What happens when a few 19th century scholars, a baking powder magnate, a transcendental poet, and a pair of Norwegian archaeologist explorers start looking for the real site of Vinland? John and Andy spoke at Bridgewater State University and the Scandinavian Cultural Center in West Newton, MA to answer that question. In this live episode, we review the Vinland sagas and then explore the efforts of prominent 19th century gentlemen to locate Vinland in the Boston area. If you’ve never visited Norumbega Tower, Dighton Rock, or “Krossanes beach” in Duxbury, you’ll want to after this.
Our thanks to Bridgewater State University’s English department for helping Andy travel from Oxford, Mississippi. And to the Scandinavian Cultural Center in West Newton, MA for hosting this live event.
The presentation we used and some photos we took follow:
In this episode we rejoin Thorgils Scar-Leg’s Step-son on the icy shores of Greenland. Of the 35 men and women who traveled with him to Greenland, his only companions are his son Thorleif and a pair of helpful brothers, Kol and Starkað. And then there’s the child, Thorfinn, nourished by his father’s love and bloody breast milk. Together these castaways must battle the elements on land and sea to make their way home again. Along the way they’ll encounter troll women, a polar bear, terrible Vikings, and more than one opportunity to duel. There’s even a guest appearance by everyone’s favorite grumpy pagan, Eirik the Red.
Nearly a decade after being shipwrecked in Greenland, Thorgils finally returns to Iceland. He’s greeted by his daughter Thorney, now grown into a beautiful young woman. In his absence, Thorny was married to Bjarni of Grof, an arrangement that Thorgils finds less than ideal. And when he attempts to take the lovely Helga as his own bride, Thorgils ends up feuding with a rival suitor, Asgrim Ellida-Grimsson, a familiar name from Njal’s Saga. This conflict threatens to disrupt the relative peace of the region and prompts one of John’s thingmen into action.
Will young Thorfinn survive the journey from Greenland? Does Thorstein the red-shirted Norwegian companion ever die? Will Thorgils manage to rearrange his daughter’s marriage to his liking? Does Helga choose Thorgils or Asgrim? Or is her opinion not worth a hill of beans? And which thingman emerges from John’s mead hall to settle the dispute over her hand?
Find out in the sometimes thrilling but poorly told conclusion to Floamanna Saga!
Thanks as always to Matt Smith for contributing another original drawing. Check out his webpage or Twitter account to keep up with Matt’s latest projects.
Saga Thing returns with the wild adventures of Ref the Sly. Follow us as we track this wily character from as he travels all throughout medieval Scandinavia leaving piles of wood shavings and bodies in his wake.
From 2015-2017 we covered a grand total of 10 sagas. You listened. You laughed. You cried. And when each saga was finished, you heard John and Andy pass judgment on the characters and their actions. Now it’s your turn to be heard.
As always, the Quarter Court reviews the winners from the past 10 judgment episodes. The polls will be open until September 30th. At that time, John and I will close them down and review the results in the judgment section of the Second Quarter Court.
Remember, voting closes on September 30th. Get in while you can.
Music Credits:
Intro Music – “Prelude and Action” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Outro Music – “Stormfront” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Selections from music by Kevin MacLeod licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
John surveys the land with Leif Eiriksson at L’Anse aux Meadow
The Saga of the Greenlanders might be the shortest saga John and Andy have tackled, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a lot to say about it. In this episode, your stalwart hosts run through the usual categories and discuss the motivations behind Freydis’ attack on Helgi and Finnbogi, debate the quality of Thorfinn Karlsefni’s character, review some competing theories on Norse settlements in the North America, and share some recent scholarship that challenges our understanding of the conditions the Vikings dealt with in Greenland. There’s a fair amount of nonsense as well. Join us as we conclude our trip through the Vinland sagas.
If you’ve got a picture of yourself with a statue or relevant landmark from the world of saga literature, remember to post it on Twitter, Facebook, or send it to our sagathingpodcast@gmail.com.
And lastly, there’s this picture. My microsoft paint skills are pretty impressive. It won’t make sense until you finish the episode.
In this episode, John interviews Loretta Decker of L’Anse aux Meadows. They discuss the archaeological history of the Vikings in Newfoundland, the challenges of constructing Viking turf houses, and the relationship of the Vinland sagas to the history of the site.
Since Eiriks saga is central to the question of when and where Scandinavian explorers visited North America, we thought we’d offer a few resources for those interested in pursuing the topic in more detail than we were able to cover in our latest podcast.
I. History
Attempts at interpreting the geographical information provided in the Vínland sagas have ranged across centuries, resulting in a series of speculative maps (including the 16th c. Skálholt Map, item 1) and at least one spectacular example that is almost certainly a clever forgery (The Vínland Map, item 2).
1. Skálholt Map (c.1690 reproduction of lost 1570s original)
2. The Vínland Map
Attempts to chart the various voyages of the Vínland saga explorers are also common, and generally produce something more or less like this:
3. A Wikimedia Commons map showing Leif’s voyage (as differently described in Eirik the Red’s saga and in The Saga of the Greenlanders) as well as those of the manly Karlsefni, the violent Eirik himself, and Bjarni Herjolfsson; the mapmaker wisely chose not to include Thorstein Eiriksson’s farcical “lost summer” wandering around the North Atlantic…
There are many other attempts to definitively establish the pattern of Scandinavian exploration and settlement: look here, here, and here for various efforts in this direction.
II. A Little Light Reading
Probably the most exhaustive work on the subject of the Vínland landing sites was done by the husband and wife team of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad. The couple followed clues from the Vínland sagas, some made some nifty guesses based on the topography of various places along the Atlantic coast, and deduced from linguistic evidence that everyone else who’d looked for the landing site was too far south–and in 1960 they found a Norse settlement that sure looks like the right place…The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland by the Ingstads explains the process by which they found the site; if you’re a sucker for archeological procedurals, it makes for some quality reading.
One of the few serious arguments against the Ingstads’ claim was put forward by Erik Wahlgren, whose book The Vikings and America concedes the archeological value of L’Anse aux Meadows but argues for a Vínland landing site further south.
If, on the other hand, you’d just like a light overview of the history of the Vínland explorations and a brief discussion of L’Anse aux Meadows, you might try the “Vinland” chapter of the highly readable Tony Horwitz’s A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America. Horwitz’s details are sometimes a little fuzzy, but he covers the major issues fairly well, and does it in about a tenth the page count of the other books listed here.
III. Documentaries
In case you’re really, really interested in the whole Vínland sagas story and don’t have anything else to do for an hour or so, here are a couple of publicly-available documentaries on the subject:
If you make it through all that and still have questions, let us know and we’ll do our best!
It’s time to strike out for the west in the latest installment of Saga Thing. Join us as we sail through stormy and unpredictable seas in the Saga of Eirik the Red!
The first of the two so-called Vínland sagas to be reviewed, Eirik’s saga offers up a story that’s part travelogue, part bloodbath, and part confusing as heck. In this episode, we’ll learn all about Eirik the Red’s bad habit of killing almost everyone he meets, his son Leif’s discovery of Vínland through the magic of pure navigational incompetence, the volatile natives of this dangerous new land, and another round of hauntings (much to Andy’s delight).
Will Eirik ever find a nice neighborhood and settle down (without killing anyone who lives there)? Why does a Greenland seeress need such fancy seat-cushions? Is that a Uniped hopping through the Vínland woods? And just where are Helluland and Markland, anyway?
Saga Thing 