultgård in Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic Place-Names, ed. Tore Ahlbäck (1990)
The standard dictionary of Old Norse is The Icelandic-English Dictionary, Second Edition, by Richard Cleasby, Gudbrand Vigfusson, and Sir William Craigie (1957; rpt. 1969), known as Cleasby-Vigfusson. The translators of skörungur are: George Dasent (1861, 1866); W. C. Green (1893); Sir Edmund Head (1866); Eiríkr Magnússon & William Morris (1892–1901); F. York Powell (1896); Muriel Press (1899); W. G. Collingwood & J. Stefánsson (1901); Reeves, Beamish, & Anderson (1901); G. H. Hight (1914); Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Pálsson (1960s); Denton Fox & Hermann Pálsson (1970s); Jenny Jochens (1995); Keneva Kunz (1990s); Anthony Faulkes (2001); Bo Almquist (2001); and Eric V. Youngquist (2002).
ICELANDIC SAGAS AND HISTORY
Uno von Troil, who accompanied Sir Joseph Banks to Iceland in 1772, argued that the sagas were just as trustworthy as Tacitus or Livy. Von Troil wrote in Swedish; I used the Icelandic translation of his letters, Bréf frá Íslandi, by Haraldur Sigurðsson (1961). As mentioned above, the best introduction to the sagas is Gísli Sigurðsson’s The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition (2004).
The recognized expert on the Vinland Sagas is Ólafur Halldórsson. See his “Lost Tales of Gudrídr” in Sagnaskemmtun: Studies in honour of Hermann Pálsson, ed. Rudolf Simek, Jónas Kristjánsson, and Hans Bekker-Nielsen (1986); his entry in Approaches to Vínland; and, for readers of Icelandic, Grænland í miðaldaritum (1978).
Good discussions of women in saga times can be found in:
Carol Clover, “Regardless of Sex,” Speculum 68 (1993)
Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (1991)
Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (1995)
Preben Meulengracht Sorensen, The Unmanly Man (1983) Other sources in English include:
Rasmus B. Anderson, ed. The Flatey Book and Recently Discovered Vatican Manuscripts Concerning America as Early as the Tenth Century (1908)
Lois Bragg, Oedipus Borealis: The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga (2004)
Thomas Bredsdorff, Chaos and Love: The Philosophy of the Icelandic Family Saga (2001)
Jesse L. Byock, Medieval Iceland (1988)
————, Viking Age Iceland (2001)
W. A. Craigie, The Icelandic Sagas (1913)
Paul Durrenberger, The Dynamics of Medieval Iceland (1992)
Stefán Einarsson, A History of Icelandic Literature (1957)
Bruce Gelsinger, Icelandic Enterprise (1981)
Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, The Arnamagnaean Institute Manuscript Exhibition (1992)
Gunnar Karlsson, The History of Iceland (2000)
Magnus Magnusson, Iceland Saga (1987)
Rory McTurk, ed. A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (2005)
William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking (1990)
Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues with the Viking Age (1998)
Páll Ólafsson, Iceland the Enchanted (1995)
William Pencak, The Conflict of Law and Justice in the Icelandi
c Sagas (1995)
Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. Old Icelandic Literature and Society (2000)
Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth (1999)
M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, The Saga Mind (1973)
Einar Ó. Sveinsson, Age of the Sturlungs (1953)
SHIPS AND SAILING
Arne Emil Christensen and Ole Crumlin-Pedersen have long been the recognized experts on Viking-ship technology. In addition to their articles in the collections recommended above, see Christensen’s “Viking Age Boatbuilding Tools” and “Viking Age Rigging, A Survey of Sources and Theories” in The Archaeology of Medieval Ships and Harbours in Northern Europe (1979); and “Boats and Boatbuilding in Western Norway and the Islands” in The Northern and Western Isles in the Viking World, ed. Alexander Fenton and Hermann Palsson (1984). Ole Crumlin-Pedersen and Olaf Olsen describe the retrieval of the Skuldelev ships in Acta Archaeologica 38 (1967). See also “Viking Shipbuilding and Seamanship” in the Proceedings of the Eighth Viking Congress (1981) and “The Sporting Element in Viking Ships and Other Early Boats,” Sailing and Science, ed. Gisela Sjøgaard (1999).
The voyage of the replica Gaia is chronicled by Judy Lomas, The Viking Voyage (1992); that of Snorri by Hodding Carter, A Viking Voyage (2000).