The Verses in Eric the Red’s Saga. And Again: Norse Visits to America by Richard Perkins (review)

This short volume is an expanded version of Richard Perkins’s Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies delivered at University College London in 2009. It examines the three verses in Eiríks saga rauða, one of the two so-called Vinland sagas detailing the discovery, naming, and partial exploration of coastal North America by Norsemen.

The verses, which in Perkins’s view are included to authenticate elements of the narrative and borrowed from different contexts with some adaptation, are designated “Verse A,” “Verse B,” and “Verse C.” They all relate to the story of Þorfinnr Karlsefni’s mighty expedition. The context for Verse C, which Perkins discusses first, is that Þorfinnr has abandoned his attempt to settle Vinland and is sailing in search of Þórhallr the Hunter, who previously had headed north in search of one of the expedition’s three ships. It is related that Þorfinnr and his men put in at the mouth of a river, where they saw a uniped. The creature shot an arrow into the groin of Þorvaldr Eiríksson. The crew chased the uniped, but it managed to escape. One of the men then spoke a verse quoted here in Perkins’s translation: “Men chased a uniped down to the shore. That was quite true. But the strange man raced as fast as he could, rapidly over the rough terrain. Hear that, Karlsefni” (p. 5). It is told that the men then sailed northwards believing they had sighted the Land of the Unipeds. Perkins’s interpretation of this peculiar tale is that there was in medieval Iceland a tradition that Vinland extended as far south as Africa where, according to medieval learning, unipeds lived. As far as the provenance of the verse is concerned, he subscribes to the theory advanced by Ian McDougall in 1997 that the verse is based on a riddle for a pen: “[T]he members of the expedition, pursuing the uniped, would be the fingers of the hand holding the pen and chasing it, as it were down the page” (p. 7). Perkins stresses that the saga author “did not, of course, compose the verse himself, but more or less pilfered it from the store of riddles he must have known from oral sources, and forced it into an entirely foreign contexts. … [H]e wanted a verse about a uniped in his saga and got one by consciously misconstruing the sense of a riddle for a pen” (p. 8).

The discussion of Verse B is based on Perkins’s 1976 article on “The Furðustrandir of Eiríks saga rauða.” The context for this verse is Þorfinnr and his crew’s voyage along coastal North America, where they passed long, sandy beaches, which they name Furðustrandir. They sent two Scots ashore, who returned with wild wheat and grapes. The members of the exhibition spent the winter at Straumsfjorðr but grew short of food. They flensed, cooked, and ate a whale that had driven ashore, but its meat made everyone sick, and it became clear that it had been sent by Thor at Þórhallr’s instigation. In the spring, Þórhallr sailed back northwards, and, as he carried water aboard his ship, he declaimed two verses (Verses A and B). Perkins is of the opinion that Þórhallr is not the composer of the verses, since he is almost certainly a ficticious character, and in contrast to the conventional interpretation of Verse B that it expresses Þórhallr’s intention to return to Greenland, he argues that it originates among Norse whalers along the coasts of Iceland or Greenland and may have been chanted to the rhythm of whalers’ rowing. He proposes that the words “órir sandhimins landar” may be a kenning for whales and that “þeirs leyfa lond” refers to “land” as opposed to “sea” and concludes that “the first half of the verse describes...