Vínland the Good: Paradise Lost?

Vinland the Good: Paradise Lost? For those who regard Columbus as a symbol of oppression, this year's celebrations, re-enactments, and artisticreconstructionsof his Caribbean landfall on October 12 1492, have been cause for protest rather than celebration. In the case of the 1992 Rose Parade in Pasadena, however, the outcome was happy compromise: failing to anticipate the outrage of many native Americans, the Tournament of Roses Committee adopted the topical theme of 'Voyages of Discovery' and chose to honour Columbus by inviting one-of his descendantstobe Grand Marshall of the parade; after the ensuing controversy had occupied the front page of the Los Angeles Times for some months, threatened disruption of the parade was avoided by some eleventh-hour diplomacy, and the Grand Marshallship was shared between the committee's original choice and the only full-blooded native American in the U.S. Congress, Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado. Had the Tournament of Roses Committee saved its 'Voyages of Discovery' theme for the millenium and given pride of place to the Icelander, Leif Eiriksson, who made a voyage to the North American continent around the year 1000, hard feelings among native Americans might have been averted, for the attempted setdement insphed by Leif s reports of the idyllic land named Vinland in Old Norse sources soon ended in the withdrawal of the European intruder. Suggestions that stories about Vinland m a y have been current in the seaports of Europe in the fifteenth century1 and the claim, in an unauthenticated note attributed to Columbus by his son, Fernando, that his father 'sailed one hundred leagues beyond the island of Tile' (Thule; presumably Iceland)2 conjure up tantalizing speculation about possible Vinland-Iceland-Columbus connections which this paper will abandon in favour of an attempt to sketch thefinding,setdement, and loss of Vinland in the contexts of cartography, literature, and European colonization of the N e w 1 See Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson, trans., The Vinland Sagas. The Norse Discovery of America, Harmondsworth, 1965; rpr. 1987, pp. 42-43; Fridtjof Hansen, trans. Arthur G. Chater, In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times, London, 1911, ii, p. 293. 2 Fernando Col6n, The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus by His Son Ferdinand, trans. Benjamin Keen, N e w Brunswick, NJ, 1959, p. 11. See also Hallddr Hermansson, 'The Problem of Wineland', Islandica 25 (1936), 80-83. P A R E R G O N ns 12.2 (January 1995) 76 G. Barnes World. Its primary focus wiU be the two medieval Norse accounts of the Vinland expeditions in Grcenlendinga saga [GS] ("The Greenlanders' Saga'), and EirUcssaga rau6a [ES] ('Eirik the Red's Saga'), the so-called 'Vinland sagas' .3 In both these narratives, which blend probable fact and likely fiction in univerifiable proportions, the Vinland story is only one episode in the story of Leif s father, Eirfk, and the Greenland setdement which he founded. GS, the older of the twotextsand probably written around the mid- to late-twelfth century, is generally accepted as the relatively more 'reliable'; ES, written about a century later, contains the same basic events as GS, but in an apparendy deliberately revised form4 in which Vinland is transformed from geographical tangibilitytounattainable Elysium. According to GS, Leif Eirfkson made three landfalls on a voyage of exploration west of Greenland and named them, in order of discovery, Helluland ('slab land'), Markland ('forest land'), and Vinland ('wine land').5 Helluland is generally identified with the southern part of Baffin Island, and Markland with the south coast of Labrador or Newfoundland, but the land which Leif called Vinland remains as elusive for modern scholars as it did for medieval navigators. Whereas, for example, a reference in the Icelandic annals for the year 1347 to a ship arriving from Markland6 bespeaks longterm familiarity and recognized ship lanes, an entry some two hundred and 3 Scholarship on the subject is vast. For overviews and useful bibliographies, see Halldor Hermannsson, "The Problem of Wineland'; Erik Wahlgren, 'Fact and Fancy in the Vinland Sagas', in Edgar C. Polom6, ed., Old Norse Literature and Mythology: A Symposium, Austin, TX, and London, 1969, pp. 19-80; Richard Perkins, 'The Furfi ustrandir of Eiriks...