In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery by Annette Kolodny (review)

In Search of First Contact is a jubilee work that braids together three areas of research from Annette Kolodny's fifty-year career in American literature and culture, spanning the years between her BA in 1962 and this book's 2012 publication. The subtitle identifies the three strands that the author entwines throughout the book: Nordic Studies, Native American Studies, and New England Studies. Although her time frame reaches across a period of more than one thousand years, the author delimits her research to "recent scholarship in archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, and American history" with "stories" as the main focus of the book (10). One of the stated purposes is to understand why pre-Columbian stories of Viking contact have endured in American national culture and literary traditions. The study, moreover, endeavors to understand the function of such contact accounts in communities that preserve, tell, and reshape them (10-1, 13). The author's approach is political (19-43), and her method is interpretive. She uses Nordic sagas and Native American narratives to spin her own story about the appropriation of a Viking heritage by Euro-Americans in the United States.

The book consists of an autobiographical prologue, seven chapters of textual interpretations with contextual discussions, and an evaluative epilogue. To describe the book's greatest strengths, I will use three of the contextual relations outlined for philological criticism by anthropological linguist Alton L. Becker: 1) interpersonal relations, that is, the connecting of texts to authors and readers; 2) generic relations, the connecting of texts to prior texts; and 3) referential relations, the connecting of texts to nature and the world beyond language.

The author's prologue draws readers into the book by explaining the genesis of her diverse academic interests: several journeys to Scandinavia and meetings with scholars arranged by Dr. Brita Lindberg Seyersted and her husband, Per; an eco-criticism American literature dissertation at Berkeley; a lasting marriage with novelist Daniel Peters, who sets his works in the ancient Americas; and a close acquaintance with colleagues who have Native American ancestry. The personal voice of the prologue enables me as the reviewer to identify with the author by considering parallel interests in my experience: several journeys to the homelands of my Scandinavian grandparents, a dissertation on the New England language of Emily Dickinson citing Brita Lindberg Seyersted, service among the Aymará Indians of the Bolivian altiplano, and an appreciation for people from many cultural backgrounds thanks to my father's military service in Mississippi, New Mexico, Okinawa, and Arizona. Dr. Kolodny's reader-engaging introduction to the subject matter lends an authentic voice to the discourse throughout the book.

The author is at her best when she quotes and elucidates the texts of two attested Icelandic sagas in chapter 2, the works of three New England poets in chapter 3, and several traditional indigenous stories in chapters 6 and 7. Her helpful overview of the Vikings begins with an etymology of their names and key events in their history. She summarizes the details of Viking migrations from Iceland to southern Greenland to northeastern North America. Her exegesis of brief segments in The Greenlanders' Saga and Erik the Red's Saga can open windows for readers seeking knowledge about the pre-Columbian past of the Americas. Her presentation of texts with Viking themes by New England authors Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell are likewise insightful because these are not standard anthology pieces in today's literary canons. Exploring possibilities, the author weaves the Norse-American and New England textual traditions together, along with Native American texts about early contacts with white people. The multicultural approach is productive and refreshing.

A third strength of the book is its underlying reverence for the New World as a portal to explore other new worlds of mutual understanding. Kolodny's peroratio at the end...