The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2): with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish ConquestFiske, John
History
The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2): with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest
Fiske, John
America -- Discovery and exploration; Latin America -- History
[Footnote 252: Indeed, the parallel existence of the
Flateyar-bok version of Eric the Red's Saga, alongside of the
Hauks-bok version, is pretty good proof of the existence of a
written account older than Hauk's time. The discrepancies
between the two versions are such as to show that Jon
Thordharson did not copy from Hauk, but followed some other
version not now forthcoming. Jon mentions six voyages in
connection with Vinland: 1. Bjarni Herjulfsson; 2. Leif; 3.
Thorvald; 4. Thorstein and Gudrid; 5. Thorfinn Karlsefni; 6.
Freydis. Hauk, on the other hand, mentions only the two
principal voyages, those of Leif and Thorfinn; ignoring Bjarni,
he accredits his adventures to Leif on his return voyage from
Norway in 999, and he makes Thorvald a comrade of Thorfinn, and
mixes his adventures with the events of Thorfinn's voyage. Dr.
Storm considers Hauk's account intrinsically the more probable,
and thinks that in the Flateyar-bok we have a later
amplification of the tradition. But while I agree with Dr.
Storm as to the general superiority of the Hauk version, I am
not convinced by his arguments on this point. It seems to me
likely that the Flateyar-bok here preserves more faithfully the
details of an older tradition too summarily epitomized in the
Hauks-bok. As the point in no way affects the general
conclusions of the present chapter, it is hardly worth arguing
here. The main thing for us is that the divergencies between
the two versions, when coupled with their agreement in the most
important features, indicate that both writers were working
upon the basis of an antecedent written tradition, like the
authors of the first and third synoptic gospels. Only here, of
course, there are in the divergencies no symptoms of what the
Tuebingen school would call "_tendenz_," impairing and obscuring
to an indeterminate extent the general trustworthiness of the
narratives. On the whole, it is pretty clear that Hauks-bok and
Flateyar-bok were independent of each other, and collated, each
in its own way, earlier documents that have probably since
perished.]
[Sidenote: Adam of Bremen.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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