Vikings in America
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Authors: Graeme Davis
Vikings in America
Dr Graeme Davis
is a specialist in the mediaeval North Atlantic, its languages, literature and culture. Recent books include studies of mediaeval Germanic languages, of Early English settlement of Orkney and Shetland, and dictionaries of English dialects. He is lecturer in English Linguistics at the Open University and previously a British Academy researcher at the University of Iceland.
IN
AMERICA
Graeme Davis
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This eBook edition published in 2011 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.birlinn.co.uk
First published in 2009 by Birlinn Ltd
Copyright © Graeme Davis 2009
The moral right of Graeme Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 .
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-065-4
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
2Â Â Â Â Stepping Stones to America
5Â Â Â Â Viking Exploration of the High Arctic
8Â Â Â Â Memories of Vikings in America
9Â Â Â Â Legacy of the Vikings in America
Appendix 1
A Note on Methodology
Appendix 2
Bishops of Greenland
Appendix 3
Mediaeval Kings of Norway
Map 1Â Â Â Â Â Â Â The Viking World
Map 2Â Â Â Â Â Â Â North Atlantic Stepping Stones
Map 3Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Viking Greenland
Map 4Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Viking Vinland
Map 5Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Viking High Arctic
Map 6Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Viking Hudson Bay
Replica of a Viking Figurehead from Unst Boat Haven, Shetland
King Harald I Fairhair receiving the Shetlands
Summer in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland
The Greenland or Whale Fishery
Magna Britannia
(Petrus Bertius)
1. T
HE
V
IKING
W
ORLD
2. N
ORTH
A
TLANTIC
S
TEPPING
S
TONES
3. V
IKING
G
REENLAND
4. V
IKING
V
INLAND
5. V
IKING
H
IGH
A
RCTIC
6. V
IKING
H
UDSON
B
AY
Vikings in America
Vikings to America
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
He had three ships and left from Spain:
He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.
S
O
goes the school-room jingle, and so most people today perceive the dawn of European exploration and settlement of America. Yet it is not Columbus but the Vikings who should be credited with the first significant European exploration and settlement of America.
Around five centuries before Columbus, the Vikings both explored and settled in America. The archaeological remains at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland leave no doubt that they established a substantial presence on the American east coast. Today we know for sure that the Vikings were there. Yet in popular perception the story of the Vikings in America remains at the margins of history. As a result the Vikings and their exploration of what they called Vinland is now presented as little more than a footnote in world history. The implicit assumption is that their remarkable achievement had no lasting impact on the history of either Europe or America.
The picture is changing. In recent years academics working in many different disciplines have been finding fragments of evidence which taken together tell a far bigger story of the Vikings in America. This is the story presented here.
For the Vikings did a lot more than just visit a few places in Newfoundland or elsewhere on the American east coast. From their base in the Viking colony of Greenland â itself strictly part of the American continent â we now know that the Vikings explored in three different directions. A thousand miles south from Greenland is the archaeological site of L'Anse aux Meadows, a staging post on the journey to what they called Vinland, east-coast America. A thousand miles north from Greenland the Vikings reached
the High Arctic. Here Viking archaeological remains have been found in some of the most unlikely locations, in lands no-one would have dreamed the Vikings could ever have reached. Today we must accept the evidence of that the Vikings, against all expectations, in fact reached the High Arctic. Furthermore, 1,000 miles west from Greenland in Hudson Bay and its vicinity we have evidence of Viking presence, and can place the Vikings at the centre of the North American continent. Viking Greenland emerges as the starting point for exploration of three widely separated areas of the American continent: the east coast, the far north and Hudson Bay.