Vikings in America (32 page)

While the contribution of the Vikings to American history is enormous, it is not adequately recognised. Typical of this marginalisation is the lack of consideration that the Vikings may have named America. The etymology advanced here is not complicated, and it should have been suggested a century or more ago. It should not be that a case now has to be advanced for what is, in effect, a new theory. Whether the theory is right or wrong, in the absence of any other information, it is the Vikings who are the most likely people to have named America.

We need to move on from the Columbus myth. We need to replace the language of Columbus as discoverer of America with the language of Columbus confirming for the Spanish monarchs the existence of America. As a counterbalance to Columbus, the achievement of the Viking expansion across the North Atlantic has been told in this book. Likewise the story has been told of the three great Viking steps onward from Greenland – to Vinland, to Ellesmere Island and to Hudson Bay. Archaeology and genetics provide exciting insights, but the main thrust of this story is also told in European archives, and the Viking role should have been accepted even without the recent corroboration of archaeological evidence.

Future researchers need to look in more detail at the interaction between the Vikings and the American peoples they met, particularly the Inuit, for here seems to be a key to understanding both Viking and Inuit expansion. The arrival of the Inuit post-dates the Viking colonisation, and it may well be that the Inuit arrival was supported by the presence there of the Vikings. The Ellesmere Island Viking settlement presumably coexisted with the Inuit, and if this settlement indeed survived the destruction of the Greenland colony then the support of the Inuit there is likely to be key. In many of the lands the Vikings visited the Inuit either held sway or followed. Baffin Island, most of the High Arctic, Labrador and the northern tip of Newfoundland were all occupied by Inuit. It may well be no coincidence that the Viking way-station of L'Anse aux Meadows later became Inuit territory. The Hudson Strait and much of the shores of Hudson Bay are again Inuit areas. The Vikings found a way of coexisting with the Inuit, perhaps of cooperating. Elsewhere in America the Vikings came
across Native Americans from many different tribes representing many languages and ethnic groups. The evidence suggests attempts at trade, but little success. Rather there is conflict, from which the Vikings seem to have been the losers.

Future researchers also need to look at the European misinformation about the Vikings in America, to the extent that we must feel we are unearthing a cover-up, even a conspiracy. Hiding Greenland and America was of commercial benefit to Denmark. Subsequently the deception of presenting Columbus as the discoverer of America was of enormous benefit to Spain and to the papacy. Today mediaeval and fifteenth-century politics should be set aside, so that we can review the true European discovery of America.

Five hundred years before Columbus the Vikings reached America. It is the Vikings, not Columbus, who start the European history of America.

Not only are the Vikings the first settlers of America, but they lived their lives in a curiously modern, American manner, almost in accordance with what we today think of as the American dream.

Europe on the eve of the Viking Age was a brutal, feudal society with scant personal freedoms. The labourers at the bottom of the social structure, while called serfs, were in reality slaves. The classes above were bound to their superiors, and ultimately to a king whose power was absolute. During the years of the Viking expansion the structures in Europe worsened as petty despots and the popes consolidated their power, so that by the fourteenth century the vast majority of Europeans were living in a state of subjection. Europe was not a nice place to live.

Scandinavian society was not free from these class divisions, yet there was some modification. The terms
jarl
,
karl
and
thrall
sum up the fundamental feudal authoritarian structure. The farms of Scandinavia would not have functioned without their slave labour, the thralls. Above them were the freemen, the karls or farm-owners, while the pyramid was topped by the jarls, the rulers, who were as tyrannical as any in Europe. Yet the reality of remote communities within Scandinavia promoted modification of this social distinction. Karl and thrall lived and worked together. The position of the farm owner was ultimately defended by law, and there were draconian penalties for thralls who did not keep to their place, but on a daily basis a
farm could only function when the thralls were motivated to do their work, and accepted the leadership of the karl. Karl and thrall ate the same food, sheltered under one roof, and in the many skirmishes between rival groups karl and thrall fought together. Difficult geography meant that the jarl was a distant figure, not impacting on everyday life. The jarl led the army, but his army was in effect of volunteers. In this was the start of a different, more modern, method of social interaction.

It was on the sea routes of the North Atlantic that a new Viking social structure developed, characterised by personal freedom and independence. The pioneers who settled the stepping stones of the North Atlantic started with a common experience – a long sea-voyage in an open boat. No amount of reference to supposed Viking hardiness or the high quality of Viking woollen clothes can take away the simple facts that such journeys were cold, wet and miserable, in over-crowded, leaking boats which needed continual bailing. The experience brought people together.

It is in Iceland that Europe develops its first true democratic institutions. Democracy is, of course, a Greek concept. Yet Athenian democracy had not survived in Athens, and had left no direct legacy in the Mediterranean. It is in Iceland that the Vikings established Europe's first enduring democracy, and one which still exists today in an unbroken tradition, so that today's prime minister of Iceland is truly the direct successor of the first Viking law-speaker and presides over a legislature which has its roots in the first Icelandic parliament in Thingvellir. It is perfectly easy to criticise the early Icelandic democracy – for example, it was based on a household suffrage rather than a universal suffrage, and was an annual event rather than in more or less permanent session – yet it was also the very best that could be achieved 1,000 years ago, and much better than the undemocratic governmental systems endured by most of the world's people even today. The Vikings were truly democrats.

For many Vikings the motivation for voyaging the North Atlantic was simply the preservation of their lives. This is recorded, for example, in the case of Eirik the Red and his followers, who would have been executed as outlaws had they stayed in Iceland, and so were thereby prompted to settle Greenland. Doubtless similar stories lay behind many of the migrations west across the Atlantic.

There was also a desire for liberty, along with an appreciation of personal responsibility for one's actions. There was no-one to help if a Viking ship ran into problems in the middle of the Atlantic. The farmsteads in the Faroe
Islands, Iceland and Greenland, the settlements in North America, were isolated and dependent on their own resources for survival. Freedom, and the pursuit of this freedom, drove the first Viking settlers west to America.

Yet it seems to me to be wrong to regard the Vikings who crossed the Atlantic simply as refugees seeking freedom in a new world. Rather they were excited by what they did, happy to be living in accordance with the spirit of heroism that was their ethical code. The rigours of a transatlantic voyage in an open boat are substantial, yet everything that we see in the sagas is that the Vikings embraced these challenges, and took pleasure in their achievements. In the experience of the North Atlantic voyages the Vikings lived life to the full. They lived without the hierarchies of kings and courts, without taking much notice of papal authority, asserting rather the equality of all, women and men. Their lives as set out in the sagas demonstrate belief in a personal ethical code derived from direct, personal experience of the divine, and with little reference to dogmas, whether Christian or pagan. In reading the sagas, even with all their bloodshed and suffering, there is a spirit of joy in being able to live life, take decisions, embrace the moment.

In the Vikings, America finds its first European settlers. Most fittingly these first European settlers in America were people searching for what we know today as the American dream: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The ideas found in this book derive from several distinct disciplines. The approach is therefore of necessity multi-disciplinary, and to complement this, methodologies are derived from more than one discipline.

The unifying methodology of this book is the multi-method approach,
¹
which has gained popularity in recent years within the social sciences and is beginning to be applied more widely. A question may be approached using several methodologies or several bodies of evidence, each of which has distinct flaws which throw doubt on the validity of the conclusion. When several different methodologies can be found which yield the same conclusion then that conclusion assumes a greater degree of validity than could be given by one method alone. The metaphor of a three-legged stool is sometimes used – with one or even two legs it falls over, but with three legs it stands up.

Historical method is fundamental to this book. Events discussed are related to the sources from which our knowledge of those events is derived. While I have made much use of the interpretations made by experts in their many and varied specialist areas, ultimately the events are rooted in a primary source to which a degree of credence may be attached. Discussion of events from literary sources, particularly the sagas, takes account of the methodology of literary criticism. Ideas which derive from language are influenced specifically by the neo-grammarian philological method, though the general approach is familiar to descriptive linguists. My approach to archaeology, genetics and ethnology is as an interested non-specialist. Historical method alone cannot give all the answers to questions about the Vikings in America. Literature presents us with a series of events around the lives of Eirik the Red and Leif Eiriksson, clearly a limited approach. Language, archaeology, genetics and ethnology all have something to contribute. Taken together these disciplines and the methodologies they offer provide the framework for the story told here.

The style of this book is as a continuous narrative free from a heavy critical apparatus. Researchers will readily find corroboration for factual material in major libraries or online. My contribution has been to put the whole together. There is little here that is original or primary research, save for the etymology proposed for ‘America'.

There are many gaps in the story of Vikings in America, and the best that can be done with the gaps is to offer hypotheses. Once the question is formed then someone, somewhere may be able to find a methodology to provide an answer.
Vikings in America
is a key story in the development of both Europe and America, and it needs much more work by a host of scholars. We need to move on from unproductive reworking of such disputes as the Vinland Map, Kensington Runestone and Newport Tower – for until there is new evidence one way or the other we just don't know about these. Rather we need academic and public acceptance that the Vikings were in North America in large numbers and for a long time. We need to accept that we should be able to find traces of the Vikings, and actively search for them.

Eirik Gnuppson 1112–24?

Arnald 1124–52

Jon Knutr 1152–88?

Jon Smyrill Sverrifostri 1188–1209

Helgi 1212–30

Nicholas 1234–42

Olaf 1247–80

Thord 1289–1314

Arnni 1314–48

Jon Eiriksson Skalli 1343–50s?

From 1124 all had their bishopric at the cathedral of St Nicholas, Gardar, modern Igaliku, in the Eastern Settlement. Eirik Gnuppson's bishopric was at Sandnes. The list contains several gaps when there may have been bishops appointed whose names are not remembered. Bishop Nicholas was in Norway 1234–40, leaving Greenland effectively without a bishop. From 1343–48 Greenland appears to have had two bishops. The bishopric of Greenland was founded as part of the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen; later it was part of the archdiocese of Nidaros.

Harald Fairhair (
c
. 890–
c
. 930)

Eirik Bloodaxe (
c
. 930–34)

Håkon the Good (934–61)

Harald Gråfell (961–76)

Haakon Jarl (976–95)

Olaf Tryggvason (995–1000)

Svein Forkbeard (999–1015)

Olaf Haraldsson (Saint Olav) (1015–28)

Knut the Great (1028–35)

Magnus the Good (1035–47)

Harald Hardrade (1046–66)

Magnus Haraldsson (1066–69)

Olaf Kyrre (1066–93)

Håkon Magnusson (1093–94)

Magnus Barefoot (1093–1103)

Olaf Magnusson (1103–10)

Øystein Magnusson (1103–23)

Sigurd Jorsalfar (1103–30)

Magnus the Blind (1130–35)

Harald Gille (1130–36)

Sigurd Slembe (1135–39)

Sigurd Munn (1136–55)

Øystein Haraldsson (1136–57)

Inge Krokrygg (1136–61)

Håkon Herdebrei (1157–62)

Magnus Erlingsson (1161–84)

Sigurd Markusfostre (1162–63)

Eystein Meyla (1174–77)

Sverre Sigurdsson (1177–1202)

Jon Kuvlung (1185–88)

Sigurd Magnusson (1193–94)

Inge Magnusson (1196–1202)

Håkon Sverreson (1202–04)