

IOO SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



The normal Norseman, of whom we hear less, was a good man at 

 arms, under penalty of losing all ; too ready, no doubt, to obey the 

 battle summons even in the neighborhood or family quarrels ; but less 

 a soldier than a trader, a farmer, a fisherman or something of all 

 three, as well as a curious traveler abroad. At heart he was anything 

 but a pirate. The habit of industry was almost curiously dominant in 

 all classes and exhibited in the most artless, unpretending way. 

 The great chief and champion Gunnar is discovered sowing grain with 

 his own hands in the crisis of his fate ; at Bolli's command, his wife 

 Gudrun goes out of the dairy, where murder is to leap on him, and 

 providently washes clothes in the brook during that tragedy ; the 

 vengeance of Bardi falls on Gisli and his companions while their 

 scythes are asway in the field ; Hallgerda's first husband is killed, by 

 her contrivance, over a quarrel as to whether he or another can best 

 handle codfish ; and the whole troop of Flosi the Burner postpone one 

 of the most notable recorded instances of Norse vengeance until they 

 have properly completed the haying. The old time Icelander was a 

 very practical, if a very belligerent and litigious, hero, with genuine 

 honesty as he saw it, and a real intention to be law-abiding in the main, 

 though abiding a most topsy-turvy kind of law. 



Yet, while not a viking, he might have as good ships or better. 

 Such were the " dragons " or " serpents," built for dangerous hazards 

 and important missions, for withstanding the worst onset of the ele- 

 ments at need for hand to hand boarding with sword and axe and 

 spear, also for the most effective pursuit or escape. 



Of course they were not the only kind. A rather clumsy and 

 dilatory craft * was in use more or less for ordinary trading purposes. 

 Its modern representative was pointed out to Professor Packard 2 

 by a Norwegian, and taken as an approximate standard in the sailing 

 calculations of the former for the time needed in the passage between 

 Newfoundland and Greenland across the dreaded Ginnungagap. 

 But one of the exploring vessels had already borne Thorbiorn and 

 Gudrid with their fortunes to Greenland, when a dismal death, or 

 life, honor and prosperity, were in the cast of a die, and all that he 

 owned had gone to the venture ; a second was Thorfinn's own ; a third 

 belonged to Biarni, a chivalric chieftain of the highest personal pride 

 and most exacting followers. Such craft would more likely be of the 

 dragon or serpent pattern, beautiful open ships " which were probably 

 stronger and more seaworthy and certainly much swifter than the 



1 Heimskringla. Laing's transl., vol. I, p. 441. 

 2 A. S. Packard: The Labrador Coast, pp. 24, 26. 



