The Farfarers: Before the Norse

by Farley Mowat

  Pringle reports that a team from the University of Calgary, using metal detectors and other high-tech equipment, found evidence, some of it almost microscopic, of 288 pieces of copper and iron in two Dorset (Tunit) sites on Little Cornwallis Island. These sites are within a few miles of two boat-roofed foundations.

  Much of the iron found in eastern Arctic sites is thought to have come from fragments of a massive nickel-iron meteorite that struck Cape York, the northwestern point on the Melville Bay coast, sometime between 2,000 and 10,000 years ago. According to Pringle, “Current research suggests that prehistoric Arctic dwellers began hammering the metal into tools about 1200 years ago,” which would be in the latter part of the eighth century.

  However, during the eighth century, as for several centuries previously and for at least two centuries thereafter, no native peoples inhabited Greenland, Ellesmere Island, or the northern portion of the Baffin Bay basin. The only people who seem to have been in that region at the right time would have been Alban valuta seekers. I find it reasonable to suppose they were the first to find and exploit the Cape York meteoric fragments; that they made meteoric iron available to Tunit in the northeastern Canadian Arctic as a trade item; and that they pointed the way to the source both for Tunit and for the successor, Thule-culture people.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WESTERN GROUNDS

  1 A period of cold and stormy weather returned to the north towards the end of the eighth century. It endured for about a hundred years and brought a renewal of heavy pack ice, which would have made navigation to Kane Basin and beyond difficult, if not impracticable.

  2 Thomas E. Lee, “Archaeological Findings, Gyrfalcon to Eider Islands, Ungava, 1968,” in Travaux Divers, no. 27 (Quebec: Centre d’Etudes Nordiques, Université Laval, 1969).

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WESTVIKING

  1 The Icelandic sources are discussed at some length in Part 1, Appendix A, of Westviking (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965).

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  LAND TAKING

  1 A Norse chieftain presided over his household from a raised seat beside which stood two, often ornately carved, posts, which were symbolic of his authority. If he moved to a new home, he was careful to take his high-seat posts with him. Mention of the posts here is indicative of his intention of establishing himself in Iceland.

  2 Presumably the brothers had reconnoitred, and may even have wintered at, one or both places during earlier visits. Some geographers conclude that both features may actually have been islands in Ingolf’s and Hjorleif’s time.

  3 Vestmannaeyjar is the name they still bear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CRONA

  1 Icelandic historians are generally in agreement that most of the island’s existing topographical names were acquired during the Norse settlement period and have been retained more or less unchanged.

  The Norse name givers of that period were pagans (Iceland did not accept Christianity until A.D. 1000) yet a number of Icelandic place names include one of three words signifying a Christian presence or connection. The words are kross, kirk, and papa. Kross seems to have referred especially to standing crosses visible from some distance. Kirk now generally means “church,” but in early Icelandic times frequently designated a small, but always Christian, chapel. Norse pagans referred to their places of worship as temples.

  The Norse were pragmatists. A land taker, seeing a cross standing on a point of land, would be apt to call the place Krossness (Cross Point), the name by which inhabitants probably already knew it. The name would remain. If he homesteaded land upon which a chapel or Christian shrine stood, he might very well have named it Kirkjubol (Chapel Place), even though he himself was a staunch follower of Thor.

  Chapels, shrines, and standing crosses were distinctive features in early Christian countries. I believe the Norse occupiers of Iceland accepted and continued to use an existing toponymy that included the names of many such places. New Norse-inspired names of similar origin were undoubtedly added after the Norse accepted Christianity, but the elder names endured.

  A cursory examination of the map of Iceland reveals fifty-nine kirk, kross, or papa names in the eastern region; thirty-three along the south coast; twenty-five in the western district; and twenty-nine in the northwestern peninsula. The names identify thirty-six places where crosses once stood; twenty-nine chapel sites; seven places distinguished by the papa component; and some thirty-four crofts or steadings whose names include one or other of the above trio. I conclude that many, if not the majority, of such names owe their existence to Alban habitation of the country.

  2 When the Norse took over a country, one of several fates awaited the native inhabitants. They might flee. They might stay behind at the considerable risk of being slaughtered or enslaved. If enslaved they might be sold abroad, or put to work at home. Another choice was to withdraw into a remote and unwanted region where they might hope to survive until the Norse came to look upon them as predatory nuisances (like wolves) and hunted them down or captured them.

  One way or another, a genetic residue of the original inhabitants would nevertheless have been preserved in the ongoing population. Its size and influence would have varied according to local conditions.

  In Shetland a distinctive physical residue seems to have survived for some time on Yell, Unst, and Fetlar.

  Orkney appears not to have had a visible residue, probably because there was no place in that archipelago for outcasts to hide, except perhaps briefly on Hoy.

  I believe an important refuge in Iceland was the Dranga peninsula on the gnarled northwestern fist Iceland shakes at Crona. It was one of the last districts to attract Norse settlers. Alban refugees may well have hung on in its grim valleys for a generation or two until, inevitably, they were overwhelmed even there.

  3 When Brattahlid was excavated C-14 dating techniques had not yet been devised, so the site could not be accurately dated. Scandinavian historians have assumed it could not be earlier than the year of Erik’s arrival in Greenland. Although the site has been considerably disturbed, it should still be possible to obtain usable C-14 samples from it and so determine its real age. However, neither Danish scholars nor any others have shown an interest in doing so.

  Many Norse steadings in the Northern Islands, Iceland, and Greenland may well have been built on existing habitation sites. Since the sequential structures were often very similar, as were the tools and utensils used by many generations of inhabitants, it is not possible to accurately determine the identities of the first comers, or when they came, except through the use of modern dating techniques.

  4 I have evaluated the nature and qualities of sea-going ships of those times, and discussed how they were navigated, in Westviking, appendices E and F (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965).

  5 Westviking, Appendix J, The Old Church Documents.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - ONE

  UNGAVA

  1 Livyers is a Labrador term for people of mixed race. It means “people who live here.” I use it in preference to any of the other terms signifying people of mixed race.

  2 Although it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the marks made by steel knives and those of flint tools, metal saw and axe marks are readily identifiable. It is of particular importance to note that Dorset culture is not supposed to have possessed the drill, yet Lee found numerous artefacts from Late Dorset layers that had been neatly and cleanly drilled, almost certainly with metal bits.

  3 Thomas E. Lee, “Payne Lake, Ungava Peninsula, Archaeology, 1964,” in Travaux Divers, no. 12 (Quebec: Centre d’Etudes Nordiques, Université Laval, 1966); “Archaeological Discoveries, Payne Bay Region, Ungava, 1966,” in Travaux Divers, no. 20 (Quebec: Centre d’Etudes Nordiques, Université Laval, 1968).

  4 Some authorities reject the postulated presence of Europeans in North America in pre-Columbian times because few European artefacts of that period have been found in situ. This would be a valid objection if it related to t
he massive movements of trade goods in post-Columbian times. But the fact is that pre-Columbian trade between Europe and North America (including Greenland) was on a relatively small scale. Trading ships were few, small, and often far between. Records confirm that it was unusual for more than two or three to reach Norse Greenland in any given year, and there were intervals of several years when no trading ship arrived there. Commercial congress with mainland North America would probably have been as scanty.

  Furthermore, inbound cargoes were mostly consumed by settlers, leaving little to be traded to the indigenes. And “consume” is the right term. Hard goods, especially metal wares, were safeguarded through the generations until they virtually disintegrated from use. The scarcity of such goods on homestead sites in Greenland occupied by Norsemen for four centuries testifies to the care with which imported goods were husbanded. We can rest assured that pre-Columbian European settlers in Ungava, Labrador, and Newfoundland would have guarded imports in like manner and would have left just as little evidence of them.

  Significant quantities of European hard goods probably did not even enter North American native cultures prior to the sixteenth century—not because Europeans were not present, but because they themselves would have engrossed most of what imports were available. In any case, trade between natives and early European immigrants may never have been predicated on durable goods. We know that Norse expeditions to Newfoundland mainly traded perishables such as coloured cloth and even dairy products. And this despite the fact that some of these expeditions were mounted by Icelandic merchants who ought to have been relatively well provided with hard goods.

  5 Thomas E. Lee, “Payne Lake, Ungava Peninsula, Archaeology, 1964,” in Travaux Divers, no. 12 (Quebec: Centre d’Etudes Nordiques, Université Laval, 166); “Fort Chimo and Payne Lake, Ungava, Archaeology, 1965,” in Travaux Divers, no. 16 (Quebec: Centre d’Etudes Nordiques, Université Laval, 1967); “The Cartier Site, Payne Lake, Ungava,” in Anthropological Journal of Canada, no. 1 and 2, vol. 17 (Ottawa, 1979).

  6 The Cartier site houses may have been boat-roofed. Although three of the five have suffered so much damage that their lengths cannot now be accurately determined, in all cases the internal width was close to fourteen feet. The two whose original length can be reliably estimated were between thirty-five and forty feet long. Roofing such structures with boats (allowing for bow and stern overhang) would have required vessels forty to forty-five feet in length. Their length-to-width ratios would have been between 2.8:1 and 3.0:1—rather narrow for ocean-going vessels, but adequate and even advantageous for those intended for use mainly on rivers and inland waters.

  Could such relatively large vessels have navigated between Payne Bay and the mouth of the Payne River? Probably yes. Twenty-six-foot Hudson Bay freight canoes manned by Inuit which, because of their narrow beam and heavy wood-and-canvas construction, doubtless drew just about as much water as a forty-foot skin boat, regularly made this journey into recent times.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - TWO

  OKAK

  1 “Innu” (not to be confused with Inuit) is what the Indians of Labrador call themselves. The Innu are descendants of the Maritime Archaic tradition and include the tribes known to Europeans as Nascopie and Montagnais. They are primarily nomadic caribou hunters, who until recently moved seasonally over most of forested Labrador and northern Ungava.

  2 Albans in the west would have made extensive use of Ramah chert, not only as an article of trade but also in the manufacture of their own artefacts. Thomas Lee concluded that a number of chert artefacts he excavated at the “longhouses” on Pamiok Island in Ungava Bay were not of Dorset, Thule, or Inuit origin, and might have been manufactured by Europeans. These are discussed and illustrated in Travaux Divers, no. 20 (1966) and no. 27 (1968), and in Collections Nordicana, no. 33 (1970), all from the Centre d’Etudes Nordiques, Université Laval, Quebec.

  3 All three of these beacons are still extant, although the two smaller ones have sustained some damage.

  4 Only the stub of one beacon remains. The other has been reduced to rubble.

  5 Angelica archangelica, commonly called angelica, is a robust umbelliferous plant whose succulent stem somewhat resembles tough celery. Indigenous to northern Europe and parts of Asia, it was a staple in the diet of the first people to settle the northern regions after the withdrawal of the glaciers. Angelica may, in fact, have been the first plant “cultivated” by these early hunter-gatherers.

  Wherever the northerners went, angelica went with them. It is now to be found in many parts of Iceland, southern Greenland, and northeastern North America. It may even have been the first of the multitude of alien plants to be brought to the new continent by Europeans. I have found it growing in close proximity to most of the sites I believe were once inhabited by Albans.

  6 In September 1997, I was again briefly able to visit the Okak site, accompanied by Callum Thomson and Keith Nicol, a geographer from Newfoundland’s Memorial University. We had only time for another cursory look, but Nicol was at least able to conclude that the twin depressions were not attributable to natural causes. For his part, Callum pointed out that, if the depressions indeed represented habitations, the abundance and availability of timber locally would have made it likely that they had been timber roofed.

  I agree that, assuming the structures were in use for any significant length of time, they would eventually have been roofed with some combination of timber and turf. However, initially , they could have been boat-roofed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - FOUR

  A NEW JERUSALEM

  1 The Barrenland Grizzly was found in Ungava and eastward into the Torngat Mountains until historic times, when the species was extirpated in the region. Cf. Sea of Slaughter (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984).

  2 During the eighteenth century, Newfoundland fishermen came to the Labrador in great numbers, and not a few remained to settle. Some brought girls from home, but many married Inuit women. Attempts were made by the livyers at keeping domestic animals. Missionaries at Okak kept a few cattle for a time, and an occasional family elsewhere had a pony, but in general few succeeded in pastoral enterprises. The failure of animal husbandry was primarily due to a severe deterioration of the climate that began in the fourteenth century and continued into the nineteenth. Conditions in the eighteenth were so severe that cattle and horses could not survive the winter unless fed and stabled. But local hay had by then become so scarce as to be almost nonexistent, and the cost of shipping in feed from abroad was prohibitive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - FIVE

  ERIK RAUDA

  1 I have detailed the material supporting this statement in Westviking; however, new evidence has recently been brought to my attention.

  A chart dated c. 1598 in the collection of the Wm. Barentz Museum in Terschelling, Holland, traces the Arctic explorations of Willem Barentz. Although primarily concerned with Barentz’s famous voyage to the European Arctic, the chart extends its coverage far to the west. Greenland is figured, and the name “Alba” appears on its coast. The source of the western material is unknown, but may well have been Norse.

  2 Westviking, Chapters 2 to 5 inclusive.

  3 Westviking, Appendix D, Norse Geographical Concepts.

  4 By the latter part of the tenth century, when this account was committed to parchment, Hvitramannaland and Albania had become interchangeable names referring to a land lying to the west of Greenland.

  Clerical scribes rendering oral sagas into Latin may have assumed the word Albania was cognitive with the Latin alba, meaning white. From this misapprehension the word Hvitramannaland—White Man’s Land—could have arisen.

  On the other hand, the Norse may have bestowed the name Hvitramannaland on Alba-in-the-West because of the white clothing that seems to have been a distinguishing characteristic of Alban clergy, if not of the entire population on ceremonial occasions. This is established in the account of the western Albanians given to Karlsefni’s party by Skraeling children captured
on the coast of Labrador. Cf. Chapter 29, Karlsefni and Company.

  There is also the possibility that the name White Man’s Land was an example of racism, meaning white-skinned people as opposed to natives.

  5 Westviking, Chapter 6, The Ocean Whirl, pp. 75–76.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - SIX

  ARI GOES TO ALBANIA

  1 “VI doegr” in the surviving Latin texts. But six days would not have taken a vessel of those times even to mid-Atlantic. The original saga must have said “XVI doegr,” which is close to the actual sailing distance between Ireland and Newfoundland. Numerical errors of this sort are common in mediaeval documents.

  2 Cf. endnote no. 4, Chapter 25, Erik Rauda.

  3 Westviking, Appendix D, Norse Geographical Concepts.

  4 Vin in ancient Norse meant grass or pasture. It was not until the arrival of Christianity and Latin in Norway and Iceland that vin became confused with the Mediterranean (Latin-based) word for wine and eventually acquired that meaning. Thereafter scribes mistakenly translated Vinland as Wineland, an error perpetuated by scholars into our time.

  5 Wild grapes apparently grew in eastern and probably other parts of Newfoundland until the post-fourteenth-century climatic decline. Cf. Westviking, pp. 125–28.