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Those too large to he entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmis d des taux de reduction diffdrents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour Stre reproduit en un seul clichd, il est film6 d partir de Tangle supdrieur gauche, de g.'^uche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 m HISl America not Discovered by Columbis. A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ^hmmi ttf ^mtim &g tlje |l0rsem«ii, IN THE TENTH CENTURY. Bv R. B. ANDERSOJSs A.M., Oc THK UmVKKSITV OF WISCONSIN. WITH AN APPENDIX ON THE HISTORICAL, LINGUISTIC, LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF THE SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES. CHICAGO: S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY LONDON: TRfBNER & CO, 1874. ^ US' 68443 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. y TO .STEPHEN H. CARPENTEK, LL.D., PROFB880K OF LoeiC, RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LiTBRATURB, WHOSE FRIENDSHIP AND SYMPATHY HAVE BEEN A COMFORT TO ME IN THE LINE OF STUDIES THAT I HAVE PURSUED, AND WHOSE VOICE HAS WHISPERED "COURAGE" WHEN- EVER I SEEMED TO PALTER IN DESPAIR, THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARF RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, AS A TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION, BY THE AUTHOR. I" valiij C. C B. F R. ] othe] II. ( valuf I The that auth( the has 1 of tl inter PEEFAOE. "FN preparing this sketch, the author lias freely -*- made use of such material as he considered valuable for his purpose from the works of Torlbeus, C. C. Rafn J- T. Smith, N. L. Beamish, G. (rravier, B. F. De Costa, A. Davis, William and Mary Ilowitt, B. M. Ballantyne, P. A. Munch, R. Keyser, and others, and he is under special obligations to Dr. S. H. Carpenter, of the University of Wisconsin, for valuable suggestions. This sketch does not claim to be without faults. The style may seem dull and heavy, but it is hoped that the reader will be generous in criticising an author who now makes his first appearance before the American public. The object of this sketch has been to present a readable and truthful narrative of the Norse discovery of America, to create some interest in the people, the literature, and the early f: '& VI PREFACE. institutions of Norway, and especially in Iceland, — that lonely and weird island, — the Ultima Thule of the Greek Philosophers; and of the good or ill performance of the task, a generous public must be the judge. R. B. ANDERSON. University of Wisconsin, June 18, 1874. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. The Norsemen, and other Peoples, interested in THE Discovery of America, *J CHAPTER II. Norse Literature has been Neglected by the Learned Men op the Great Nations, - - - 15 CHAPTER III. Antiquity of America, 20 CHAPTER IV. Phenician, Greek, Irish, and Welsh Claims, - - 32 CHAPTER V. Who Were the Norsemen? 34 CHAPTER VI. Iceland, *® CHAPTER VII. Greenland, ^^ CHAPTER VIII. The Ships of the Norsemen, - 38 If h viii f •< >NTKNTH. CHAPTKR IX. The Sagas anm) I)o< uments auk (iJenuink, - - - 41 CHAPTER X. Bjarne Hekjui-fson, 1)80, • 45 CHAPTER XI. Leik Euikson, 1000, 48 CHAPTER XII. TnoRWALD EiuKsoN, 1003, 52 CHAPTER XIII. Thokstein F ukson, 1005, 56 CHAPTER XIV. TlIORKINN KaULSEFNE AND (iUDRID, 1007. - - - 57 CHAPTER XV. The Discovery ok America by Colimbus, - - - 03 CHAPTER XVI. Oiher Expeditions by the Norsemen, - ... 65 CHAPTER XVII. Conclusion, - - - 74 APPENDIX. The Scandinavian Lvncuacjes, - - - • - - 77 n CHAPTER I. THE NORSEMEN, AND OTHER PEOPLES, INTERESTED IN THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. rpiIIE object of the following pages is to present -^ the reader with a brief account of the discovery of, early voyages to, and settlements in the Western Continent by the Norsemen, and to prove that Co- lumbus must have had knowledge of this discovery l)y the Norsemen before lie started to find America ; and the author will not be surprised, if, in these pages, he should happen to throw out some thoughts which will conflict with the reader's previously- formed convictions about matters and things gen- erally, and about historical facts especially. The interest manifested by the reader of history is always greater the nearer the history which he reads is connected with his own country or with his own ancestors. The American student, on the one hand, loves 'Hi ft ¥ 10 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. >V! 1' i^t to gaze upon the pages of American history. He admires the resohition, the fortitude and persever- ance of the Pilgrim Fathers as they passed through tlieir varied scenes of hardship and adversity when they made their first settlement upon our New England shores; and his whole soul is filled with transporting emotions of delight or sympathy as he reads the thrilling incidents of the sufferings and the victories of his countrymen who fought for his as well as for their own freedom during rhe Revolu- tionary war. The Norse student, on the other hand, takes special pleasure in perusing the old Sagas and Ed- das, and following the Vikings on their daring but victorious expeditions through European waters ; and he draws inspiration from those beautiful and poet- ical ancient myths and stories about Odin, Thor, Baldur, Loke, the Giant Ymer, Ragnarokr, Ygg- drasil, and that innumerable host of godlike heroes that illuminate the pages of his people's ancient history, and glitter like brilliant diamonds in the dust and darkness of bygone ages. The subject to which your attention is invited, 8. AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 11 ry. He 3ersever- througli ;.) when iir New ed with y as he and the r his as Revoli.i- tlie discovery of AmeriGa^ is, if properly presented, of equal interest to Americans and Norsemers. For those who are born and brought up on the fertile soil of Columbia, under the shady branches of the noble tree of American liberty, where the banner of progress and education is unfurled to the breeze, must naturally feel a deep interest in whatever facts may be presented in relation to the first dis- covery and e«-rly settlement of this their native land ; while those who first saw the sunlight beaming among the rugged, snow-capped mountains of old Norway, and can still feel any of the heroic blood of their dauntless forefithers course its way through their veins, must, as a matter of course, feel an equally deep interest in learning that their own ancestors, the intrepid Norsemen, were the first pale-faced men who planted their feet on this gem of the ocean, and an interest too, I dare say, in having the claims of their native country' to this honor vin- dicated. The subject is not without special interest to the Germans^ as it will appear in the course of this sketch that a German, who accompanied the Norse- 12 AMERICA NOT DISOOVEKEU BY COLUMBUS. (^ 'M i IV: K men on their iirst expedition to this Western "World, is intimately connected with the first name of this country; and there is no doubt tnat a German, tlirough his writings about the Norsemen, was tht means of bringing to Columbus valuable information about America. The Welsh also have an interest in this subject; for it is generally believed, and not without reason, that their ancestors, under the leadership of Madoc, made a settlement in this country about the year 1170; thus, although they were 170 years later than the Norsemen in making the discovery, they were still 322 years ahead of Columbus, and Norse- men, therefore, claim in this question, Welshmen's sympathies against Columbus. We might enlist the interest of Irishmen, too, in the presentation of this subject; for in the year 1029 (according to an account in the Eyrbyggja Saga, chapter 64), a Norse navigator, by name GuDLEiF GuDLAUGSON, undcrtook a voyage to Dub- lin, and on leaving Ireland again he intended to sail to ^ oeland ; but he met with northeast winds and was driven far to the west and southwest in it! AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 13 the sea, where no land was to be seen. It was ah'eady late in the summer, and Gudleif with his party made many prayers that they might escape from the sea. And it came to pass, says the Saga, that they saw land, hut they knew not what land it was. Then they resolved to sail to the land, for they were weary with contending longer with the violence of the sea. They found there a good harbor, and when they had been a short time on shore, there came some people to them. They knew none of the people, but it ''^rather aiypeared to them that they spoke Irish.'''' This portion of America, supposed to be situated south of the Chesapeake Bay, including North and South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida, is in the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefne, chapter 13, called ^'' Irland edh M.ykla^'' that is. Great Ireland. It is claimed that the name, Great Ireland^ arose from the fact that the country had been colonized, long before Gudlaugsoii' s visit, by the Irish, and that, they coming from their own green island to a vast continent possessing many of the fertile qualities of their own native soil, the appellation was natural 14 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. and appropriate. There is nothing improbable in this conchision ; for the Ivish, who visited and inhabited Iceland toward the close of the eighth century, to accomplish which they had to traverse a stormy ocean to the extent of eight hundred miles — who, as early as 725, were foi'nd upon the Faroe Isles — and whose voyages between Ireland and Ice- land, in the tenth century, were of ordinary occur- rence — a people so familiar with the sea were certainly capable of making a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. I cannot here enter upon any further discussion of the claims of the Irish, but you observe that this subject of discovering America cannot be treated exhaustively without bringing back to the mind fond recollections of the Emerald Isle, which was once the School of Western Europe, and her brave sons "Inclyta gens hominum, milite, pace, fide," as Bishop Donatus somewhere has it. CHAPTER II. NORSE LITERATURE HAS BEEN NEGLECTED BY THE LEARNED MEN OF THE GREAT NATIONS. TJINLIGHTENED men all over the world are -*-'^ watching, with astonishment and admiration, the New World, from which great revolutions have proceeded, and in which great problems in human government, human progress and enterprise, are yet to be worked out and demonstrated. People are everywhere eagerly observing every event that takes place in America, making it the subject of the most careful scrutiny, and the results, wonderful as they are, everywhere awaken the most intense interest. If you travel in England, in Ger- many, in Norway, or in any of the North-European countries, it is interesting to observe how familiar the common people are with matters and things per- taining to America. They not only know America better than they know their border countries, but 16 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. there also are found not a few who keep themselves better posted on the affairs of America than on those of their own country. Until recently it has generally been supposed that America was wholly unknown to European nations previous to the time of Columbus, but investigations by learned men have made it cer- tain, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the Europeans did have knowledge of this country long before the time of Columbus, and it has even been claimed, on quite plausible grount.ls, that some of the nations living here at the time of Columbus' discovery of this continent were descendants of Europeans. As yet but few scholars have turned their atten- tion to the North of Europe in relation to this subject, and hence the light which this extreme portion of the globe could give has hitherto been, in a great measure, neglected by the learned men of the great nations; and yet the antiqinties of the North furnish a series of incontestable evidence that the coast of North America was discovered in the latter part of the tenth century, immediately after AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 17 the discovery of Greenland by the Norsemen; fur- thermore, that this same coast was visited repeatedly by the Norsemen in the eleventh century; further- more, that it was visited by them in the twelfth century; nay, also, that it was found again by them in the thirteenth century, and revisited in ttie four- teenth century. But even this is not all. These Northern antiquities also show that Christianity had been introduced in America not only among the Norsemen, who formed a settlement here, but also among the aborigines, or native population, that the Norsemen found here. The learned men of the North are not to blame that this matter has not previously received due attention, for ToRFiEus published an account thereof as early as the year 1705, and besides him Suhm and ScH(ENiNG and Lagerbring and Wormskjold and ScHRCEDER, to say nothing of many others, have all presented the main facts in their historical works. But other nations paid no attention to all this. Not until 1837, when the celebrated Pro- fessor Rafn, through the laudable enterprise of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquities, published 2 18 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. Ill Ml: his learned, interesting and important work,* could scholars outside of Scandinavia be induced to examine the claims of the Norsemen. Professor Kafn suc- ceeded, and he has perhaps done more than any other one man to call the attention of other nations* to the importance of studying the Old Norse lite- rature. Thus it is that scholars of other nations recently have begun to direct their attention to Northern Antiquities, Northern Languages and His- tory. Germany and England, and I would like to add America, are now beginning to realize how much valuable material is to be found in these sources for elucidating the history and institutions of other contemporary nations ; and especially do the early Sagas of the North throw much important light on the character of English and German insti- tutions during the middle ages. The English and Germans are translating the Sagas as fast as they can. Professors Konrad Maurer and Th. Moebius are doing excellent work at their respective Univer- sities in Germany ; Oxford and Cambridge in Eng- land have each an Icelandic Professor, and three * Antiquitates Americans, Hafnise, 1837. AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 19 American Universities* give instruction in the Northern languages. It is indeed an encouraging fact that these great nations are gradually becoming conscious of the importance of studying the Northern languages and literature, and we may safely hope that the time is not far distant when the Norsemen will be recog- nized in their right social, political, and literary character, and at the same time as navigators assume their true position in the pre-Columbian discovery of America.f * Cornell University in New York, and the Michigan and Wisconsin Universities. + A step toward llie vindication of the claims of the Norsemen to the honor of having discovered, settled, and made America known to the world, has been made, and a movement has been inaugurated for the erection of a monument in memory of the Norse navigator, Leif Erikson, who visited and explored America in the year 1000, nearly five centuries before Columbus. For the realization of this object Ole Bull has contributed his eminent services. He has already given several concerts, both in this country and in Norway, the proceeds of which go to the monument fund. Ole Bull is President, Senator John A. John- son, Treasurer, and the writer of these pages Secretary, of the monument committee. Norway's famous poet and orator, BjOrnstjerne BjOrnson (see Appendix), has promised to write, for the dedication of the monu- ment, a cantata, to which the eminent Norse composer, Edward Gbieg, will write the music. BjOhnson has also promised to come to America in person and deliver the dedication oration. 1^-.; mw CHAPTER III. 11 .1 m ANTIQUITY OF AMERICA. "T) KFORE the plains of Europe rose above the -*-^ primeval seas, the continent of America, according to Louis Agassiz, emerged from the watery waste that encircled the whole globe and became the scene of animal life. Hence the so-called New World is in reality the Old, and Agassiz gives abundant proof of its hoary age. But who is able even to conjecture at what period it became the abode of man? Down to the close of the tenth century its written history is vague and uncertain. We can find traces of a rude civilization that suggest a very high antiquity. We can show mounds, monuments, and inscriptions, that point to periods, the contemplation* of which would make Chronos himself grow giddy; yet among all these great and often impressive memorials there is no monument, mound, or inscription that solves M AMERICA NOT DIKOOVERED BY t'OLUMnUS. 21 satisfactorily the mystery of tlieir origin. There are but few traditions even to aid us in our researches, and we can only infer that age after age nations and tribes have continued to rise into greatness and then fall and decline, and that barbarism and a rude culture have held alternate sway.* * Compare De Costa, page 11. i m CHAPTER IV. PHENICIAN, GREEK, IRISH AND WELSH CLAIMS. ■ 4 iliiilii! TN early times the Atlantic Ocean, like all otlier -*- things without known l)ound8, was viewed by man with mixed feelings of fear and awe. It was usually called the Sea of Darkness. Both Phenician and Tyrian voyages to the "Western Continent, in early times, have been warmly advocated; and it is more than probable that the original inhabitants of the American continent crossed the Atlantic instead of piercing the icy regions of the north and coming by the way of Behring's Strait. From the Canaries, which were discovered and colonized by the Phenicians, it is a short voyage to America, and the bold sailors of the Mediterranean, after touching at these islands, could easily and safely be wafted to the western shore. AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 23 That the Greek philosopher, Pytheas, whoso discoveries about the different length of the days in various climates appeared so astonishing to the other philosophers of his age, traversed the Atlantic Ocean about 3-iO years before Christ, can scarcely be doubted. He certainly discovered Thule* (Ice- land), and determined its latitude, and we may at least say, that by this discovery he opened the way to America for the Norsemen. Claims have been made, as I have already shown, both by the Irish and by the Welsh, that they crossed the Atlantic and found America before Columbus, but it is not my purpose to comment upon these claims in this short sketch. Much learned discussion has been devoted to the subject, but the early history of the American continent is still, to a great extent, veiled in mystery, and not until near the close of the tenth century of the present era can we point, with absolute certainty, to a genuine trans- Atlantic voyage. * See Strabo'8 Geography, Book II, S 6. lir I : II V !i !' CHAPTER V. WHO V/ERE THE NORSEMEN? r I IJIE iirst voyage to America, of which we have -*- any perfectly reliable account, was performed by the Norsemen. But who were the Norsemen ? Permit me to answer this question briefly. The Norsemen were the descendants of a branch of the Gothic race that, in early times, emigrated from Asia and traveled westward and northward, Anally settling down in what is now the west cen- tral part of the kingdom of Norway. Their lan- guage was the Old Norse, which is still preserved and spoken in Iceland, and upon it are founded the modern Norse, Danish, and Swedish languages. The ancient Norsemen were a bold and inde- pendent people. They were a free people. Their rulers were elected by the people in convention assembled, and all public matters of importance i'. AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 25 were decided in the assemblies, or open parlia- ments of the people. Abroad they became the most daring adven- turers. They made themselves known in every part of the civilized world by their daring as sol- diers and navigators. They spread themselves along tlie shores of Europe, making conquests and plant- ing colonies. In their conquering expeditions they subdued a large portion of England, wrested Normandy, the fairest province of France, from the French king, conquered a considerable portion of Belgium, and made extensive inroads into Spain. Under Robert Guiscard they made themselves masters of Sicily and lower Italy in the eleventh century, and main- tained their power there for a long time. During the Crusades they led the van of the chivalry of Europe in rescuing the Holy Sepulchre, and ruled over Antioch and Tiberias under Harald. They passed between the pillars of Hercules, they deso- lated the classic fields of Greece and penetrated the walls of Constantinople. Straying away into the distant east, from where ;i 26 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. I ! ■!|ll i ' ' > \ they originally came, we llnd them laying the! foundations of the Russian Empire, swinging their two-edged battle-axes in the streets of Constantino- ple, where they served as the leaders of the Greek Emperor's body-guard, and the main support of his tottering throne. They carv^ed their mystic runes upon the marble lion* in the harbor of Athens in commemoration of their conquest of this city. The old Norse Vikings sailed up the rivers Rhine, Schelde, the Seine and Loire, conquering Cologne and Aachen, where they turned the emperor's palace into a stable, filling the heart of even the great Charlemagne with dismay. The rulers of England are descendants of the Norsemen. Ganger Rolf, known in English history by the name Rollo, a son of Harald Haarfagr's friend, Ragnwald Moerejarl, invaded France in the year 912 and took possession of Kormandy; and in 1066, at the battle of Hastings, William the Con- queror, a great-grandson of Ganger Rolf, conquered England; and it is proper to add, that from this * The marble liou upon which they carved their runes was afterwards taken to Venice and erected at the entrance of tlie arsenal, where it may be seen at the present time. lis AMEKICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 27 jconquest the pride and glory of Great Britain lescended. It is also a noticeable fact, that the most serious lopposition that William the Conqueror met with jcame from colonists of his own race, who had set- Itled in Northumbria. He wasted their lands with pre and sword, and drove them beyond the border; Ibut still we find their energy, their perseverance land their speech existing in the north English and llowland Scotch dialects. CHAPTER VI. ICELAND. "T^UT Europe did not set bounds to the voyages I -*-^ and enterprises of the Norsemen. In the year 860 they discovered Iceland, and soon afterwards | established upon this island a republic, which flour- ished four hundred years. The Icelandic republic I furnishes the very best evidence of the independent! spirit which characterized the Norsemen. Political circumstances in Norway urged many of the boldest and most independent people in the I country to seek an asylum of freedom. Harald Haarfagr ('. e. the Fair-haired) had determined to make himself monarch of all Norway. He was instigated to unite Norway under his scepter by the ambition of the fair and proud Ragna Adil8-| DATTER (daughter), whom he loved and courted: but she declared that the man she married would I have to be king of all Norway. Harald accepted AMERKiA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 29 the conditions; and after twelve years' hard fight- ing, during whicli time he neither cut nor combed his liair once,* in the year 872, at the battle of Hafrs^'ord, Norway became united into one king- dom, instead of being divided into thirty-one small republics, as had been the case before that time. Harald had subdued or slain the numerous lead- ers, and had passed a law abolishing all freehold tenure of property,t usui'ping it for the crown. To this the proud freemen of Norway would no; sub- mit. Disdaining to yield their ancient independ- ence and be degraded, they resolved to leave those lands and homes, which they could now scarcely call their own, and set out with their families and followers in quest of new seats. There were as great emigrations from Norway in those days as there are now. The Norse spirit of enterprise is as old as tneir history. Whither then should they go, was the question. * He made a pledge to Ragna that he would neither cut nor comb his hair until he had subjugated all Norway. t This so-called udal, [Icel. 6dal, Norse odel, allodium,] i. e. independent tenure of property, was given back to the Norsemen by King Hakon the Good in the year 935, and has never since been taken away from them. i ; ' 30 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. ''I ■ lili V'l I III ki liil;ii iPrI Some went to the Hebrides, others to the Ork- ney isles; some to the Shetland and Faroe isles; I many went as Yikings to England, Scotland and France; but by far the greater number went to the more distant and therefore more secure IcelaiiJ. which had been discovered by the celebrated Norse! Viking Naddodd in 860, and called by him Snow- land ; rediscovered by Gardar, of Swedish extrac- tion in 864, after whom it was called Gardar's Holm (island), and visited by two Norsemen, Ingolfr and Leif (Hjoerleifr) in 870, by whom it was called Iceland. This emigration from Norway to Iceland began in the year 874, a thousand years ago this summer; and thus this strange island was peopled — and in a few years peopled to a surprising ex- tent. It was not long before it had upwards of 50,000 inhabitants. You must bear in mind that this colonization was on an island in the cold North Sea, a little below the Arctic Circle. It was in a climate where grain refused to ripen, and where the people often were obliged to shake the snow off the frozen hay before they could carry it. Fishing, the main support of the people, was often obstructed AMERICA NOT DISC<^VERED BY COLUMBUS. 31 by ice from the polar regions iilling their liarbors, and the whole island presented a most melancholy aspect of desolation. But still the people continued to flock thither and become attached to the soil. They were surrounded the whole year by dreary ice-mountains, the glare of volcanic flames, and the roaring of geysers or boiling springs. Still they loved this wild country, because they were free^ and through the long winters, when the sun nearly or entirely disappeared from above the horizon, and nothing but northern lights flickered over their heads, they seemed only the more thrown upon their intellectual resources, and passed the time in reciting the Eddas and Sagas of their ancestors. Perhaps I ought to beg your pardon for dwell- ing so long upon the subject of Iceland ; but my apology is that, in the first place, Iceland is of itself an exceedingly interesting country ; and, in the next place, it is really the hinge upon which the door swings which opened America to Europe. This I island had been visited by Pytheas 340 years before Ohri;t; and, according to the Irish monk Dicuilus, who wrote a geography in the year 825, it had 32 AMERICA NOT T)I9(X)VEREn BY COLUMBUS. 1.1 1 :!ll \lul been visited by some Irish priests in the summer of| 795.* It was the settlement of Iceland by the Norsemen, and the constant voyages between thi.s island and Norway, that led to the discovery, first of Greenland and then of America; and it is due to the high intellectual standing and fine historical taste of the Icelanders that records of these voyages M'ere kept, first to instruct Coluiubus how to find America, and afterwards to solve for us the myste- ries concerning the discovery of this continent. Iceland is a small island, in the 65th deg. north latitude, of about 1,800 geographical square miles. Its valleys are almost without verdure, and its mount- ains without trees. Still, it contains, even at the present time, no less than 70,000 inhabitants, who live a peaceable and contented life, still clinging to their ancient language, and studying foreign lan- guages, science, philosophy, and history, as we do who live in milder and more favored climes. Now, as in olden times, the earth trembles in the throes of the earthquake, — the geysers still spout their scalding water, and the plain belches forth mud, — * \l,d. DicuilU8, De Meneura Orhis Terrse, ed. Latronne, page 38. I i ! ■ I . ■^ AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLL'.MHUS. 33 while ohe grand old jokul,* Mount Ilekla, clad in white robes of eternal snow, brandishes aloft its volcanic torch, as if threatening to set the very heavens on fire. For ages Iceland was destined to become the sanctuary and preserver of the grand oM literature of the North. Paganism prevailed there more than a century after the island became inhabited ; the old traditions were cherished and committed to memory, and shortly after the introduction of Chris- tianity the Old Norse literature was put .*n writing. The ancient literature and traditions of Iceland excel anything of their kind in Europe during the middle ages. The Icelandic poems have no paral- lel in all the treasures of ancient literature. There are gigantic proportions about them, and great and overwhelming tragedies in them, which rival those of Greece. The early literature of Iceland is now fast becoming recognized as equal to that of ancient Greece and Eome. The original Teutonic life lived longer and more independently in Norway, and especially in Iceland, * Mountains covered with perpetual snow are called *'j6kul8" in Iceland. 3 8.*- 84 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. mm than elsewhere, and had more favorable opportnni- ties to grow and mature ; and the Icelandic literature is the full-blown flower of the Teutonic heathen- dom. Thib Teutonic heathendom, with its beauti- ful and poetical mythology, was rooted out by superstitious priests in Germany, and the other countries inhabited by Teutonic peoples, before it had developed sufficiently to produce blossoms, ex- cepting in England, where a kindred branch of the Gothic race rose to eminence in letters, and pro- duced the Anglo-Saxon literature. CHAPTER VII. GREENLAND. T)UT, as time passed on, the people of Iceland ■^-^ felt a new impulse for colonizing new and strange lands, and the tide of emigration began to tend with irresistible force toward Greenland, in the west, which country also became settled in spite of its wretched climate. The discovery of Greenland was a natural con- sequence of the settlement of Iceland, just as the discovery of America afterwards was a natural con- sequence of the settlement of Greenland. Between the western part of Iceland and the eastern part of Greenland there is a distance of only forty-five geographical miles. Hence, some of the ships that sailed to Iceland, at the time of the settlement of this island and later, could in case of a violent east wind, which is no rare occurrence in those regions, scarcely avoid approaching the coast of Greenland 36 AMERICA NOT niSOOVERED BY COLUMBUS. Ill ]\ i 11 ' I I 1 I ,1 sufficiently to catch a EFORE following the Norsemen further on -'-^ their westward course, it may not be out of place to sa}'' a few vords about their ships. Hav- ing crossed the briny deep four times myself I have seon something of what is required in order to venture with safety on so long watery journeys. I have also seen one of the old Norse Viking ships, which is preserved at the University of Norway, and it seemed to me an excellent one both in respect to form and size. Now, I do not mean to say that the old Norsemen possessed such ocean crafts as now plow the deep between New York and Liverpool ; but what I mean to say is this, that the Norsemen were then, as they are now, very excellent navigators. They had good sea-going ves- sels, some of which were of large size. We have an account, in Olaf Tryggvason's Saga, of one that AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 39 was in many respects remarkable. That part of the keel which rested on the ground was 140 feet long. None but the choicest material was used in its con- struction. It contained thirty-four rowing-benches, and its stem and stern were overlaid with gold.* Their vessels would compare favorably with those of other nations, which have been used in later times in expeditions around the world, and were in every way adapted for an ocean voyage. They certainly were as well fitted to cross the Atlantic as were the ships of Cclumbus. From the Sagas we also learn that the Norsemen fully understood the importance of cultivating the study of naviga- tion ; they knew how to calculate the course of the sun and moon, and how to measure time by the stars. Without a high degree of nautical knowl- edge they could never have accomplished tlieir voy- * This ship of Olaf Tryggvason was called the Long Serpent, and was built by the ship-carpenter Thorbtrg, who is celebrated in the annals of the North for his ship-building. The Earl Ilakon had a dragon contain- ing forty rowing-benches. King Canute had one containing sixty, and King Olaf, the saint, possessed two ships capable of carrying two hun- dred men each. The Norse dragons glided on the waters as gracefully as ducks t swans, of which they also had the form. Compare also "Saga Frithjofs ens Froekna," chapter 1, where his good ship Ellida is described. 40 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. fi "-m iiiiiilr'''" \: ! |l . ' nges to England, France, Spain, Sicily, Greece, and those still more difficult voyages to Iceland and Greenland. 1 have now given a brief historical sketch of the voyages and enterprises of the Norsemen. I have done this to show that they were capable of the exploit of discovering America — nay, that it was in fact an unavoidable result of their constant seafarin? life; so that even if we did not have the unmis- takable language of the Sagas, we might still be able to assert, with a considerable degree of cer- tainty, that the Norsemen must have been aware of the existence of the American continent. Yes, the Norsemen were truly a great people ! Their spirit found its way into the Magna Charta* of England and into the Declaration of Independence in America. The spirit of the Vikings still survives in the bosoms of Englishmen, Americans and Norse- men, extending their commerce, taking bold posi- tions against tyranny, and producing wonderful internal improvements in these countries. * Compare William and Mary Howitt. CHAPTER IX. THE SAGAS AND DOCUMENTS ARE GENUINE. "TTTE have now seen that the Norsemen made * * themselves known in every part of the civilized world; that they had excellent shipsj that they were well trained seamen, and a highly civ- ilized nation, possessing in fact all the means necessary for reaching the continent in the west ; and we are thus prepared for the vital question, Did the Norsemen actually discover and explore the coast of the country now known as America? There is certamly no improbability in the idea, r^pen an atlas at the map Ox" the Atlantic Ocean, or at the maps of the two hemispheres. Observe the distance between Norway and Iceland, and the distances between Iceland and Greenland, and Green- land and Newfoundland. You perceive it is more than twice the distance between Norway and Ice- land that it is between Iceland and Greenland, and 42 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. I il: 11,1 i I i\ V not far from twice the distance that it is between Greenland and Labrador, and thence pn to New- foundland. Now, after conceding the fact that Norse colonies existed in Greenland for at least three hundred years, which every student of Norse history knows to be a fact, we must prepare our- selves for the proposition that America was dis- covered by the Norsemen. It would be alto- gether unreasonable to suppose that a seafaring people like the Norsemen, who traversed the broad western ocean to reach Iceland and Green- land, could live for three centuries within a short voyage of this vast continent and never become aware of its existence. But fortunately on this point we are not left to conjecture. We have a complete written record of the discovery. Intelligent men must first succeed in blotting out innumerable pages of well authen- ticated history, before they undertake to deny or dispute the facts of this discovery. While literary darkness overspread the whole of the European continent for many centuries following the tenth, letters were highly cultivated in Iceland; and this I ill .:i AMERICA NOT DI8C0VERED BY C0LUMBU3. 43 is the very tinie and country in which the Sagas containing a record of the discovery of America originated. That they were written long before Columbus, is as easy to demonstrate as the fact that Herodotus wrote his history before the era of Christ. The authenticity and authority of the Ice- landic Sagas has been fully acknowledged by Alex- ander VON Humboldt in his Cosmos,* by Malte- BRUN,t and many other distinguished scholars; and therefore a further discussion is at this time un- necessary on this point. * Coamos, Vol. IL, pages 269-272, where Alexander von Humboldt, discussing the pre-Columbian discovery of America by the Norsemen, says : " We are here on historical ground. By the critical and highly praiseworthy efforts of Professor Rafn and the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries in Copenhagen, the Sagas and documents in regard to the fc; r'^ditions of the Norsemen to Hclluland (Newfoundland), to Markland (the mouth of the St. Lawrence river and Novii Scotia), and to Vinland (Massachusetts) have been published and satisfactorily commented upon. * * * The discovery of the northern part of America by the Norsemen cannot be disputed. The length of the voyage, the direction in which they sailed, the time of the sun's rising and setting, are accurately given. While the Challfat of Bagdad was still nourishing under the Abbasides, and while the rule of the Samanidcs, so favorable to poetry, still flour- ished in Porsia, America was discovered, about the year 1000, by Leif, son of Erik the Red, at about 41Vi° N. L." t Vid. Nouvelles annales des voyages, de la geographie, de rhistoire et de I'archeologie, redigees par M. V.-A. Malte-Bb.n, secretaire de la commission centrale de la societe de geographie de Paris, member de plusieurs societes savantes. AoQt, 1858, pag. 263. 44 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. H f mil' I lib The manuscripts, in which we have the Sagas i relating to America are found in the celebrated Codex Flatceensis, a skin-book that was finished in the year 1387. This work, written with great care and executed in the highest style of art, is noy: preserved in its integrity in the archives of Copen- hagen, and a carefully printed copy* of it is to be found in Mimer's library at the University of Wis- consin. We gather from this work, that the Norse- men, after discovering and settling Greenland, and then keeping a bold southwestern course, discovered America more than 500 years before Columbus; and I shall in the following chapters present some of the main circumstances of this discovery. * Flateyarbok, Christiania (Norway), 1860-1868. CHAPTER X. BJARNE HERJULFSON, 986. T"N the year 986, the same year that he returned -^ from Greenland, the above-named Erik the Red moved from Iceland to Greenland, and among his numerous friends, who accompanied him, was an Icelander by name Herfulf. Herjulf had a son by name Bjarne, who was a man of enterprise and fond of going abroad, and who possessed a merchant-ship, with which he gath- ered wealth and reputation. He used to be by turns a year abroad and a year at home with his father. He chanced to be away in Norway when his father moved over to Greenland, and on return- ing to Iceland he was so much disappointed on hearing of his father's departure with Erik, that he would not unload his ship, but resolved to follow his old custom and take up his abode with his father. "Who will sro witli me to Greenland?" pHHirii 11 ■J. .ij I ■:.■: 'Ml! lL.^All|l| I ''^ ;!i 46 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY C0LUMBU6. I, li said he to his men. "We will all go with yon," replied the men. "But we have none of ns ever been on the Greenland Sea before," said Bjarne. "We mind not that," said the men, — so away they sailed for three days and lost sight of Iceland. Then the wind failed. After that a north wind and fog set in, and they knew not where they were sailing to. This lasted many days, until the sun at length appeared again, so that they could deter- mine the quarters of the sky, and lo ! in the horizon they saw, like a blue cloud, the outlines of an un- known land. They approached it. They saw that it was without mountains, was covered with wood, and that there were small hills inland. Bjarne saw that this did not answer to the description of Greenland ; he knew he was too far south ; so he left the land on the larboard side and sailed north- ward two days, when they got sight of land again. The men asked Bjarne if this was Greenland; but he said it was not, " For in Greenland," he said, "there are great snowy mountains; but this land is flat and covered with trees." They did not go ashore, but turning the bow from the land, they AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLrMBU6. 47 kept the sea with a fine breeze from the south wet for three days, when a third land was seen. Still Bjarne would not go ashore, for it was not like what had been reported of Greenland. So they sailed on, driven by a violent southwest wind, and after four days they reached a land which suited the description of Greenland. Bjarne was not deceived, for it was Greenland, and he happened to land close to the place where his father had settled. It cannot be determined with certainty what parts of the American coast Bjarne saw; but from the circumstances of the voyage, the course of the winds, the direction of the currents, and the pre- sumed distance between each sight of land, there is reason to believe that the first land that Bjarne saw in the year 986 was the present Nantucket, one degree south of Boston ; the second Nova Scotia, and the third Newfoundland. Thus Bjarne Her- JULFSON was the first European whose eyes beheld any part of the American continent. "■''I m . ^i!i liiii'' .' lilt'; '!^. i: ':l!;iii h:^ I' i i - 11 CHAPTER XI. LEIF ERIKSON, 1000. "TTTHEN Bjariie visited Norway, a few years ^ ' later, and told of his adventure, he was censured in strong terms by Jarl (Earl) Erik and others, l)eeau8e he had manifested so little interest that he had not even gone ashore and explored these lands, and because he could give no more definite account of them. Still, what he did say was sufficient to arouse in the mind of Leif Erik- son, son of Erik the Red, a determination to solve the problem and find out what kind of lands these were that were talked so much about. He bought Bjarne's ship from him, set sail with a good crew of thirty-five men, and found the lands just as Bjarne had described them, far away to the south- west of Greenland. They landed in Helluland (Newfoundland) and in Markland (Nova Sco- tia), explored these countries somewhat, gave them ! ^^ =i' ill! nrr il AMERICA NOT DISCOVEREn HY (^ol.UMBUS. 4!) names, and proceeded from the latter into the open sea with a northeast wind, and were two days at sea hefore they saw land again. They sai _d into a sound. It was very shallow at ebb-tide, so that their ship stood dry and there was a long way from their ship to the water. But so much did they desire to land that they did not give themselves time to wait until the water rose again under their ship, but ran at once on shore, at a place where a river flows out of a lake.* But as soon as the water rose up under the ship, they rowed out in their boats, floated the ship up the river and thence into the lake, where they cast anchor, brought their skin cots out of the ship, and raised their tents. After this they took counsel, and resolved to remain through the winter, and built a large house. There was no want of salmon, either in the river or in the lake, and larger salmon than they had before seen. The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good that cattle would not require house-feeding in winter. Day and night were more equal than in * This lake is Mount Hope Bay. The tourist, in traveling that way by rail, will at first take Mount Hope Bay for a lake. B. F. DcCosta, page 82. 50 AMERICA NOT DISCO VK14EU BY COLUMBUS. I iil: 'ill ■I'll Greenland or Iceland, for on the shortest day the sun was above the horizon from half-past seven in the forenoon till half-past four in the afternoon ; which circumstance gives for the latitude of the place 41° 24' 10" ; hence Leif 's booths are thought to have been situated at or near Fall River, Massachusetts. Leif Erikson called the country Vinland, and the cause of this was the following interesting incident: There was a German in Leif Erikson's party by name Tykker. Hj was a prisoner of war, but h^d become Leif s special favorite. He was missing day after they came back from an exploring expe- dition. Leif Erikson became very anxious about Tyrker, and fearing that he might be killed by wild beasts or by Indians,* he went out with a few men to search for him. Toward evening he was found coming home, but in a very excited state of mind. The cause of his excitement was some fruit which he had found, and which he held up in his hands, I t (\ 1J IMJIlllll! '{li 'i: mm * Onr Noree colonists in Vinland had frequent intercourse with the natives, whom they called "Skrielliuger." This name is derived from the verb "skriela," which means to peel; hence skraelling (peeling) alludes to their small and shriveled aspect. Compare also the adjective "skral," which means slim. lean. AMKRICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 51 shouting: " Weintrauben ! Weiiitrauben ! ! Weintrau- ben ! ! ! " The sight and taste of this fruit, to whicli lie had been accustomed in his own native land, had excited liim to such an extent that he seemed drunk, and for some time he would do nothing but laugli, devour grapes and talk German, which language our Norse discoverers did not understand. At last he spoke Norse, and explained that he, to his great joy and surprise, had found vines and grapes in great abundance. From tb's circumstance the land got the name of Vinland, and history got the interesting fact that a German was along with the daring argonauts of the Christian era. Here is then a short account of the first expedi- tion to America. It took place in the year 1000, and Leif Erikson w?.s the first pale-faced man who planted his feet on the American continent. Give Leif Erikson a place in history ! ^i'llil ■II CHAPTER XII. THORWALD ERIKSON, 1002. HTN the spring, when the winds were favorable, -*- Leif Erikson returned to Greenland. The ex- pedition to Vinland was much talked of, and Thor- WALD, Leif's brother, thought that the land had been much too little explored. Then said Leif to Thorwald : " You may go with my ship, brother, to Vinland, if you like." And so another expedition was fitted out, in the year 1002, by Thorwald Erik- idon, who went to Vinland and remained there three yesrs; but it cost him his life, for in a battle with th:> Skrsel lings an arrow from one of the natives of America pierced his side, causing death. He was buried in Vinland, and two crosses were erected ol his grave — one at Iiis head and one at his feet. Hallowed ground this beneath whose sod rests the dust of the first Christian and the first European who died in America! His death and burial also AMERICA NOT DI8(jOVP:RED BY COLUMBUS. 53 gains interest in anotlier respect, for in the year 1831 there was found in tlie vicinity of Fall River, Massachusetts, a skeleton in armor, and many of the circumstances connected with it are so wonderful that it might indeed seem almost as though it were the skeleton of this very Thorwald Erikson ! This skeleton in armor attracted much attention at the time, was the subject of much learned discussion, and our celebrated poet Longfellow wrote, in the year 1841, a poem about it, beginning: " Speak ! speak ! thou fearful guest !" After which he makes the skeleton tell about his adventures as a viking, about the pine forests of Norway, about his voyage across the stormy deep, and about the discovery of America, concerning which he says: "Three weeks we westward bore, And when the storm was o'er, Cloudlike we saw the shore Stretching to leeward ; There for my lady's bower Built I the lofty tower,* Which to this very hour Stands looking- seaward." li'Hiv* •The tower here referred to \e the famous Newport tower in Rhode Inland, which undoubtedly wae built by the Noreemen. t ,■ 'ill! Pilii l.lli' m \\m' i' '!'■ i':ilii .i,r 64 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. The following are the last two verses of the poem : " Still grew my bosom then, Still as a stagnant fen, Hateful to rae were men, The sunlight hateful! In the vast forest here, Clad in my warlike gear, Fell. I upon my spear, Oh, death was grateful! "Thus seamed with many scars, Bursting these prison bars, Up to its native stars. My soul ascended. There from the flowing bowl Deep drinks the warrior's soul : Skaal ! to the Northland, skaal ! Thus the tale ended." The great Swedish chemist Berzelius analyzed* a part of the breastplate which was found on the ■"A bronze article found in Denmark, and dating with certainty back to the tenth century, was also analyzed, and the annexed table shows the result of the analysis : Breastplate Bronze Article from from America. Denmark, Copper 70.29 67.13 Zinc 28.03 20.39 Tin 0.91 9.24 Lead 0.74 3.39 Iron 0.03. 0.11 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 55 skeleton, and found that in composition it corre- sponded with metals used in the North during the tenth century ; and comparing the Fall Kiver breast- plate with old northern armors, it was also found to correspond with these in style. When the Norsemen had buried their chief, Thorwald, they returned to Leifsbudir (Leifs booths), loaded their ships with the products of the land and returned to Greenland in the year 1005. ii'!' I 'M i ;M'*'' r::'4 III ''i;^ ■/^'■!;i :, :f Mii \ 'I CHAPTER XIII. THORSTEIN ERIKSON, 1005. r I 1HEN the Sagas tell iis that Thorstein, the -*- youngest son of Erik the Red, was seized with a strong desire to pass over to Yinland to fetch the bod}'^ of his brother Thorwald. He was married to Gudrid, a woman remarkable foi her beauty, her dignity, her prudence, and her good discourse. Thorstein fitted out a vessel, manned it with twenty-five men selected for their strength and stature, besides himself and Gudrid. When all was ready they put out to sea, and were soon out of sight of land. Through the whole summer they were tossed about on the deep and were driven they knew not whither. Finally they made land, which they found to be Lysefjord, on the western coast of Greenland. Here Thorstein and several of his men died, and Gudrid returned to Eriksfjord. CHAPTER XIY. THORFINN KARLSEFNE AND GUDRID, 1007. ri iHE most distinguished explorer of Vinland -*- was Thorfinn Karlsefnp:. He was a wealthy and influential man. He was descended from the most famous families in the North. Several of his ancestors had been elected kings. In the fall of 1006, he came from Norway to Eriksfjord with two ships. Karlsefne made rich presents to Leif Eiikoon, and Leif offered the Norse navigator the hospitalities of Brattahlid during winter. After the Yule festival Thorfinn began to treat with Leif as to the marriage of Gudrid, Leif being the person to whom the right of betrothment belonged. Leif gave a favorable ear to his advances, and in the course of the winter their nuptials were celebrated with due ceremony. The conversation frequently turned at Brattahlid upon Vinland the Good, many saying that an expedition thither held out fair IP w 58 AMERICA NOT DISCOVKRKD BV COLUMBUS. prospects of gain. The result was that Thorfinn, accompanied by liis wife, who urged him to the undertaking, sailed to Yinland in the spring of 1007, and remained there three years. The Sagas lay considerable stress upon the fact that Gudrid persuaded him to undertake this expedition. She also appears to have taken a prominent part in the whole enterprise. Imagine yourself way oft' in Greenland. Imagine Gudrid and Thorfinn Karl- sefne taking a walk together on the sea-beach, and Gudrid talking to her husband in this wise : " I wonder that you, Thorfinn, with good ships and many stout men, and plenty of means, should choose to remain in this barren spot instead of searching out the famous Yinland and making a settlement there. Just think what a splendid country it must be, and what a desirable change for all of us. Thick and leafy woods like those of old Norway, instead of these rugged clift^s and snow-clad hills. Fields of waving grass and rye instead of moss-covered rocks and sandy soil. Trees large enough to build houses and ships instead of willow Lushes, that are tit for nothing except to AMERICA NOT DISCOVERKD BY COLUMBUS. 59 [gave our cattle from starvation when the hay-crop runs out ; besides longer sunshine in winter, and more genial warmth all the year round, instead of howling winds and ice and snow. Truly 1 think this country has been wofully misnamed when they (called it Greenland." You can easily imagine that Thorfinn was con- [ vinced by such persuasive arguments, and he resolved I to follow his wife's advice. The expedition which now set out for Vinland I was on a much larger scale than any of the expedi- tions that had preceded it. That Leif and Thorwald [and Thorstein had not intended to make their per- manent abode in Vinland was plain, from the fact that they brought neither women nor flocks nor herds with them. Karlsefne, on the other hand, went forth fully equipped for colonization. The party consisted of one hundred and fifty-one men and seven women. A numbei of cattle and sheep were also carried on this occasion to Vinland. They all arrived there in safety, and remained, as has been stated, three years, when hostilities between them and the Skraellings compelled them to give I up their colony. 1*1 'ill ill hi m W> 60 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. bi'f The Saga gives a very full account of Thorlinnii enterprises in Vinland ; about the traffic with the| Skrsellings; about the development of the colony, etc. ; all of which I am compelled to omit in tliisl sketch. I must call attention, however, to the inter- esting fact that a son was born to Thortinn and Gudrid the year after they had established theni| selves in their quarters at Straum^ord (Buzzard's Bay). His name was Snorre Thorfinnson. He I was born in the present State of Massachusetts, in the year 1008, and he was the first man of Euro- pean blood of whose birth in America we have any record. From him the famous sculptor, Albert Thorwaldsen, is lineally descended, besides a lung train of learned and distinguished men, who have flourished during the last eight centuries in Iceland! and Denmark. In the next place, attention is invited to anl inscription on a rock, situated on the right bank of I the Taunton river, in Bristol county, Massachusetts. It is familiarly called the Dighton Writing Kocr Inscription. It stands in the very region whicli the Norsemen frequented. It is written in char- lift AMERICA NOT DI8C()VEREn BY COLUMBUS. 61 iters which the natives have never used nor sciilp- jtiired. This inscription was copied by Dr. Danforth early as 1680, by Cotton Mather in 1712; it iras copied by Dr. Greenwood in 1730, j;y Stephen Jewell in 1768, by James Winthrop in 1788, and las been copied at least four times in the present century. The rock was seen and talked of by the irst settlers in New England, long before anything ras said about the Norsemen discovering America efore Columbus. Hear the center of the inscription we read dis- tinctly, in Koman characters, CXXXI, ^hich is 151,* the exact number of Thortinn's party. ?hen we find an N, a boat, and the Runic character for M, which may be interpreted " N(or8e) seafaring |M(en)." Besides we have the word NAM — took [(took possession), and the whole of Thorfinn's name, nth the exception of the first letter. Repeating Ithese characters we have ORFIN, CXXXI, N ^^^^ M, NAM, *The Icelanders reckoned twelve decades to the hundred, and called pt stort hundrad (great hundred). ,*\ 62 AMERICA NOT D18C0VEBED BY COLUMBUS. I- which lias been interpreted by Prof. Rafn as fol lows: "Thorlin, with one hundred and fifty-oiiel Norse seafaring men took possession of tliis land (landnam)." In the lower left corner of the inscription is a I figure of a woman and a child, near the latter A which is the letter S, reminding lis most forcibly of Gudrid and her son, Snorre. Upon the whole | the Dighton Writing Rock removes all doubt con- cerning the presence of Thoi*finn Xarlsefne and the I Norsemen at Taunton river, in the beginning of tlie| eleventh century. CHAPTER XY. OTHER EXPEDITIONS BY THE NORSEMEN. rriHE Sagas give elaborate accounts of other -■- expeditions by the Norsemen to Yinland. Thus there is one by Freydis in the year 1011 ; and in the year 1121 the Bishop Erik Upsi went as a missionary to Vinland. Then there are Sagas that give accounts of expe- ditions by Norsemen to Great Irland (North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida), but I will omit these in the present sketch. The last expedition mentioned was in the year 1347, but this was in the time of the Black Plague, which raged throughout Euro]te with unrelenting fury from 1347 to 1351, and also reached Iceland, Greenland and Vinland, and cut off communication between these countries. The Black Plague reduced the population of Norway alone from two millions to three hundred thousand, and this fact gives us 64 AMP:RI0A not disco VKBEO by OOLUMHUrt. some idea of the terri})le ravages of this fearful epidemic. It is evident that the Black Plague left no surplus population for expeditions to America or elsewhere. I : CHAPTER XVT. THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY COLUMBUS. T" WILL now devote a few pages to pointing out -^ some of the threads that connect this discovery of America by the Norsemen with the more recent and better-known discovery by Columbus. 1. From a letter which Columbus himself wrote, and which we find quoted in Washington Irving's Columbus* we know positively that while the design of attempting the discovery in the west was maturing in the mind of Columbus, he made a voyage to the north of Europe, and visited Iceland. This was in February, 1477, and in his conversation with the Bishop and other learned men of Iceland, he must have been informed of the extraordinary fact, that their countrymen had discovered a great country beyond the western ocean, which seemed to extend southward to a great distance. This was * Vol. I, page 59. it wmmmm 66 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. liif m a cireiimRtance not likely to rest quietly in the active and speculative mind of the great geographer and navigator. The reader will observe that, when Columbus was in Iceland, in the year 1477, fifteen years before he discovered America, only one hun- dred and thirty years had elapsed since the last Norse expedition to Vinland. There were undoubt- edly people still living whose grandfathers had crossed the Atlantic, and it would be altogether unreasonable to suppose that he, who was constant!) studying and talking about geography and naviga- tion, possibly could visit Iceland and not hear any- thing of the land in the west. 2. Gudrid, the wife of Thorfinn and mother of Snorre, made a pilgrimage to Rome after the deatli of her husband. It is related that she was well received, and she certainly must have talked there of her ever memoraWe trans-oceanic voyage to Vin- land, and her three years' rec'dence there. Rome paid much attention to geographical discoveries, and took pains to collect all new charts and reports that were brought there. Every new discovery was an aggrandizement of the papal dominion, a AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 67 new field for the preaching of the Gospel. The Romans might have heard of Vinland before, but she brought personal evidence. 3. That Vinland was Iniowii at the Vatican is clearly proved by the tact that the Pope Paschal II, in the year 1112, appointed Erik Upsi, Bishop of Iceland, Greenland and Vinland, and Erik Upsi went personally to Vinland in the year 1121. 4. Recent developments in relation to Columbus tend to prove that he had opportunity to see a map of Vinland, procured from the Vatican for the PinzoiiB, and it would indeed astonish us more to learn that he, with his nautical knowledge, did not hear of America than that he did. We must also bear in mind that Columbus lived in an age of discovery; England, France, Portugal and Spain were vying with each (/tlier in discovering new lands and extending their territori<;g. 5. But in addition to the Haoai*, the Diguton Writing Rock, the Newport T'/wer (which the Indians told the early New Englaiid afetijers was built by the giants, and the Norse discoverers cer- tainly looked like giants to the Indians, 8in('^ \he m m u'mf^ I kd !Mi] 68 AMERICA NuT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUfl. former called the latter Skrsellings), and in addition to the SKELETON IN ARMOR, we havG a remarkable record of the early discovery of America by the Norsemen in the writings of Adam of Bremen, a canon and historian of high authority, who died in the year 1076. He visited the Danish king Svend Esthridson, a nephew of Canute the Great, and on liis return home he wrote a book " On the Propa- gation of the Christian Religion in the North of Europe^'' and at the end of this book he added a geographical treatise " On the Position of Denmarlv and other regions heyond DetiinarTc^'' Having given an account of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Greenland, he says that, ^'besides these there is still another regi\V 72 AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. II ■: ; ■ '"■'ill If our theory, then, does not make Columbus out as true and good a man as the reader may liave considered him, we still insist that it proves him a man of extraordinary ability. It shows that he discovered America by study and research, and not by accident or inspiration. Care should always be taken to vindicate great names from accident or inspiration. It defeats one of the most salutary purposes of history and biography which is to furnish examples of what human genius and laud- able enterprise can accomplish. That the Spanish and more recent colonies in America could become more permanent than the Norse colonies, is chiefly to be attributed to the superiority that fire-arms gave the Europeans over the natives. The Norsemen had no fire-arms, and their higher culture could not defend them against the swarms of savages that attacked them. In the next place, the Black Plague reduced the popula- tion of Norway and Iceland beyond the necessity or even possibility to emigrate. If the communication between Vinland and the North could have been maintained say one hundred years longer, that is AMERICA NOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. 73 to the middle of the fifteenth century, it is difficult to determine what the result would have been. Possibly this sketch would have appeared in Ice- landie instead of English. Undoubtedly the Norse colonies would have become firmly rooted by that time, and Norse language, nationality, and institu- tions might have played as conspicuous a part in America as the English and their posterity do now-a-days. 1 1 i Ilk' I 'I 1'' CHAPTEK XVII. CONCLUSION. 1) UT it is not within the scope of this sketch -*— ^ to discuse this subject any further. Let us remember Leif Erikson, the first white man who planted liis feet on American soil ! Let us remem- ber his brother, Tiiorwald Erikson, the first Euro- pean and the first Christian who was buried beneath American sod ! Let us not forget Thorfinn and GuDRiD, who established the first European colony in America! nor their little son, Snorre, the first man of European blood whose birthplace was in the New World ! Let us erect a monument to Leif Erikson worthy of the man and the cause; and while the knowledge of this discovery of America lay for a long time hid iu the unstudied literature of Iceland, let us take this lesson, that ^^ truth crushed to earth will rise again ; " that truth may often lie darkened and hid for a long time, but AMKRIGA NOT DI8COVERKD BY COLUMBUS. that it is like the beam of light from a star in some far distant region of the universe — after thousands of years it reaches some heavenly body and gives it light. In the language of Mr. Davis : " Let us praise Leif Erikson for his courage, let us applaud him for his zeal, let us respect him for his motives, for he was anxious to enlarge the boundaries of knowl- edge. He reached the wished for land, " ' Where now the western sun O'er fields and floods, O'er every living soul Diffuseth glad repose.' He opened to the view a broad region, where smil- ing hope invites successive generations from the old world. " Such men as an Alexander, or a Tamerlane, conquer but to devastate countries. Discoverers add new regions of fertility and beauty to those already known. "And are not the hardy adventurers, plowing the briny deep, more attractive than the troops of Alexander, or Napoleon, marching to conquer tlie I' ! i f !i i ii i i 'H' ■' i i •r: J v'.. 76 AMERICA IVOT DISCOVERED BY COLUMBUS. .'t * world, with plumes waving in the gentle breeze, and with arms glittering in the sunbeams? Who can tell all the benefits that discoverers confer on mankind ? ^\ " ' To count them all demands a tlioueand tongues, A throat of brasB and adamantine lunge.' " THE SCANDINAVIAN LAN(iUAUKS; Tbeir Historical, liwtic, Literary aid Scientific Valne. KtrCIDATBU BY QUOTATIONS P'ROM EMINENT AMERICAN, ENGLISH, GERMAN AND FRENCH SCHOLARS. MOTICB8 OP THBSB LANOUAOBH BT H. W. LONGFELLOW, GEORGE P. MARSH, SAMUEL LAING, ROBERT BUCHANAN. SCHLEGEL, MALLET, AND OTHERS. BE' ' .JU .ND BDITRD WITH A FBW MOTBH BY R B. ANDERSON, A.M. Of the ITniverHity of Wisconsin. Hi lai sti ge le( qu ca Ai ha WHAT SCHOLARS SAY ABOUT THE Historical, Linguistic and Literary Valik OF THE SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES. " Der ilr flagga p;^ mast och den visar At norr, och i norr ilr den illskade jord ; jag vill folja de himmeleka vindarnas gAng, jag vill styra tillbaka mot Nord." — Teyner. ENGLISH VERSION. " There's the flag on the mast, and it points to the North, And the North holds the land that I love, I will steer back to northward, the heavenly course Of the winds guiding sure from above." VERY little attention has hitherto been given in this country to the study of Scandinavian history, languages and literatures. We think this branch of study would not be so much neglected, if it were more generally known, what an extensive source of intel- lectual pleasure it affords to the scholar who is ac- quainted with it. We hope, therefore, to serve a good cause by calling your attention to a few quotations from American, English, German and French scholars, who have given much time and attention to the above named '■■\ 80 niK SCANDINAVIAN LAN(;rAOKS. ii subjects, in order time it may be known wbat they, who may justly be considered competent to judge, say of their importance. I will add that I have not found a sciiolar, who luis devoted himself to this field of study and research, tluit has not at the same time become an entlmsiastic admirer of Scandinavian and particularly Icelandic history, lan- guages, and literatures. To scientific students it is sufficient to say, that u knowledge of the Scandinavian languages at once intro- duces them to several writers of great eminence in the scientific Avorld. I will briefly mention a few. Hans Christian Oersted won for himself one of the greatest names of the as:e. His discovery, in i8:;i0, of eleccro-magnetism — the identity of electricity and mag- netism — which he not only discovered, but demon- strated incontestably, placed him at once in the highest rank of physical philosophers, and has led to all the wonders of the electric telegraph. His great work, " The Soul of Nature," in which he promulgates his grand doctrine of the universe, abundantly repays a careful perusal. Carl von Linne (Linna'us) is the polar star in botany. He wa3 Professor at the University of Sweden, died in 1788, and is the founder of the established system of botany. As Linna?us is the father of botany, so Ber- ZELius might be called the father of the present system of chemistry. He is one of the greatest ornaments of science. He devoted his whole life sedulously to the promotion and extension of his favorite science, and to him is the world indebted for the discovery of many THE aOANiUN'AVlAN LANGlTAOK«. HI new elementary principles iind valuuble elioniical com- binations now in general use. He Hllo'l the chair of Chemistry in the Universiiv of Stockhoin\ for forty-two years, and died in 1848. Sciikele, Mi;jiiael Sars, Hansteen, and several others, are men who have dis- tinguit^hed themselves by their labors in tlie tield of science, natural history and astronomy. Aiul now read the following ({notations, wliicii we have promised to present. Mr. North Ludlow Beamish says: "The national literature of Iceland holds a distinct and eminent position in the litenvjure of Europe. In that remote and cheer- less isle * * * * religion and learning took up their tranciuil abode, before the south of Europe had yet emerged from the mental darkness, which followed the fall of the Roman Empire. There the unerring memo- ries of the Skalds and Sagamen were the depositories of past events, which, handed down from age to age, in one unbroken line of historical tradition, were committed to writing on the introduction of Christianity, and now come before us with an internal evidence of their truth, which places them mnongst the highest order of historical records. "To investigate the origin of this remarkable ad- vancement in mental culture, and trace the progressive steps by which Icelandic literature attained an eminence which even now imparts a lustre to that barren land, is an object of interesting and instructive inijuiry. "Among no other people of Europe can the concep- tion and birth of historical liteiatur'- be more clearly traced than amongst the people of Iceland. Here it can be shown how memory took root, j\nd gave birth to 6 mm k 1^ l^tk. ■ iULJL. 82 THE SCANDINAVIAN LANOUAGEB. narrative ; how narrative multiplied and increased until it was committed to writing, and how the written rela- tion eventually became sifted and arranged in chrono- logical order." SAAaTEL Laing, Esq. — **A11 that men hope for of good government and future improvement in their physical and moral condition — all that civilized men enjoy at this day of civil, religious, and political liberty — the l^ritish constitution, representative legislature, the trial by jury, security of property, freedom of mind and person, the influence of public opinion over the con- duct of public aifairs, the Reformation, the liberty of the press, the spirit of the age, — all that is or has been of value to man in modern times as a member of society, either in Europe or in America, may be traced to the spark left burning upon our shores by the Norwegian barbarians. " There seem no good grounds for the favorite and hackneyed course of all who have written on the origin of the British constitution and trial by jury, who un- riddle a few dark phrases of Tacitus concerning the institutions of the ancient Germanic tribes, and trace up to that obscure source the origin of all political institu- tions connected with freedom in modern Europe. In the (Norwegian) Sagas we find, at a period immediately preceding the first traces of free institutions in our history, the rude but very vigorous demonstrations of similar institutions existing in great activity among those nortliern people, who were masters of the country uiidur Canute the Great, who for two generations before bis time had occupied and inhabited a very large portion of it, and of wiiom a branch under William of Normandy THE 8<"ANrHNAMAN LAN(irAGKS. 88 became its ultimate and permanent con(iuerors. It may be more classical to search in the pages of Tacitus for allusions to the customs of the tribes wandering in his day through the forests of Germany, which may bear some faint resemblance to modern institutions, or to what we fancy our modern institutions may have been in their infancy; but it seems more consistent with correct principles of historic research to look for the origin of our institutions at the nearest, not at the most remote, source: not at what existed 1,000 years before in the woods of Germany, among people whom wc must believe upon supposition to have been the ancestors of the invaders from the north of the Elbe, who conquered England, and must again believe upon supposition, that when this people were conquered successively by the Danes and Normans, they imposed their own peculiar institutions upon their conquerors, instead of receiving institutions from them; but at what actually existed, when the first notice of assemblies for legislative pur- poses can be traced in English history among the con- querors of the country, a cognate people, long established by previous conquests in a large portion of it, who used, if not the same, at least a language common to both, and who had no occasion to borrow, from the conquered, institutions which were flourishing at the time in their mother country in much greater vigor. It is in these (Norwegian) Sagas, not in Tacitus, that we have to look for the origin of the political institutions of England. The reference of all matters to the legislative assemblies of the people is one of the most striking facts in the Sagas. " The Sagas, although composed by natives of Iceland, 84 VUK s. „^I)IXAVIAN [.AN(Jl AGKS. ■ il m are properly jVorwcf/ian liferature. The events, persons, manners, language, bel^jug to Norway ; and they are productions, which like the works of Homer, of Shake- speare, and of Scott, are strongly stamped with nationality of character and incident. "A portion of that attention, which has exhausted classic mythology, and which has too long dwelt in the Pantheons of Greece and Rome, and is wearied with fruitless efforts to learn something more, where, perhaps, nothing more is to be learned, may very profitably, and very successfully, be directed to the vast field of Gothic research. For we are Goths and the descendants of Goths — '" The uieii. Of t'urth's best blood, of titles manifold.' And it well becomes us to ask, what has Zeus to do with the Brocken, Apollo with Effersberg, or Poseidon with the Northern Sea? The gods of our fathers were neither Jupiter, nor Saturn, nor Mp .ry, but Odin, Brage, or Eger. If we marvel at the pictures of heathen divinities as painted by classical hands, let us not forget, that our ancestors had deities of their own — gods *i-s mighty in their attributes, as refined in their tastes, as heroic in their doings, as the gods worshiped in the Parthenon or talked about in the forum." M. Mallet says : •' History has not recorded the annals of a people who have occasioned greater, more sudden, or more numerous revolutions in Europe than the Scandinavians, or whose antiquities, at the same time, are so little known. Had, indeed, their emigra- tions been only like those sudden torrents of which all traces and remembrance are soon effaced, the mdilloitiii':.. THE S( ANDINW 1A\ l.AN<.l A(iKK. 80 that lias been shown to them woiihl liave been sufti- ciently justified by the barbarism they have been ap- proached with. But, during those general inundations, the face of Europe underwent so total a change, and during the confusion they occasioned., such different establishments took ])lace : new societies were formed, animated so entirely by the new sjiirit. that the history of our own manners and institutions ought necessarily to ascend back, and even dwell a considerable time upon u period which discovers to us their chief origin and source. " But I ought not barely to assert this. Permit me to support the assertions by proof. For this purpose, let us briefly run overall the different revolutions, which this part of the world underwent, during the long course of ages which its history comprehends, in order to see what share the nations of the north have had in pro- ducing them. If we recur back to the remotest times, we observe a nation issuing step by step from the forests of Scythia, incessantly increasing and dividing to take possession of the uncultivated countries, which it met with in its progress. Very soon after, we see the same people, like a tree full of vigor, extending long branches overall Europe; we see them also carrying with them, wherever thev came, from the borders of the Bli;,ck Sea to the extremities of Spain, of Sicily, and of Greece, a leligion simple and martial as themselves, a form of government dictated by good sense and liberty, a restless unconquered spirit, apt to tiike fire at the very mention of subjection and constraint, and a ferocious courage nourished by a savage and vagabond life. While the gentleness of the climate softened imperceptibly the fero- 'ri 86 THE SCANDINAVIAN LANCrUAOES. city of those who settled in the south, colonies of Egyp- tians and Phenicians mixing with them upon the coasts of Greece, and thence passing over to those of Italy, taught them at last to livo in cities, to cultivate letters, arts and commerce. Thus their opinions, their customs and genius, were blended together, and new states were formed upon new plans. Rome, in the meantime arose, and at length carried all before her. In proportion as she increased in grandeur, she forgot her ancient man- ners, and destroyed, among the nations whom she over- powered, the original spirit with which they were ani- mated. But this spirit continued unaltered in the colder countries of Europe, and maintained itself there like tlie independency of the inhabitants. Scarce could fifteen or sixteen centuries produce there any change in that spirit. There it renewed itself incessantly; for, during the whole of that long interval, new adventurers issuing continually from the original inexhaustible country, trod upon the heels of their fathers towards the north, and, being in their turn succeeded by new troops of followers, they pushed one another forward like the waves of the sea. The northern countries, thus over- stocked, and unable any longer to contain such restless inhabitants, equally greedy of glory and plunder, dis- charged at length upon the Roman Empire the weight that oppressed them. The barriers of the Empire, ill defended by a people whom prosperity had enervated, were borne down on all sides by torrents of victorious armies. We then see the conquerors introducing, among tlie nations they vanquished, viz. into the very bosom of slavery and sloth, that spirit of independence and equality, that elevation of soul, that taste for rural and THE 8(1 ANDIN AVIAN LANGUAOES. 87 military life, which both the one and the other had originally -derived from the same common source, but which were then among the Romans breathing their last. Dispositions and principles so opposite, struggled long with forces sufficiently equal, but they united in the end, they coalesced together, and from their coalition sprung those principles and that spirit which governed after- wards almost all the states of Europe, and which, not- withstanding the differences of climate, of religion, and particular accidents, do visibly reign in them, and retain, to this day, more or less, the traces of their first common origin. " It is easy to see, from this short sketch, liow greatly the nations of the earth have infiuenced the different fates of Europe; and if it be worth while to trace its revolutions to their causes; if the illustration of its institutions, of its police, of its customs, of its manners, of its laws, be a subject of useful and interesting inquiry ; it must be allowed, that the antiquities of the north, that is to say, everything which tends to make us ac- quainted with its ancient inhabitants, merits a share in the attention of thinking men. But to render this obvious by a particular example: is it not well known that the most flourishing and celebrated states of Europe owe originally to the northern nations whatever liberty they now enjoy, either in their constitution or in the spirit of their government ? For although the Gothic form of government has been almost everywhere altered or abolished, have we not retained, in most things, the opinions, the customs, the manners which that govern- ment had a tendency to produce? Is not this, in fact, the principal source of that courage, of that aversion to "!i m .i^l 88 TIMO SCANIUNAVIAN l.ANiif AliKIS. slavery, of that empire of lionor which characterized in general the European n.itions ; and of that moderation, of that easiness of access, and peculiar attention to the rights of humanity, which so happily distinguish our sovereigns from the inaccessible and superb tyrants of Asia ? The immense extent of the Romxin Empire had rendered its constitution so despotic and military, many of its emperors were such ferocious monsters, its senate was become so mean-spirited and vile, that all elevation of sentiment, everything that was noble and manly, seems to have been forever vanished from their hearts and minds; insomuch that if all Europe had received the yoke of Rome in this her state of debasement, tliis fine part of the world reduced to the inglorious con- dition of the rest could not have avoided falling into that kind of barbarity, which is of all others the most incurable; as, by making as many slaves as there are men, it degrades them so low as not to leave them even a thought or desire of bettering their condition. But nature has long prepared a remedy for such great evils, in that unsubmitting, unconquerable spirit, with whic^h she has inspired the people of the north ; and thus slio made amends to the human race for all the calamities which, in other respects, the inroads of these nations and the overthrow of tlie Rf)man Emjiire produced. " The great ])rerogative of Scandinavia (says the ad- mirable author of the Spirit of Laws*), and what ought to recommend its inhabitants beyond every people upon earth, is, that they afforded the great resource to the liberty of i^urope, that is, to almost all the liberty that is among men. Tlie Goth Jornande, adds he, calls the * Biiroii lie Mnnti'wiuh'u (L'Eeprit de Lois). THE l^rANI>INAVI AN LANraAirKB. 89 north of Europe the forge of muiikiiul. I should ratlier call it the forge of those instrument.s which broke the fetters manufactured in tlie south. It was there those valiant nations were bred who left their native climes to destroy tyrants and slaves, and so to teach men that nature having made them equal, no reason could be assigned for their becoming dependent but their mutual happiness." H. W. Longfellow is an enthusiastic admirer of the Scandinavian languages. Of the Icelandic he says: *'The Icelandic is as remarkable as the Anglo-Sax()n fo" its abruptness, its obscurity and the boldness of its metaphors. Poets are called Songsmiths; — poetry, tlie Language of the Gods: — gold, tlie Daylight of Dwarfs; — the heavens, the Scull of Ymer: — the rainbow, the Bridge of the Gods ; — a battle, a Bath of Blood, the Hail of Odin, the Meeting of Shields ; — the tongue, the Sword of Words; — river, the Sweat of Earth, the Blood of the Valleys; — arrows, the Daughters of Misfortune, the Hailstones of Helmets ; — the earth, the Vessel that floats on the Ages; — the sea, the Field of Pirates: — a ship, the Skate of Pirates, the Horse of the Waves. The ancient Skald (Bard) smote the strings of his harp with as bold a band as the Birsscrk smotv his foe. When heroes fell in battle he sang to them in his Drapa, or death-song, that they had gone to drink * divine mead in the secure and tranquil palaces of the gods' in that Valhalla upon whose walls stood the watchman Heiin- dal, whose ear was so acute that he could hear the gj-uss grow in the meadows of earth, and the wool on the backs of sheep. He lived in a credulous age ; in the dim twilight of the past. He was DO T!IK SCANDIN AVIAN LANGUAai<)K. " 'Tho skylark in tho dawu of years, The poet of the morn.' In the vast solitudes around him, the heart of Nature beat against his own. From the midnight gloom of groves, the deep-voiced pines answered the deeper- voiced and neighboring sea. To his ear, these were not the voices of dead, but living things. Demons rode the ocean like a weary steed, and the gigantic pines flapped their sounding wings to smite the spirit of the storm. " Still wilder and fiercer were these influences of Nature in desolate Iceland, than on the mainland of Scandinavia. Fields of lava, icebergs, geysers, and vol- canoes were familiar sights. When the long winter came, and the snowy Heckla roared through the sunless air, and the flames of the Northern Aurora flashed along the sky, like phantoms from Valhalla, the soul of the poet was filled with images of terror and dismay. He bewailed the death of Baldur, the sun ; and saw in each eclipse the horrid form of the wolf, Managamer, who swallowed the moon and stained the sky with blood." Professor W. Fiske, of Cornell University, who is undoubtedly the most learned northern scholar in this country, who has spent several years in the Scandinavian countries, and who is an enthusiastic admirer of Iceland and its Sagas, has sent me the following lines for inser- tion in this appendix : " It is not necessary to dwell on the value of Icelandic to those who desire to investigate the early history of the Teutonic race. The religious belief of our remote an- cestors, and very many of their primitive legal and social "customs, some of which still influence the daily life of THfc, .S< .\NI>INAVrAN I \N0UA<;KS, 91 the people, find their clearest and often their only eluci- dation in the so-called Eddie and Scaldin laya, and in the Sagas. The samf writings form the sole sources of Scandinavian liistory before the fourteenth century, and they not infrequently shed a welcome ray on the obscure annals of the Britisii Islands, and of several eontinontal nations. They furnish, moreover, an almost un 'jue ex- ample of a modern literature whicli is completely indige- nous. The old Icelandic literature, which MoBius truly characterises as 'cin Phiinomen vom Standpunktc der allgomeinen Cultur und Litcraturgeschichte,' and be- side which the literatures of all the other early '^'eutonic dialects — Gotiiic, Old High (ierman, Saxon, Frisian, and Anglo-Saxon — are as a drop to a bucket of water, developed itself out of the actual lifr of the i>eople under little or no extraneous influence. In this respect it de- serves the careful siudy of every student of letters. For the English-speaking races especially there is nowhere, so near home, a tield promi>;ing to the scholar so rich a harvest. The few translations, or attempted transla- tions, which are to be found in English, give merely a faint idea of the treasures of anti(iue wisdom and sublime poetry which exist in the Eddie lays, or of the quaint simplicity, dramatic action, and striking realism which characterize the historical Sagas. Nor is the modern literature of the language, with its rich and abundant stores of folk-lore, unworthy of regard." Benjamin Lossing savs: ''It is back to the Nor- wegian Vikings we must look for the hardiest elements of progress in the United States." ^. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 4p A 1.0 I.I 1^128 |2.5 *iA Uik 12.2 u Wuu HJi& 1.25 || 1.4 1.6 ^ 6" ► <% » ^:.^*' V /^ Sciences Coiporation 23 WEST MAIN STREir WEBSTIR.N.Y. 149M (716)872-4503 \ 4 •^ ;\ \ ;\ .<;' * ^ u. \ ^ i Jill 92 THE KCANDINAVIAN I.ANtil; AGES. B. F. De Costa. — " Let iis remember that in vindi- cating the Northmen we honor those who not only give us the first knowledge possessed of the American continent^, but to whom we are indebted for much besides that we esteem valuable. I'or we fable in a great measure when we speak of our Saxon inheritance ; it is rather from the Northmen that v/e have derived our vital energy, our freedom of thought, and, in a measure that we do not yet suspect, our strength of speech. Yet, happily, the people are fast becoming conscious of their indel)ted- ness ; so that it is to be hoped, that the time is not far distant when the Northmen may be recognized in their right, social, political and literary characters, and at the same time, as navigators, assume their true position in the Pre-Columbian Discovery of America. "The twelfth centary was an era of great literary activity in Iceland, and the century following showed the same zeal. Finally Iceland possessed a body of prose literature superior in quantity and value to that of any other modern nation of its time. Indeed the natives of Europe at this period had no prose literature in any modern language spoken by the people. " Yet while other nations were without a literature, the intellect of Iceland was in active exercise, and works were produced like the Eddas and Heimskringla, works which, being inspired by a lofty genius, will rank with the writings of Homer and Herodotus while time itself endures." Says Sir Edmund Head, in regard to the Norwegian literature of the ttvelfth century: "No doubt there were translations in Anglo-Saxon from the Latin, by Alfred, of an earlier date, but there was in truth no vernacular I THK SOANDFXAVIAN LAN^aiAfJErt. 93 in vindi- ilygive us }ontinentj J8 that we lire when ;her from il energy, we do not ppily, the indebted- is not far d in tlieir md at tlie osition in it literary ig sliowed [y of prose lat of any natives of re in any literature, md works KRINGLA, will rank vhile time forwegian here were )y Alfred, ernacuhir literature. I cannot name,'' he says, "any work in high or low German prose, which can be carried back to this period. In France, prose writing cannot be said to have begun before the time of Villehardouin (1204) and Joinville (1302) ; Castilian prose certainly did not begin before the time of Alfonso X (1253) ; Don Juan Manvel, the author of Conde Lucanor, was not born till 1283. The Cronica General de Espana was not composed till at least the middle of the thirteenth century. About the same time the language of Italy was acquiring that softness and strength, which were destined to appear so conspicuously in the prose of Boccaccio and the writers of the next century. " Of course there was more or less poetry, yet poetry is something that is early developed among the rudest nations, while goodi prose tells that a people have become highly advanced in mental culture.'* William and Mary Howitt. — "There is nothing besides the Bible, which sits in a divine tranquility of unapproachable nobility, like a King of Kings amongst all other books, and the poem of Ho aer itself, which can compare in all the elements of greatness with the Edda. There is a loftiness of stature, and a growth of muscle about it which no poets of the same race have ever since reached. The obscurity which hangs ever some parts of it, like the deep shadows crouching mid the ruins of the past, is probably the result of delapida- tious; but amid this stand forth the boldest masses of intellectual masonry. We are astonished at the wisdom which is shaped into maxims, and at the tempestuous strength of passions to which all modern emotions appear puny and constrained. Amid the bright sunlight of a ,; 1 II ' 94 TJIE SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES. •i^;l far-off time, surrounded by the densest shadows of for- gotten ages, we come at once into the midst of gods and heroes, goddesses and fair women, giants and dwarfs, moving about in a world of wonderful construction, unlike any other worlds or creations which God has founded or man has imagined, but still beautiful beyond conception. "The Icelandic poem? have no parallel in all the treasures of ancient literature. They are the expressions of the souls of poets existing in the primeval and un- effeminated earth. They are limnings of men and women of godlike beauty and endowments, full of the vigor of simple but impetuous natures. There are gigantic pro- portions about them. There are great and overwhelming tragedies in them, to which those of Greece only present any parallels. " The Edda is a structure of that grandeur and im- portance, that it deserves to be far better known to us generally, than it is. The spirit in it is sublime and colossal." Plihy Miles. — " The literary history of Iceland in the early ages of the Republic, is of a most interesting character. When we consider the limited population of the country, and the many disadvantages under which they labored, tJieir literature is the most remarkable on record. The old Icelanders, from the tenth to the six- teenth century, through a period of the history of the world when little intellectual light beamed from the surrounding nations, were as devoted and ardent workers in the fields of history and poetry as any community in the world under the most favorable circumstances. Springing from the old Norse or Norwegian stock, they THK SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGEK. 95 vs of for- t of gods id dwarfs, struction, God has il beyond n all the Impressions I and un- id women I vigor of mtic pro- whelming ly present r and im- )wn to ns )lime and 'celand in iteresting alation of ler which rkahle on » the six- ry of the from the t workers nunity in Qistances. ock, they carried the language and habits of their ancestors with them to their liighland home. Though a very larf/e number of our English words are derived direct from the Icelandic, yet the most learned and indefatigable of our lexicographers, both in England and America, have acknowledged their ignorance of this language. " The Eddas abound in mythological machinery to an extent quite equal to tlie writings of Homer and Virgil." The learned German writer Schlegel, in his "Es- thetics and Miscellaneous Works," says : " If any monu- ment of the primitive northern world deserves a place amongst the earlier remains of the south, the Icelandic Edda must be deemed worthy of that distinction. The spiritual veneration for Nature, to which the sensual Greek was an entire stranger, gushes forth in the mys- terious language and prophetic traditions of the North- ern Edda with a full tide of enfchusiasm and inspiration sufficient to endure for centuries, and to supply a whole race of future bards and poets v» ith a precious and ani- mating elixir. The vivid delineations, the rich glowing abundance and animation of the Homeric pictures of the world, are not more decidedly superior to the misty scenes and shadowy forms of Ossian, than the Northern Edda is in its sublimity to the works of Hesiod." Prof. Dr. Dietrich asserts " that the Scandinavian literature is extraordinarily rich in all kinds of writings." Hon. George P. Marsh. — "It must suffice to re- mark that, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, the Icelandic literature has never been surpassed. ii i 96 THE S()ANl)lNAVIA>r LANGUAGES, if equaled, in all that gives valut? to that portion of his- tory v/hich consists of spirited delineations of character and faithful and lively pictures of events among nations in a rude state of society. " That the study of the Old-Northern tongue may have an important bearing on English grammar and etymology, will be obvious, when it is known that the Icelandic is most closely allied to the Anglo-Saxon, of which so few monuments are extant; and a slight examination of its structure and remarkable syntactical character will satisfy the reader that it may well deserve the atteiition of the philologist." The excellent writer, Charles L. Brace, in speak- ing of Iceland, says : '' The Congress, or ' Althing,' of the Icelanders, had many of the best political features which have distinguished parliamentary government in all branches of the Teutonic race since. Every free- holder voted in it, and its decisions governed all inferior courts. It tried the lesser magistrates, and chose the presiding officers of the colony. " To this remote island (Iceland) came, too, that re- markable profession, who were at once the poets, his- torians, genealogists and moralists o^ the Norse race, the Scalds. These men, before writing was much in use, handed down by memory, in familiar and often alliterative poetry, the names and deeds of the brave Norsemen, their victories on every coast of Europe, their histories and passions, and wild deaths, their family ties, and the boundaries of their possessions, their adventures and voyages, and even their law and their mythology. In fact, all that history and legal THE 8CANt)INAVIAN LANGUAGES. 97 on of liis- charactei- ig nations ngue may nmar and 1 that the -Saxon, of a slight syntactical ell deserve in speak- Ithing/ of il features rnment in ]very free- ill inferior chose the 0, that re- poets, his- I^orse race, much in and often the brave f Europe, tths, their ossessions, r law and and legal documents, and genealogical records and poetry transmit now, was handed down by these bards of the Norsemen. Iceland became their peculiar center and home. Here, in bold and vivid language, they recorded in works, which posterity will never let die, the achievements of the Vikings, the conquest of almost every people in Europe by these vigoi'ous jnrates; their wild ventures, their contempt of pain and death, their absolute joy in danger, combat and difficulty. In these, the oldest re- cords of our (i. e. the Americans') forefathers, will be found even among these wild rovers the respect for law which has characterized every branch of the Teutonic race since; here, and not in the Stviss cantons, is the beginning of Parliament and Congress ; here, and not with the Anglo-Saxons, is thefotmdatiori of trial by jury; and here, among their most ungoverned wassail, is that high reverence for woman, which has again come forth by inheritance among the Anglo- Norse Americans. The ancestors (at least morally) of Raleigh and Nelson, and Kane and Farragut, appear in these records, among these sea-rovers, whose passion was danger Rr?d venture on the waters. Here, too, among such men as the 'Raven Floki,' is the prototype of those American pioneers who follow the wild birds into pathless wilder- nesses to found new Republics. And it is the Norse "udal" property, not the European feudal property, ivhich is the model for the American descendants of the ancient Norsemen. " In these Icelandic Sagas, too, is portrayed the deep moral sentiment which characterizes the most ancient mythology of the Teutonic races. Here we have no dissolute Pantheon, with gods reveling eternally in 7 Pin m Kr-i 11; .: m III lit.:, yjg "A 98 THK SCANDINAVIAN LANGtJAGBS. earthly vices, and the evils and wrongs of humanity continued forever. Even the ghosts of the Northmen have the muscle of the race; they rre no pale shadows flitting through the Orcus. The de.vd fight and eat with the vigor of the living. But there comes a dread time, when destiny overtakes all, both human and divine beings, and the universe with its evil and wrong must perish (Ragnarokr). Yet even the crack of doom finds not the Norsemen timid or fearing. Gods and men die in the heat of the conflict; and there survives alone, Baldur, the "God of Love," who shall create a new heaven and a new earth. " It is from Iceland that we get the wonderful poetic and mythologic collections of the 'Elder' and 'Younger Edda.' In this remote island the original Norse lan- guage was preserved more purely than it was in Norway or Denmark, and the Icelandic literature shed a flood of light over a dark and barbarous age. Even now the modern Icelanders can read or repeat their most ancient Sagas with but little change of dialect. "But to an American, one of the most interesting gifts of Iceland to the world is the record of the dis- covery of Northern America by Icelandic rovers (?) near the year 1000. " We think few scholars can carefully read these Sagas, and the accompanying in regard to Greenland, without a conviction that the Icelandic and Norwegian Vikings did at that early period discover and land on the coast of our Eastern States. * * * * rphe shortest winter day is stated with such precision as to fix the latitude near the coast of Massachusetts aud Ehode Island. * * * * Iceland, then, has the honor of having discovered America. THE SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES. 99 humanity N^orthmen shadows d eat with read time, lid divine •ong must oom finds d men die ves alone, ie a new ful poetic * Younger rorse lan- 11 Norway a flood of now the st ancient iteresting f the dis- s (?) near ese Sagas, :, without I Vikings the coast shortest fix the d Rhode he honor "That volcano-raised island, with its mountains of ice and valleys of lava and ashes, has played no mean part in the world's history." — Christian Uniun, July '5, 1874. The famous George Stephens, in his elaborate work on "Runic Monuments," having discussed the impor- tance of studying the Scandinavian languages in order that many of our fine old roots may again creep into circulation, says: " Let us (the F jglish) study the Scan- dinavian languages, and ennoble and restore our mother tongue. Let the Scandinavians study Old English as well as their own ancient records, give up mere provincial v:°W8, and melt their various dialects into one shining, rich, sweet and manly speech, as we have done in Eng- land. Their High Northern shall then live forever, the home language of eight millions of hardy freemen, our brothers in the east sea, our Warings and Guardsmen against the grasping clutches of the modern Hun and the modern Vandal. The time may come when the kingdom of Canute may be restored in a nobler shape, when the bands of Sea-kings shall rally round one Northern Union standard, when one scepter shall sway the seas and coasts of our forefathers from the Thames to the North Cape, from Finland to the Eider. "We have watered our mother tongue long enough with bastard Latin ; let us now brace and steel it with the life-water of our own sweet and soft and rich and shining and clear ringing and manly and world-ranging, ever dearest English ! " In his preface to his Icelandic grammar, Dr. G. W. Dasent says : " Putting aside the study of Old Norse ,1' . * f-1 100 THE SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES. T li for the sake of its magnificent literature, and consider- ing it merely as an accessory help for the English student, we shall find it of immense advantage, not only in trac- ing the rise of words and idioms, but still more in clear- ing up many dark points in our early history; in fact, so highly do I value it in this respect, that I cannot imagine it possible to write a satisfactory history of the Anglo-Saxon period without a thorough knowledge of the Old Norse Literature." Dr. Dasent, in his introduction to Cleasby's and Vigfusson's Icelandic Dictionary, spys of Iceland : " No other country in Europe possesses an ancient vernacular to be compared with this." And again : " Whether in a literary or in a philological point of view, no literature in Europe in the middle ages can compete in interest with that of Iceland. It is not certainly i?i forma pau- peris that she appears at the tribunal of learning." In another place he remarks: "In it (the Dictionary) the English student now possesses a key to that rich store of knowledge which the early literature of Iceland possesses. He may read the Eddas and Sagas, which contain sources of delight and treasures of learning such as no other language but that of Iceland possesses." The distinguisiied German scholar, EttmVller, in comparing the literature of the Anglo-Saxons with that of the Icelanders, says : " Neither the Goths, nor the Germans, nor the French can be compared with the Anglo-Saxons in the cultivation of letters. By the Sca7i- dinavians alone, they are not only equaled, but also sur- passed in literature." And again : "If the Scandinavians excel in lyric poetry, the Anglo-Saxons can boast of their THE SCANDINAVIAN LANCJLAGKS. 101 1 consider- sh student, ily in trac- re in clear- j; in fact, t I cannot tory of tlie owledge of asby's and .nd : " No vernacular iV^hether in ) literature in interest orma pau- nmg. >j In ionary) the :ch store of i possesses. lin sources 3 no other tLLER, in with that s, nor the with the the Sca7i- t also sur- idinavians ,st of their epic poetry. If the famous island in the remote north- ern sea applied itself with distinguished honor to his- torical studies, the isle of the Anglo-Saxons is es])ccially entitled to praise from the fact that it produced orators, who, considering the time in which they lived, were de- cidedly excellent." Max Mt)LLER, in his "Science of Language," says: "There is a third stream of Teutonic speech, which it would be impossible to place in any but a co-ordinate position with regard to Gothic, Low and High German. This is the Scandinavian branch." In Wheaton's "History of the Northmen," we find the following passages : " The Icelanders cherished and cultivated the language and literature of their ancestors with remarkable success. * * * * jjj Iceland an independent literature grew up, flourished, and was brought to a certain degree of perfection before the re- vival of learning in the south of Europe." Robert Buchanan, the eminent English writer, in reviewing the modern Scandinavian literature, says: " While German literature darkens under the malignant star of Deutschthums while French art, sickening of its long disease, crawls like a leper through the light and wholesome world, while all over the European continent one wan influence or another asserts its despair-engen- dering sway over books and men, whither shall a be- wildered student fly for one deep breath of pure air and wholesome ozone ? Goethe and Heine have sung their best — and worst; Alfred de Musset is dead, and Victor Hugo is turned politician. Grillparzer is still a mystery. T Mil 102 THE 8CANP1NAVIAN LANaUAOES. thanks partly to the darkening medium of Carlylo's hostile criticism. From the ashes of Teutonic tran- scendentalism rises Wagner like a Pbo3nix, — a bird too uncommon for ordinary comprehension, but to all in- tents and purposes an anomaly at best. One tires of anomalies, one sickens of politics, one shudders at the petticoat literature first created at Weimar ; and looking east and west, ranging with a true invalid's hunger the literary horizon, one searches for something more natu- ral, for some form of indigenous and unadorned love- liness, wherewith to fleet the time pleasantly, as they did in the golden world. "That something may be found without traveling very far. Turn northward, in the footsteps of Teufels- c^ ochk, traversing the great valleys of Scandinavia, and not halting until, like the philosopher, you look upon 'that slowly heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost north the great sun hangs low.' Quieu and peace- ful lies "Norway yet as in the world's morning. The flocks of summer tourists alight upon her shores, and scatter themselves to their numberless stations, without disturbing the peaceful serenity of her social life. * * * The government is a virtual democracy, such as would gladden the heart of Gambetta, the Swedish monarch's rule over Norway being merely titular. There are no hereditary nobles. There is no 'gag' on the press. Science and poetry alike flourish on this free soil. The science is grand as Nature herself, cosmic as well as microscopic. The poetry is fresh, light, and pellucid, worthy of the race and altogether free from Parisian taint" ' THE RCANDTNAVIAN LAKOUAaKS. 103 f Carlylo's onic tran- ■a bird too to all in- ne tires of lers at the nd looking lunger the nore natu- rned love- y, as they traveling >f Teufels- navia, and look upon ich in the and peace- ing. The hores, and IB, without fe. * * * as would monarch's ire are no the press, soil. The IS well as . pellucid, L Parisian " Bjornst.terne B.tornson,* one of the most emi nent of living Norwegian authors, is something more than even the finest pastoral taleteller of tliis generation. He is a dramatist of extraordinary power. He docs not possess the power of imaginative fancy shown by Werge- landf (in such pieces as Jan van Huysums Blomster- stykke), nor Welhaven's;^ refinement of phrase, nor the wild melodious abandon of his greatest rival, tlie author of Peer Gi/ut ;\\ but, to my thinking at least, he stands as a poet in a far higher rank than any of these writers. " In more than one respect, particularly in the loose, disjointed structure of the piece, ^ Siyurd Slembe' re- minds one of Goethe's * Goefz,' but it deals with materials far harder to assimilate, and is on the whole a finer picture of romantic manners. Audhild (a prominent character in ^Sigurd Slembe,') is a creation worthy of Goethe at his best ; worthy, in my opinion, to rank with Claerchen, Marguerite, and Mignon, as a masterpiece of delicate characterization. And here I may observe, inci- * BjOrnstjebne B.18RN8ON was born in 1832; has written several novels, dramas, and epic poems. " Sigurd Sletnbe''' is a drama, publislicd in 1863, of which Robert Buchanan eays ; " It is, besides being a masterpiece by its author, a drama of which any living European author might be justly proud." Several of his novels, including "Arne," "A Happy Eoy," "The Fisher- maiden," have been translated into English. t Henrik Arnold Wergeland was born in 1808, and died in 1845. He is the Byron of the North. His works comprise nine ponderous volumes. He excelled in lyrics. X John Sebastian Welhaven, born in 180T, died 1873. Remarkable for the elegance and chasteness of his style. No poet has more beautifully and correctly described the natural scenery of Norway. li The author of "'Peer GynV is Henrik Ibsen, born in 1828. Was en- gaged by Die Bull as instructor at the theatre in Bergen, which pot