Here's another map, limned by a young Icelandic teacher and hobbyist cartographer named Sigurd Stefansson around 1570 at the bishopric of Skalholt near modern-day Reykjavik (note ancient residue in last syllable). Sigurd's map gave a much more accurate picture of the northern latitudes of the New World, believe it or not, than the earlier Waldeseemuller world map, by now the standard, and the one that had forever immortalized Amerigo Vespucci at the expense of his fellow countryman, Columbus. For the scholarly Sigurd had done his homework well. He relied on the sagas.His map had zero impact at the time, of course, but that little capital "A" down in the left hand corner would have enormous influence on the archaeological rediscovery of the true "discovery" of America ... some five hundred years later. Sigurd followed the sagas faithfully in piecing together the land-and-sea-scape provided in mainly two of somewhat lesser literary worth, but abounding in historical value: the Saga of Eirik the Red and the Groenlendinga Saga (not taught in my class, but pointedly and often alluded to).
Sigurd the Mapmaker read an incredible story ... one eminently suitable for Hollywood adaptation. But also true. Harrowing sea-voyages. Frontier Indian fighting. Near starvation. Birth of first child on North American soil. Sound familiar? Nope, its not Massachusetts or Virginia. All this happened more than a half-millennium earlier, on and around that magical year 1000, and on and around the places depicted on Sigurd's map.
Here's what the sagas told him: there was the Icelandic merchant Bjarni's first sighting--those "low-lying hills covered with forests"--when blown off-course on his way to the Norwegian outlaw Eirik the Red's Greenland colony. Eirik's opportunistic son, Leif, picked up the challenge 15 years later ("forests" meant timber, of which tree-depleted Greenland, despite its P.R. moniker, was in dire need) by setting sail in in the very same long-ship that Bjarni used, along with several others. (Note: I have seen these big, clinker-built, dragon-prowed, more-than-seaworthy knarrs "up close and personal." It was during my "quest for the Beowulf poem's Heorot" in 1973, when I visited Roskilde, Denmark, site of the Viking Ship Museum. See DM # 139.)
He took a safer route than that of Bjarni's wind-blown ride across open waters, however, and this was important for Sigurd's map. Leif took a "coastal" course, staying as close as he could to land masses that HAD to be there, if Bjarni was telling the truth. They were. In fact, it would have been a miracle if these itchy Viking sea-hounds had NOT discovered the northeast coastlines of North America. Just look at the map. Or check a modern one. These guys already had the nautical-tech to sail Columbus-like across vast ocean-distances if necessary, but they didn't have to. "Vinland" is right in Greenland's backyard ... literally: as mentioned earlier, they share the same continental plate.
Curiously though, Sigurd doesn't use Leif's "Vinland" to label his promontory in the lower left of his map (actually the island of Newfoundland--he also generously attached his own Greenland to "mainland" North America. Even in 1570, nobody had yet circumnavigated the forbidding extent of that massive, ice-bound island). His other designations are right from Leif's expedition: In late fall or early winter of 1000 A.D. they first make historic landfall--Leif would be the #1 European to do so, and he would hang on to that record for five centuries--on what he named Helleland (= "flat-rock-land," present day Baffin Island); next they arrive on the shores of heavily-forested Markland (= "wood-land," today's Labrador), farther south and much more promising for Leif, at least commercially, as reflected in the name he gave to it; and finally the voyagers land and set up camp on the inviting coast of Bjarni-country. On the "low-lying hills" he finds grape-vines. And upon them vinber = Old Norse for "wine-berries." (It was the Medieval Warming Period; the Little Ice Age was not to strike these latitudes for another 350 years) Here was the place to be. They all stayed the mild winter, and Leif named the place after the grapes.
But as you can see, Sigurd doesn't label this seeming New World Eden "Vinland"--as Leif would have it, according to the saga accounts. He names it after Leif's name for its aboriginals: the Skraelingar (O.N. "skin-people"-- for wearing/trading skins or being half-naked). My speculations are that perhaps the 16C Icelander was (unduly) skeptical about all that grape-business (the Little Ice Age had long since taken effect across the northern climes), or that he was trying to be cartographically accurate as to the true inhabitants of the place, since his Viking kinsmen had long ago abandoned it. For all he knew, the Skraelings might have had a thriving nation going in 1570; the English and French hadn't really gotten started yet.
Whatever the reason, Sigurd's map unwittingly verifies the root cause behind the FAILURE of the Norse colonization of America ... Americans. Native ones, that is. The Indians drove out the white-eyes for once. And only time. After ten years of struggle, Leif Eiriksson's original settlement--right near that little capital "A" on the map--was abandoned forever. Today it's the community of L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, and they speak primarily English. A smattering of Eskimo, but nary a word of Icelandic. (more)
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