The Bullish Battle Between Thorfinn Karlsefni and North American Natives

In the first decade of the 11th century, several Nordic adventurers were said to have led expeditions to North America. Leif Eiriksson was reportedly the first of these explorers to set foot in the New World, setting up his camp somewhere on the southeastern Canadian coast, presumably in the vicinity of Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia. Leif was lucky in picking the location of his camp, for he was apparently far enough away from native settlements to preclude any aggression from the locals. Instead, Leif Eiriksson gathered exotic North American merchandise in peace, and then set sail back to Greenland to sell his wares and tell tales about his adventure. Other adventurers who followed Leif Eiriksson’s stead in the early 11th century had less luck avoiding the natives of North America. Among these later adventurers was Thorfinn Karlsefni, leader of one of the more ambitious expeditions to the land that Leif called Vinland.

From the loose timeline that can be formed from Icelandic sagas and folkloric tradition, the expedition of Thorfinn Karlsefni can be dated to around 1003-1006 or 1007-1009. As the story goes, Thorfinn and his new wife, Gudrid, led a large group of people to the New World, hoping to start a settlement or trading hub. In the Saga of the Greenlanders, sixty-five people were said to have signed up for Thorfinn’s expedition. Eirik the Red’s Saga, however, claimed that Thorfinn Karlsefni’s crew was only the leading piece of a larger effort, with the total number of settlers being 140 people divided between three ships.

Stocked with supplies and some livestock, Thorfinn Karlsefni and the expedition members set sail for North America. Wind and waves did little to hamper the sailors as they made their way to the New World, and the crews soon found themselves sailing along the coast of the vast lands that Leif had enthusiastically described. Thorfinn Karlsefni decided to make his camp at a spot dominated by grassy fields, which eventually gave way to deer-filled forests, crisscrossed by streams full of fish. The site, with its access to resources from the plains, forests and water, was a perfect location for settlement—as such, the region was already settled by the North American natives, and these locals were curious and concerned about the new foreign presence sailing up to their shore.

After observing the Nordic settlers for a time, the natives eventually made contact. Arriving by boat or on foot, bands of natives peacefully approached Thorfinn Karlsefni’s settlement. Although there was a language barrier, the two peoples were able to create a limited level of communication through hand signals and other means. Using diligent pointing and gesturing, the natives and settlers began bartering. According to the sagas, the natives often brought animal pelts, which the Greenlanders took in exchange for dairy products and cloth.

Milk and its derivative products were allegedly a great hit with the locals near Thorfinn’s settlement. Yet, despite enjoying the byproducts of the settlers’ livestock, the natives reportedly found the actual animals brought by the Greenlanders to be incredibly bizarre and frightening. In particular, an ornery bull belonging to Thorfinn Karlsefni was said to have been the thing of nightmares for native traders who saw it. Thorfinn and the settlers made note of that fear, and their perceptiveness would be helpful when the good relations between natives and foreigners inevitably broke down.

Why the settlers and the natives began fighting varies from tale to tale. In the Saga of the Greenlanders, hostilities erupted after one of the native traders was killed in a bartering dispute. Eirik the Red’s Saga, in contrast, curiously placed blame on the ill-tempered bull, saying that the beast so frightened and outraged the natives that they rallied an army and attacked the settlement to rid the world of the horned devil and its owners.

According to the Saga of the Greenlanders, the bull would play a pivotal role in the battle. Knowing that the natives feared the creature, Thorfinn Karlsefni reportedly had the bull dragged into battle. As the story goes, he lured the native forces into a natural bottleneck, with water on one side and dense forest on the other. When the native force advanced through this carefully chosen narrow corridor, Thorfinn prodded the bull forward and sent it charging against the army of locals. As much of the cloth traded to the natives by the settlers had been red, the previous bartering perhaps made the bull’s rampage all the more effective. Seizing the momentum, the Greenlanders readied their weapons and followed the bull’s wake of carnage into battle. Thorfinn Karlsefni, with his Viking Age weaponry and rampaging bull, won the skirmish and forced the natives to retreat. Yet, the Greenlanders now found the atmosphere in Vinland to be too hostile for a long-term settlement and, after filling their ships with North American goods, they decided to set sail back to Greenland.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Sources:

• The Vinland Sagas (Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red’s Saga) translated by Keneva Kunz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008. 

The First Scandinavian Reported To Have Seen North America

Two sagas from the 13th century—Eirik the Red’s Saga and the Saga of the Greenlanders—unanimously declare that Leif Eiriksson was the first known Scandinavian to set foot on North America. Despite that acknowledgment, the Saga of the Greenlanders also claimed that at least one other person had seen the New World before Leif made his journey. The person in question was an Icelandic merchant named Bjarni Herjolfsson. Around 986, Bjarni was reportedly seeing to his trade route between Iceland and Norway when he received news that his father, Herjolf, was joining Eirik the Red’s expedition to settle Greenland. By the time Bjarni returned home, his father had already set sail for the new land. This realization disturbed the merchant—perhaps he was worried about his father’s ability to set up a farm alone, or maybe he was simply a filial type of guy who really loved his father. Whatever the case, Bjarni Herjolfsson quickly set back out to sea in order to meet up with his father in Greenland before winter, and he did not even take the time to unload or sell any of the cargo that he brought back from Norway before leaving port.

With his ship overweight and his navigation rushed, Bjarni soon found himself at the mercy of the weather. As the story goes, he was blown off course by storms and then found himself blinded by dense fog. Lost at sea, he continued sailing until finally, at long last, he spotted land. Yet, the sight of the coast perturbed Bjarni, for he had been given a description of his destination before he had set sail, and the lands he saw ahead were in no way Eirik the Red’s misleadingly-named Greenland. What was before him was an entirely different land.

Still eager to reach his father, Bjarni Herjolfsson did not stop to explore on foot, but instead sailed northward along the coast. He watched the geography change as his journey progressed. At first, the country he saw was extremely forested. Tree-covered hills began to give way to wooded flatlands, followed by a region of snow-capped mountains and a glacier on what seemed to be an island. Upon arriving in this more frigid and snowy place, Bjarni and his crew made the fortuitous decision to start sailing back east. Navigating this new route, the lost Icelanders finally reached Greenland, and Bjarni was reunited with Herjolf. Despite seeing plentiful land to the west, Bjarni apparently never attempted to go back to the places he witnessed. He did, however, spread the word in Greenland and similarly told his story in Norway whenever he visited for business.

Leif Eiriksson, according to the Saga of the Greenlanders, was one of the people reportedly captivated by Bjarni Herjolfsson’s tales of land to the west. Eirik the Red’s Saga, however, cuts Bjarni out of the story and instead insists it was Leif who, while returning home from Norway, was blown off course by storms and discovered the New World by accident. Whatever the case, either tipped off by Bjarni Herjolfsson or carried off course by his own fateful storm, Leif was said to have reached North America around the year 1000 and went one step further than Bjarni by actually stepping foot on the land, which he called Vinland.

Written by C. Keith Hansley

Sources:

• The Vinland Sagas (Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red’s Saga) translated by Keneva Kunz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.
• https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/bjarni-herjolfsson  

The Winter Of The Living Dead In Lysufjord Greenland

Thorstein Eiriksson was reportedly the only child of Eirik the Red to never reach North America. Thorstein’s brother, Leif Eiriksson, was the first known European to set foot in North America, doing so around the year 999, and he named his site of disembarkation Vinland; Thorvald Eiriksson also journeyed to Vinland and died of an arrow wound there; their sister, Freydis Eiriksdottir, reportedly made her own trip (or possibly trips) to those distant shores and lived to tell the tale.  Although poor Thorstein was apparently the only child of Eirik the Red to not be a part of that exclusive Vinland club, perhaps he would be glad to know that oral history about his life was in no way boring, but instead produced an incredibly strange tale that surpassed the stories of all his kinsmen in weirdness. Thorstein makes an appearance in the Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red’s Saga, both dating from the 13th century and based on oral tradition in Greenland and Iceland. Although the two sagas focus on the discovery and the discoverers of North America, Thorstein Eiriksson features in one of the most striking scenes included in both sagas, even though he never saw or stepped on North American soil. Unfortunately for Thorstein, it was his own death scene. Or, as may be guessed from the title of this article—his undeath.

According to the oral history preserved in the Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red’s Saga, Thorstein Eiriksson attempted a journey to Vinland, but his crew got lost and had to turn back to Greenland before winter. He and his wife, Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, ended up spending the winter in the region of Lysufjord, either because they owned property (probably undeveloped) in the area, or their ship was simply stranded there by the winter weather. Whatever the case, Thorstein and Gudrid attempted to ride out the winter in the home of a hospitable couple. The man of this host household was named Thorstein the Black, while his wife was given the name Grimhild (in the Saga of the Greenlanders) or Sigrid (in Eirik the Red’s Saga). Staying with this host family would turn out to be a horrible decision for Thorstein Eiriksson and Gudrid, as an outbreak of disease in Lysufjord coincided with the onset of winter, and such conditions led to the deaths of many in the region.

That winter, the illness and death of a certain foreman named Gardi heralded the beginning of an epidemic. Before long, many were bedridden by the illness, including the hostess (Grimhild or Sigrid) of the estate where Thorstein Eiriksson and Gudrid were staying. Eiriksson, too, eventually caught the disease and was restricted to a sickbed. With half of the household sick, Gudrid and the host carried out all the tasks that needed to be done—Gudrid cared for the sick, while Thorstein the Black kept his distance, often fishing or gathering resources that they would need to survive the winter.

Despite Gudrid’s best efforts, she could not prevent the illness from taking its course. The hostess of the household was the first to die. Her husband, Thorstein the Black, reportedly left the body alone with his guests while he went outside to gather planks for a coffin, and to finish other chores, such as fishing. While the host was absent, Thorstein Eiriksson and Gudrid were said to have witnessed something truly nightmarish. According to the folklore preserved in the Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red’s Saga, the corpse of Grimhild (or Sigrid) reanimated and became a draugr—a Norse zombie.

In the Saga of the Greenlanders, the draugr of the deceased woman posed little threat, and Thorstein Eiriksson, looking on from his sickbed, lightheartedly commented, “Strange are the actions of the mistress of the house now; she’s struggling to raise herself up on her elbow, stretching her feet out from the bedboards and feeling for her shoes” (chapter 5). In that particular telling of the tale, the zombie-mistress stopped moving as soon as Thorstein the Black returned to the home, his walking through the threshold of the house somehow ending her undeath. Eirik the Red’s Saga, however, presented a much more threatening, action-packed scene. In this alternative version of the story, poor Thorstein Eiriksson was again on his sickbed, looking at the body of Grimhild (or Sigrid), when the corpse reanimated and started to move. Whereas the previous story said that the draugr merely moved its limbs aimlessly, the story in Eirik the Red’s Saga instead claimed that the zombie was slowly and intimidatingly moving its way toward sick, immobilized Thorstein Eiriksson. He and his wife were so frightened that they could think of nothing better to do than shout for their host, who was somewhere outside. Thorstein the Black heard their call and came to the rescue, wielding an axe. According to Eirik the Red’s Saga, “When he entered she [the zombie] had reached the sideboards of the bed. He took hold of her and drove an axe into her breast” (chapter 6).

Not long after Grimhild or Sigrid’s death (and second death), Thorstein Eiriksson also succumbed to his illness. There must have been something special about that winter or that particular disease, for the body of Thorstein Eiriksson, too, was said to have reanimated as a zombie or draugr. Zombie-Thorstein was apparently a very polite, well-behaved creature, and therefore the axe-wielding host reportedly decided to let the creature live. In both sagas in which this tale occurs, the draugr merely wanted to speak to Gudrid. According to the Saga of the Greenlanders, the reanimated corpse of Thorstein foretold the future for Gudrid, whereas Eirik the Red’s Saga claimed that the zombie begged for his body to be brought to a church so that it could be properly buried by a priest. After delivering its message, zombie-Thorstein apparently collapsed to the ground, once again fully dead.

Written by C. Keith Hansley.

Picture Attribution: (Viking Age ship burning burial, drawn by Alexander Zick (1845–1907), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons).

Sources:

• The Vinland Sagas (Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red’s Saga) translated by Keneva Kunz. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.