Vinland the Good Read online

  Table of Contents

  Vinland the Good Illustration Sources

  About this Story

  1. The Man-slaying

  2. Trouble in Iceland

  3. Greenland

  4. The Colonists

  5. Strange Longship

  6. Stranger Story

  7. The Christian King

  8. The Church at Brattahlid

  9. They Start Off

  10. Vinland the Good

  11. Thorhall’s Warning

  12. The Plague

  13. Thorvald’s Voyage

  14. Thorhall’s Second Warning

  15. The Man on the Rock

  16. Karlsefni

  17. The Great Sailing

  18. The Quarrels Begin

  19. One Quarrel Ends

  20. The Skin Boats

  21. Second Time

  22. Gudrid and the Black Bull

  23. Third Time

  24. The Long Way Back

  25. The Last Winter

  Afterword

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Editor: Kaye Webb

  VINLAND THE GOOD

  Red Eirik was never the man to stay still if an insult came his way, or to avoid a quarrel to save his skin; so it was that he was exiled from his native Norway. He settled in Iceland for a while, where he found a wife, but even Iceland became too hot to hold him, if that can be said, so he sailed away to found his own prosperous settlement in Greenland, where in time three sons and a daughter were born to him.

  But quiet trading and farming were not for Leif, the eldest son, who had inherited all his father’s adventurous spirit. ‘I shall put my dragon prow to the green sea,’ he thought. ‘I shall find gold and a kingdom, and all men will bow when I pass and will whisper, “Hey that’s Leif Eiriksson. He’s the one who sailed where no man has ever been before.’”

  Then Bjarni, son of Herjolf, came to Greenland, with strange tales of being blown off course to an unknown land, greenly wooded and with low and gentle hills. ‘I have been to a new world,’ he said, and that was enough for Leif. ‘When I am old enough to have my own ship, I shall go where Bjarni went,’ he told his mother. ‘I cannot bear to think that any Viking has been where I have not been.’

  So one by one Eirik’s children set sail for the rich new land of America, or Vinland, as they called it. But disaster came to two of Red Eirik’s sons, till only Leif remained, and darkness came rolling down from the north on to happy Greenland.

  Henry Treece used incidents from two Icelandic sagas, Eirik the Red and The Greenland Saga, for this book. Other books by Henry Treece in Puffins are The Children’s Crusade, Horned Helmet, Legions of the Eagle, The Queen’s Brooch and a trilogy of Viking stories, Viking’s Dawn, The Road to Miklagard and Viking’s Sunset.

  Cover design by Brian Hampton

  HENRY TREECE

  Vinland the Good

  DECORATIONS BY WILLIAM STOBBS

  MAP BY RICHARD TREECE

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  First published by The Bodley Head 1967

  Published in Puffin Books 1971

  Copyright © The estate of Henry Treece, 1967

  Illustrations copyright © The Bodley Head, 1967

  Made and printed in Great Britain

  by Cox & Wyman Ltd,

  London, Reading and Fakenham

  Set in Intertype Plantin

  This book is sold subject to the condition

  that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,

  be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated

  without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of

  binding or cover other than that in which it is

  published and without a similar condition

  including this condition being imposed

  on the subsequent purchaser

  Illustration Sources

  The following drawings in this book are based on Norse archaeological remains:

  page 3, carved animal head, in the British Museum; page 18, curved animal headpost from the Oseberg Ship, in the Ship Museum, Oslo; page 29, carved wooden utensils from Dalarne, Sweden; page 33, carved animal head in the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen; page 38, bronze brooch in the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen; page 45, silver gilt brooch from Sodermanland, in the Stockholm Museum; page 53, gilt bronze ligure from Vestfold, Norway, in the Universitets Oldsaksamling, Oslo; page 57, device for Viking flag, from MS drawing; page 60, animal head from the Oseberg Ship, in the Ship Museum, Oslo; page 66, design on sword scabbard, in the Copenhagen City Museum; page 71, animal carving, in the Universitets Oldsaksamling, Oslo; page 89, bronze mount in the Wisbech Museum, Cambridgeshire; page 92, helmet, in the Danisch National Museum, Copenhagen, whetstone, in the British Museum; page 100, sword hilt and brooch, in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, Edinburgh; page 114, ivory chessman, in the British Museum; page 118, animal head from the Gokstad Ship, in the Universitets Oldsaksamling, Oslo; page 126, harness decoration from Helsingland, Denmark; page 135, carved animal head post from the Oseberg Ship, in the Ship Museum, Oslo; page 140, carved wooden vessel from Dalarne, Sweden.

  North Atlantic map drawn by Sigurd Stefansson in Iceland, c. 1590. The central design is based on decoration on Norse trinkets found along the Dnieper River at the Gnezdovo-Smolensk burial ground.

  About this Story

  Many of the incidents in this story are taken from The Greenland Saga, written in about 1190, and Eirik’s Saga, written about 1260.

  The Dates

  Eirik the Red leaves Norway and goes to Iceland - about 960

  He crosses to Greenland and explores there - about 981

  He sets up colonies in Greenland - 985-986

  Bjarni Herjolfsson sights Vinland - 985-986

  Leif Eriksson sails to Vinland - about 1001

  Karlsefni sails to Vinland - about 1010

  He goes back to Norway - about 1013

  Some of the Places

  Slabland: the south-east coast of Baffin Island, or a northerly part of the Labrador coast.

  Markland (‘Forest Land’): the country between Slabland and Vinland; the south-east coast of Labrador, or Newfoundland.

  Keelness: a promontory north of Vinland and south of Mark-land; perhaps in the Gulf of the St Lawrence.

  Vinland (‘Wine Land’): perhaps somewhere on the southern coast of New England.

  Part One: The Settlements

  1. The Man-slaying

  Now Red Eirik was never the man to stay still if an insult came his way. There were many in the hall at Jaederen who were not his friends, but when the man called Sigurd Sheepshanks taunted him over the ale-horn and said, ‘I have seen many men with red hair before, but never one with eyes so close-set that he looked like a weasel, ‘ then Eirik looked round at his old father, Thorvald, who sat higher up the board, and said, ‘What do you advise, my father? ‘

  Thorvald Asvaldsson sniffed loudly and rubbed his red eyes, as though this was a matter for some thought. Then, looking over the heads of them all into the smoke that curled up from the hearth-fire among the rafters, he said in a gentle voice, ‘If I were young again and could swing an axe, and if, when I was so young, such a man as this Sheepshanks mocked my hair and eyes, then I would take the axe to him and teach him good Norwegian manners. I can say no more. ‘

  He went back to the ale-horn and so Eirik jumped on to the table and shouted out, ‘Sigurd Sheepshanks, I call you out! Come and have your beard trimmed, little one. It is too shaggy.’

  Now the lord who was at the top of the board, called White Rolf, rapped on the oak with his gold-ringed fingers and
tried to smile as he said, ‘Now, boys! Now, boys! Good is good enough. More than that is bad.’

  By this time Sigurd was pulling out his hair and yelling for a sharp sword, and all his friends were fumbling under the benches for the weapons they had smuggled in.

  So Red Eirik strolled off down the long pine-hall and picked up his iron axe from where it lay beside his father’s jacket and cloak, and then he turned into the room again and called, ‘I am waiting, Sheepshanks. Find a sword and come out.’

  Eirik went down under the dripping pines and swung the axe a time or two to get the feel of it after the week of feasting. It felt all right. The balance was good, shaft and head equalling one another. It gave a light blow, this axe. No good for treefelling, but brisk enough for what the smith had had in mind.

  So, when Sigurd came running and sweating and swearing, Eirik just nodded to him and took a good post where overhanging boughs would not spoil his swing. Then he said softly, ‘Do you want the holmgang rules, fighting on a spread hide, or will it suit you here?’

  Sigurd yelled, ‘I cannot wait for a hide. Protect yourself, you weasel-haired fox!’

  Eirik said, ‘Let us be sensible northmen, Sheepshanks. You can either call me a weasel or a fox, but not both at the same time. That is not in nature, friend.’

  Sigurd ran straight at him, whirling his iron sword. His ragged beard was floating in the wind as far back as his red ears, he was so furious. He screamed, ‘Then I call you fox - and I am the hound that will crunch your red bones!’

  Eirik said, ‘We shall see about that.’ So, when Sigurd swept his long blade outwards like a scythe, Eirik bent under it and let the axe-blade go from him. The jolt nearly took the ash shaft out of his hands. Sigurd fell against him almost hard enough to knock him down. The iron sword flew over Eirik’s shoulder into the bracken behind. Then Eirik caught Sigurd and lowered him gently on to the turf, groaning and trying to stand and could not.

  White Rolf came out then, smoothing his blue silk feast-shirt, and said, ‘Have you fellows settled your difference?’

  Eirik said, ‘Aye, lord, it seems that Sigurd has no more to say just now.’

  ‘Good,’ said the lord, turning back, ‘then let us not waste feasting time. There is still another dish of pork to eat.’

  Most of the men followed him inside. But four of them kneeled round Sigurd who was sighing deeply, and they showed their white teeth at Eirik as though they were wolves.

  He said, ‘You are his kinsmen, friends, so I expect you to show your white fangs like wolves. But halt a moment and consider that it was Sigurd, not I, who started this.’

  One of them, wearing a catskin cap, shouted out, ‘Aye, you did not start it - but we shall end it.’

  Eirik said pleasantly, ‘You must suit yourselves. First come, first served. I go to eat the lord’s Yuletide pork and cannot stay out here in the cold.’

  One of them called after him, ‘You will not be cold for long, axeman. We will stoke the fire for you.’

  And that night, while Eirik lay asleep in his wall-bed under the calfskin coverlet, flames roared in his thatched roof and charred beams fell suddenly into his house. He sat up and said to his father, ‘Hey, our thralls did not put the hall fire out. It has caught in the thatch. I shall thrash them tomorrow and no mistake.’

  Old Thorvald was standing with his iron sword out. He said, ‘Never mind about tomorrow - it is now that matters. Come on, and bring the axe.’

  So they went outside, keeping close to the cowbyre wall. And in the stackyard they saw the four brothers who had kneeled over lamed Sigurd that day. Each man had a pine-torch in his hand and all were laughing.

  So Eirik went one way round them, and his father the other, and what with sword and axe, coming out of the black shadows, they did sharp work very suddenly. It did not need doing twice.

  And when it was all over, they beat the thralls out of their sleep and got them to smother the flames as well as they could - for the house had given itself up to fire by then.

  And in the morning Thorvald said to Eirik, ‘We should go to White Rolf and explain the matter to him. A man must protect himself.’

  So off they rode to the lord’s house, to find him up with his red cloak on, waiting for them. And before they could lodge their charges he said starkly, ‘You may be right; you may be wrong. But all I can tell you is that there is no room for you in Norway any longer. Choose what you want: my judgement on the spot now - or the judgement by the Thing. I will just say that if you choose the latter, there will also be blood-money to pay to all the kindred you have injured. And that, I guess, could be about twenty people. I do not know of any man, not even the King, who could pay off twenty people for the loss of their husbands and fathers. So choose.’

  Eirik nudged his father and said, ‘You choose, father. I am not well up in the law.’

  So Thorvald said to the lord: ‘Rolf, give the judgement and let’s be away.’

  The lord smiled and nodded. ‘This is what it is,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to be away, and quickly, before their kinsmen get on to the scent. You can borrow a ship of mine if yours needs caulking. But off with you to Scotland or Ireland or Frank-land.’

  Thorvald rubbed his hooked red nose and said, ‘We’ll go in

  my ship, Rolf. Yours lets water in. You are so busy being the lord you don’t go down often enough to the boatsheds. Maybe we will set the prow towards Iceland - and maybe not.’

  White Rolf said, ‘Once you get off-shore, take your time to decide. Drop the anchor-stone and consider a while. But, at all events, thank you for your advice about my ship-caulking. I will see that my bailiffs go down to the boatsheds more often in the future. Have a good voyage, and when you come back in three years’ time, let me hear what it is like up there in the ice. I always wanted to go there, but a lord has so much to see to, I never had time.’

  He sent them aboard two casks of sharp voyage-ale. They Went secretly in to his sheep-pen and took eight of his fattest sheep. They left the skins for him, not being mean men.

  And when they got down to their boat, forty young fellows thronged round it, fighting for the privilege of leaving Norway.

  Thorvald shouted out, ‘You laugh now, but you will groan When the oars skin your hands. We want only hard men, not dreamy boys.’

  So they picked twenty and went to Iceland. It took four days with the lucky tail-wind they picked up after leaving the skerries. They took a load of timber with them, so they knew they would be welcome. It was very scarce at that time up there on the bare mountains.

  2. Trouble in Iceland

  For a while things could not have gone better. Eirik and his father set up house at Drangar and what with the hay-harvesting and sheep-tending, had no time left on their hands. They were happy together, singing as they swung the scythe.

  Then, one winter, Eirik went off feasting to pass the dark nights through and met the daughter of Jorund Ulfsson who was also singing in the merry hall. Her name was Thjodhild and he thought she must be the most beautiful woman in Iceland. She was tall and slender, her eyes were as blue as the sea, her hair was long and straight and corn-golden. She wore a blue cloak over a red feast-robe with silver lace down the front of it and a belt of silver set with jet and garnets.

  Eirik said to her, ‘If your father agreed, I would marry you gladly.’

  She screwed up her blue eyes at him and said, ‘No one has asked you yet. Besides, I have heard things about you. I should always be worrying when you were away from the house, in

  case you had got into more trouble with your axe. That is no sort of way for a woman to live.’

  Eirik took her by the hand and said, ‘If I married you, Thjodhild, I should become a different man. I should put the axe away under the bed in a chest, and all men would call me Eirik the Mild. I swear it.’

  Just then Jorund Ulfsson came up and said, ‘I would agree to this marriage, Eirik, provided you moved off southwards to Vatnshorn, and got yourself a farmstead there. I
t would prove to me that I had a worker for my son-in-law, and not a wandering baresark.’

  Eirik said, ‘Nothing would please me better. I will go back to Drangar and arrange everything with my father.’

  As he went through the door, Thjodhild put her hand on his sleeve and said smiling, ‘I am glad you asked after all. I liked the look of you the moment you came into the feast hall. You are so ugly.’

  So Eirik went off on his horse merrily, but when he reached the steading at Drangar he could not find his father anywhere, He shouted round the house for a while, then went with a lantern into the sheep byre, and there lay old Thorvald in the straw with a deep wound in his back.

  Eirik carried him into the house and laid him on the wall-bed, but there was nothing to be done. Now he knew that even in Iceland he had enemies from among the kin of his Norwegian foes, and that it would be wise to move from Drangar as Jorund had said.

  He married Thjodhild and they set up house at Vatnshorn. In a while they had a little red-haired baby and called him Leif. He was just like his father, with the same red ears.

  This baby was so sharp-eyed that he caught whatever he reached out for, and once he had it in his hand, whether it was a dangling chain from his mother’s neck, or a horn spoon that Eirik was waving at him, Leif would not let go. Eirik was

  pleased about this and said, ‘There is a true northman in our cradle, wife. He is lucky in his grasping, and hard in his holding. We will call him Leif the Lucky.’

  But if Leif was lucky, his father was not. He was a busy worker and a good farmer, but life would not go smoothly for him, however hard he tried. One day some of his farm-slaves were trampling up and down on the hillside, carrying stones for a byre wall, when they started a landslide by accident. Boulders and scree crashed down on to a farmstead belonging to a man called Valthjof. Straightway this man’s kinsman, Eyjolf, ran up the hillside with his sword and killed the slaves, though they cried for mercy.