The Discoveries of America to the Year 1525Weise, Arthur James
History
The Discoveries of America to the Year 1525
Weise, Arthur James
America -- Discovery and exploration
“Karlsefne and his men now perceived that notwithstanding the country
was fruitful they would be exposed to many dangerous incursions of its
inhabitants if they should remain in it. They therefore determined
to depart and return to their own land. They sailed northward along
the coast and found five Skraelings clothed in skins sleeping on the
sea-shore. They had with them vessels containing marrow mixed with blood.
Karlsefne’s men believed that they had been banished from the country
and they killed them. After that they came to a cape and there were many
wild animals on it.... Then they reached Straum fjörd, where there was
an abundance of every thing which they desired. It is said by some that
Bjarni and Gudrid remained behind with one hundred men, and did not go
farther, but that Karlsefne and Snorro went southward and forty men with
them, and that they were not longer in Hóp than two months, and that they
returned from there the same summer.... They inspected the mountains
at Hóp, which they thought belonged to a range which extended in two
directions to the same distance from Straum fjörd. The third winter they
were in Straum fjörd.... Snorro, the son of Karlsefne, was born here
the first autumn, and he was three years old when they went away from
Vinland. When they sailed from Vinland they had a south wind and came to
Markland.”[59]
The Northmen it seems continued their visits to Vinland as late as
the fourteenth century. In the geographical treatise of Adam of
Bremen, written in 1073, the author says that it was told him by Sveyn
Estrithson, King of Denmark, that Vinland was an island: “Moreover he
said that an island had been discovered by many in that ocean, which
is called Vinland, because vines grow spontaneously there, producing
excellent wine. For that fruits abound there not having been sown, we
are assured not by any vague rumor but by the trustworthy report of the
Danes.”[60]
The island of Vinland is described in an old geographical document as
lying on the opposite side of a channel, between it and Greenland: “Now
is to be told what lies opposite Greenland, out from the bay already
mentioned. Furdustrandir is the name of a land. There are such hard
frosts there that it is not habitable as far as is known. South of it
is Helluland, which is called Skraeling’s land. From there it is not
far to Vinland the good, which some think goes out from Africa. Between
Vinland and Greenland is Ginnungagap which flows from the sea called Mare
Oceanum that encompasses the whole earth.”[61] On a map made by Sigurd
Stephanius, an Icelander, in 1570, Helluland, Markland, Skraeling’s land,
and the promontory of Vinland are represented as parts of the country now
called Greenland.[62]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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