370 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



and at ebb tide find halibut in them. The forest abounds with animals 

 of many kinds. There they spend the winter. No snow falls; the 

 cattle need not be brought indoors. 



Here they encounter the inhabitants of the country, the Scraelings, 

 at first in peaceable barter : red cloth and milk (which the natives had 

 never before seen) for furs. But they quarrel (after a bellowing ox 

 had chanced to scare the Scraelings) . Then the natives come in large 

 numbers in skin boats to make war on the Norsemen, and they terrify 

 them by throwing large stones, sewn into painted skins, from tall poles. 

 Men fall on both sides. The Scraelings fight with slings and stone 

 axes; they are astonished at the Norsemen's iron axes. 



After that Karlsefni judges it too dangerous to remain in the land 

 of "Hop"; he abandons the thought of making his home there and 

 instead goes back to "Stream Fjord" (which is stated to be midway 

 between "Hop" and "Keel Ness") . There he leaves most of his people, 

 takes one ship northward to look for Thorhall, returns after a vain 

 search, and winters in "Stream Fjord." There his wife bears him a 

 son, Snorri. Next spring they all go home via Markland, where they 

 capture two Scraeling boys, whom they take with them. One of the 

 ships, which turns out to be worm-eaten, foundei's, but Karlsefni's 

 own ship returns at last to Ericsf jord in Greenland. 



6. Freydis's expedition. — Some years later Freydis, a natural 

 daughter of Eric the Red, makes an expedition to Vinland with two 

 ships, accompanied by the two Icelandic brothers, Helge and Finnboge. 

 They reach Leif 's camp in Vinland and winter there. They quarrel ; 

 Freydis conceives a plan to murder both brothers and carries it out, 

 and moreover kills all the women with an ax. Early next summer 

 she returns to Greenland. 



This is the essence of what the sagas have to tell about Norsemen 

 from Greenland and Iceland discovering North America in the years 

 about 1000. There was a time when some scholars were rather 

 skeptical as to the details and the narrative descriptions contained 

 in these old Nordic sources — they were stamped as unreal, literary- 

 colored fairytale stuff; see, for instance, the famous Fridtjof Nansen 

 in his book "Nord i Takeheimen," published in 1911. Nowadays, 

 however, most historians are (rightly, I think) inclined to take many 

 points, if not all, in the saga traditions about "Vinland the Good" as 

 true facts. There the question arises : Is it possible from this literary 

 material to indicate precisely where on the Atlantic seaboard this 

 "Vinland" of Leif 's, this "Hop" of Karlsefni's lay ? Many attempts 

 have been made, all different in their results. And so, in the following 

 pages when I, too, try to find a solution to the problem, my purpose 

 inter alia is this : to show how difficult the task is, how defective the 



