NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 8l 



sive. Some of these are borne out by the Landnamabok ; others are 

 possibly stop-gaps of later invention occurring chiefly in the least 

 historical parts of Eric the Red, preceding the voyage of Thorfinn. 

 As already indicated, the incantation scene, the death of Thor- 

 stein, and other episodes, though good Icelandic folk-lore and excel 

 lent imaginative literature, are by no means to be treated as unalloyed 

 fact. There seems no especial reason why we should look for greater 

 accuracy as to names. Some of those not supplied by independent 

 and trusted authority may be derived from sound tradition ; but 

 here we have little to guide us. Their accuracy or inaccuracy does not 

 touch the general course of the voyage any more than errors in a 

 roster of troops would disprove the battle of Saratoga. 



ii. THE STORY OF THE FIRST AMERICAN MOTHER 



Gudrid is unmistakably the heroine of the saga and fills admirably 

 a good part of its Greenland section as winning and nobly gracious 

 a womanly figure as may readily be found in any literature. The 

 greatest of feminine explorers, the inspirer of the earliest attempt to 

 colonize America and sharer in all its hardships, and the mother of 

 the first-born white American, she must not lightly be passed by. 

 Her father Thorbiorn held his ground after Eric s first departure and 

 for some years declined his invitations to Greenland. But Thorbiorn 

 was somehow losing ground among his. people; and felt this brought 

 home to him unbearably when a disparaging offer of marriage for 

 Gudrid (as he considered it) was urged by an old friend, of whom he 

 expected kinder things. Apparently she felt with him ; for there 

 seems to have been no attempt at dissuasion, even when he called their 

 numerous well-wishers together in a great banquet, made a speech 

 about his honor and, lavishing gifts on them all, announced his 

 intention to sell out and emigrate. Perhaps she may have shared 

 his adventurous longing for the chances of life in a new field and 

 found no resisting magnet in any of her numerous Iceland suitors, 

 indicated by the saga. 



All that remained to them went in that ship, and certain friends 

 joined the company, to their cost in some instances, for there was 

 sickness and death on the way. It was indeed a dreadful voyage, of 

 prolonged storm and unceasing hardship and danger; but they won 

 at last to the lowest settled peninsula of Greenland, Heriolfsness, 

 where they were received for the winter. Remains of a church and 

 other vestiges have been considered to mark the spot ; with no abso- 



