Sources

RECOMMENDED READING

 

Two scholarly conferences—one in Iceland and one in Newfoundland—and an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., celebrated the thousand-year anniversary of the discovery of Vinland. The exhibition catalog, which is beautifully illustrated, is the best place to start to learn more about Gudrid and her times; the conference proceedings assume some prior knowledge of the subject matter.

Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, edited by William Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000). See also http://www.mnh.si.edu/vikings/, where you can learn to play hneftafl.

Approaches to Vinland: a conference on the written and archaeological sources for the Norse settlements in the North-Atlantic region and exploration of America, edited by Andrew Wawn and Thórunn Sigurðardóttir (Reykjavík: Sigurðar Nordal Institute, 2001).

Vinland Revisited: The Norse World at the Turn of the First Millennium. Selected Papers from the Viking Millennium International Symposium, 15–24 September 2000, Newfoundland and Labrador, edited by Shannon Lewis-Simpson (St. John’s, Newfoundland: Historic Sites Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2003).

To learn more about the sagas, I recommend Gísli Sigurðsson’s The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004). Gisli notes that Gudrid acquired the nickname viðförla—variously translated as “the Far-Traveler,” “the Wide-Traveled,” or “the Far-Farer”—long after the Middle Ages. He has not been able to trace the first appearance of her nickname.

 

MEDIEVAL TEXTS

 

The Saga of the Greenlanders (Grænlendingasaga) and The Saga of Eirik the Red (Eiríkssaga rauða) have been translated many times. The most recent are by Keneva Kunz in Sagas of Icelanders: a selection (2000) and Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson in The Vinland Sagas (1965). Excerpts in this book, along with all of the epigraphs and most selections from other medieval texts (except as listed below), are my own translations.

page 21: Wood-Leg’s lament from Grettir’s Saga, trans. Ole Crumlin-Pedersen in “The Sporting Element in Viking Ships and Other Early Boats,” Sailing and Science, ed. Gisela Sjøgaard (1999)

page 24: sailing directions from Hauksbók, trans. Judith Jesch in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory McTurk (2005)

page 28: the wave rune poem from The Saga of the Volsungs, trans. Jesse Byock (1990)

pages 58–59: the story of Grettir’s Bath from Grettir’s Saga, trans. Denton Fox and Hermann Palsson (1974)

pages 83, 86–87, and 197: excerpts from Adam of Bremen’s History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, trans. Francis J. Tschan (1959)

page 83: the destruction of Lindisfarne from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. Gwyn Jones, History of the Vikings (1968)

page 84: the attack on Constantinople from The Works of Luidprand of Cremona, trans. F. A. Wright (1930)

page 85: Simeon of Durham’s account of the attack at Tynemouth, trans. David M. Wilson, ed., From Viking to Crusader (1992)

page 87: Dudo of Normandy (excerpts), trans. Else Roesdahl in The Vikings (1991)

page 88: the story of Unn the Deep-Minded from Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements), trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (1972)

pages 121–22: the hafgerðing from The King’s Mirror (Konungs Skuggsjá), trans. Laurence Marcellus Larson (1917)

page 136: Greenland traveler’s verse, “I see death in a dread place,” from The Book of Settlements, trans. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards (1972)

pages 164–65, 167: advice to a merchant from The King’s Mirror (Konungs Skuggsjá), trans. Laurence Marcellus Larson (1917)

page 239: description of the monks from Richer’s Histoire de France, trans. Richard Erdoes, A.D. 1000: Living on the Brink of Apocalypse (1988)

pages 248–49: description of the mass from “The Story of Thorvald the Far-Traveler,” trans. Einar Ó. Sveinsson, Age of the Sturlungs (1953)

page 249: the blessing of the ale from Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, trans. Thomas DuBois in Nordic Religions in the Viking Age (1999)

pages 251–52: verses from “Words of the High One” (Hávamál), trans. W. H. Auden and Paul B. Taylor in Norse Poems: Edda Sæmundur, selections (1981)

page 254: Old Norse Homily Book (excerpts), trans. Anders Hultgård in Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic Place-Names, ed. Tore Ahlbäck (1990)

The standard dictionary of Old Norse is The Icelandic-English Dictionary, Second Edition, by Richard Cleasby, Gudbrand Vigfusson, and Sir William Craigie (1957; rpt. 1969), known as Cleasby-Vigfusson. The translators of skörungur are: George Dasent (1861, 1866); W. C. Green (1893); Sir Edmund Head (1866); Eiríkr Magnússon & William Morris (1892–1901); F. York Powell (1896); Muriel Press (1899); W. G. Collingwood & J. Stefánsson (1901); Reeves, Beamish, & Anderson (1901); G. H. Hight (1914); Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Pálsson (1960s); Denton Fox & Hermann Pálsson (1970s); Jenny Jochens (1995); Keneva Kunz (1990s); Anthony Faulkes (2001); Bo Almquist (2001); and Eric V. Youngquist (2002).

 

ICELANDIC SAGAS AND HISTORY

 

Uno von Troil, who accompanied Sir Joseph Banks to Iceland in 1772, argued that the sagas were just as trustworthy as Tacitus or Livy. Von Troil wrote in Swedish; I used the Icelandic translation of his letters, Bréf frá Íslandi, by Haraldur Sigurðsson (1961). As mentioned above, the best introduction to the sagas is Gísli Sigurðsson’s The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition (2004).

The recognized expert on the Vinland Sagas is Ólafur Halldórsson. See his “Lost Tales of Gudrídr” in Sagnaskemmtun: Studies in honour of Hermann Pálsson, ed. Rudolf Simek, Jónas Kristjánsson, and Hans Bekker-Nielsen (1986); his entry in Approaches to Vínland; and, for readers of Icelandic, Grænland í miðaldaritum (1978).

Good discussions of women in saga times can be found in:

Carol Clover, “Regardless of Sex,” Speculum 68 (1993)

Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (1991)

Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (1995)

Preben Meulengracht Sorensen, The Unmanly Man (1983)

Other sources in English include:

Rasmus B. Anderson, ed. The Flatey Book and Recently Discovered Vatican Manuscripts Concerning America as Early as the Tenth Century (1908)

Lois Bragg, Oedipus Borealis: The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga (2004)

Thomas Bredsdorff, Chaos and Love: The Philosophy of the Icelandic Family Saga (2001)

Jesse L. Byock, Medieval Iceland (1988)

————, Viking Age Iceland (2001)

W. A. Craigie, The Icelandic Sagas (1913)

Paul Durrenberger, The Dynamics of Medieval Iceland (1992)

Stefán Einarsson, A History of Icelandic Literature (1957)

Bruce Gelsinger, Icelandic Enterprise (1981)

Guðrún Ása Grímsdóttir, The Arnamagnaean Institute Manuscript Exhibition (1992)

Gunnar Karlsson, The History of Iceland (2000)

Magnus Magnusson, Iceland Saga (1987)

Rory McTurk, ed. A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (2005)

William Ian Miller, Bloodtaking and Peacemaking (1990)

Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues with the Viking Age (1998)

Páll Ólafsson, Iceland the Enchanted (1995)

William Pencak, The Conflict of Law and Justice in the Icelandic Sagas (1995)

Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. Old Icelandic Literature and Society (2000)

Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Chieftains and Power in the Icelandic Commonwealth (1999)

M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, The Saga Mind (1973)

Einar Ó. Sveinsson, Age of the Sturlungs (1953)

 

SHIPS AND SAILING

 

Arne Emil Christensen and Ole Crumlin-Pedersen have long been the recognized experts on Viking-ship technology. In addition to their articles in the collections recommended above, see Christensen’s “Viking Age Boatbuilding Tools” and “Viking Age Rigging, A Survey of Sources and Theories” in The Archaeology of Medieval Ships and Harbours in Northern Europe (1979); and “Boats and Boatbuilding in Western Norway and the Islands” in The Northern and Western Isles in the Viking World, ed. Alexander Fenton and Hermann Palsson (1984). Ole Crumlin-Pedersen and Olaf Olsen describe the retrieval of the Skuldelev ships in Acta Archaeologica 38 (1967). See also “Viking Shipbuilding and Seamanship” in the Proceedings of the Eighth Viking Congress (1981) and “The Sporting Element in Viking Ships and Other Early Boats,” Sailing and Science, ed. Gisela Sjøgaard (1999).

The voyage of the replica Gaia is chronicled by Judy Lomas, The Viking Voyage (1992); that of Snorri by Hodding Carter, A Viking Voyage (2000).

Other sources on Viking ships, navigation, timekeeping, and sailing in the North Atlantic include:

J. R. L. Anderson, Vinland Voyage (1967)

Páll Bergþórsson, The Wineland Millennium (2000)

A. W. Brøgger and H. Shetelig, Viking Ships: Their Ancestry and Evolution (1951)

Stephen Bruneau, Icebergs of Newfoundland and Labrador (2004)

Birthe Clausen, ed. Viking Voyages to North America (1993)

Frederica DeLaguna, Voyage to Greenland (1977)

John R. Hale, “The Viking Longship,” Scientific American (February 1998)

Rockwell Kent, N by E (1930)

Sean McGrail, ed. Sources and Techniques in Boat Archaeology (1977)

Þorsteinn Vilhjálmsson, “Time and Travel in Old Norse Society,” Disputatio II (1997)

 

VIKINGS IN THE BRITISH ISLES

 

The area around Uig, Lewis, is claimed by the MacAulays, or in Gaelic, Clann Amhlaeibh; Amhlaeibh is the Norse name Olaf. Alfred P. Smythe argues that Unn the Deep-Minded’s husband, Olaf the White, king of Dublin (853 to 870), was the Olaf Geirstaðaálfr who ruled the Norwegian province of Westfold (871 to ca. 890), making him a good candidate to be the man buried in the Gokstad ship circa 900. See Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles 850–880 (1977).

Gillian Fellows-Jensen explains the derivation of place-names in “Vikings in the British Isles,” Acta Archaeologica 71 (2000): the -by ending is the Norse býr or bær (farm or settlement, as in Glaumbær), -bister and -poll are shortenings of bólstaðir (homestead), -skill and -skaill come from skáli (longhouse), Laimiseadar comes from lambasætr (lamb shieling), Lacsabhat is from laxavatn (salmon lake), kirk is Norse for church.

Other important sources for the Vikings in the British Isles are:

James Graham-Campbell and Colleen Batey, Vikings in Scotland: An Archaeological Survey (1998; rpt. 2001)

Anna Ritchie, Viking Scotland (1993)

For DNA evidence, see:

S. Goodacre, A. Helgason, et al., “Genetic evidence for a family-based Scandinavian settlement of Shetland and Orkney during the Viking periods,” Heredity (2005)

Agnar Helgason, et al., “mtDNA and the Origin of the Icelanders: Deciphering Signals of Recent Population History,” American Journal of Human Genetics 66 (2000)

Agnar Helgason, et al., “Estimating Scandinavian and Gaelic Ancestry in the Male Settlers of Iceland,” American Journal of Human Genetics 67 (2000)

 

THE VIKINGS IN GENERAL

 

Although it’s a little dated, I prefer Gwyn Jones’s History of the Vikings (1968; rev. 1984); he’s a good storyteller. Other sources I consulted include:

Bertil Almgren, The Viking (1966)

Holger Arbman, The Vikings (1961; rpt. 1965)

Eric Christiansen, The Norsemen in the Viking Age (2002)

Paul du Chaillu, The Viking Age (1890)

Peter Foote and David M. Wilson, The Viking Achievement (1970)

James Graham-Campbell, ed. Cultural Atlas of the Viking World (1994)

James Graham-Campbell and Dafydd Kidd, The Vikings (1980)

James E. Knirk, ed. Proceedings of the Tenth Viking Congress, Larkollen, Norway, 1985 (1987)

Magnus Magnusson, Vikings! (1980)

Andras Mortensen and Símun V. Arge, eds. Viking and Norse in the North Atlantic: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Fourteenth Viking Congress (2005)

Rudolf Poertner, The Viking (1975)

Frederick J. Pohl, The Viking Explorers (1966)

Else Roesdahl, The Vikings (1991)

Else Roesdahl and David M. Wilson, eds. From Viking to Crusader (1992)

Ross Samson, ed. Social Approaches to Viking Studies (1991)

J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Vikings in Francia (1975)

The St. Brice’s Day massacre is mentioned in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as well as in the chronicles of William of Jumièges (d. 1090), William of Malmesbury (d. 1143), and Henry of Huntingdon (d. 1155). Michele Wates supplies the full text of the royal charter in “Massacre at St Frideswide’s,” Oxford Today, vol. 15, no. 1 (2002–03), available at www.oxfordtoday.ox.ac.uk.

Sources specific to the Oseberg ship burial are:

Niels Bonde and Arne Emil Christensen, “Dendrochronological dating of the Viking Age ship burials at Oseberg, Gokstad, and Tune, Norway,” Antiquity 67 (1993)

A. E. Christensen, A. S. Ingstad, and B. Myhre, eds. Oseberg Dronningens Grav (1992); portions are translated on the Web site www.forest.gen.nz/Medieval/ by members of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Anne-Sofie Gräslund, “Dogs in graves—a question of symbolism?” PECUS: Man and Animal in Antiquity, ed. Barbro Santillo Frizell (2004)

Thorleif Sjøvold, The Oseberg Find and the Other Viking Ship Finds (1969)

For Viking dress and weaving techniques, the publications (in Icelandic) of Elsa Guðjónsson of the National Museum of Iceland are indispensable; in English see:

Eva Andersson, The Common Thread: Textile Production during the Late Iron Age and Viking Age. Ph.D. dissertation, Lund University (1999)

Paul C. Buckland, et al., “An insect’s eye-view of the Norse farm,” The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney, and the North Atlantic, ed. Colleen E. Batey, Judith Jesch, and Christopher D. Morris (1993)

Richard Hall, The Viking Dig: The Excavations at York (1984)

N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting, Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E. M. Carus-Wilson (1982)

Michele Hayeur-Smith, Draupnir’s Sweat and Mardöll’s Tears: An Archaeology of Jewellery, Gender, and Identity in Viking Age Iceland (2004)

Marta Hoffmann, The Warp-Weighted Loom (1974)

Else Østergård, Woven into the Earth: Textiles from Norse Greenland (2004)

Stefán Aðalsteinsson, “Importance of Sheep in Early Icelandic Agriculture,” Acta Archaeologica 61 (1990)

 

ARCHAEOLOGY IN ICELAND

 

Some GPR results from Glaumbaer—along with Dean Goodman’s movie of Emperor Trajan’s eel pond—are available online at gpr-survey.com/. Results of John Steinberg’s research are available at www.fiskecenter.umb.edu/SASS/SASS.htm. Guðný Zoëga’s reports on Keldudalur are available online at the Web site of Hólar University College, http://www.holar.is/holarannsoknin/.

Orri Vésteinsson has published his work in English in the collections recommended above. See also Orri Vesteinsson, Thomas H. McGovern, and Christian Keller, “Enduring Impacts: Social and Environmental Aspects of Viking Age Settlement in Iceland and Greenland,” Archaeologia Islandica 2 (2002); and Thomas McGovern, Orri Vesteinsson, et al., “Landscapes of Settlement in Northern Iceland: Historical Ecology of Human Impact & Climate Fluctuation on the Millennial Scale,” American Anthropologist (submitted March 2005 and supplied to me in manuscript). “Increasingly comprehensive destruction” comes from Orris “Icelandic Farmhouse Excavations,” Archaeologia Islandica 3 (2004). Orri and Thomas McGovern each gave papers on Sveigakot and Hofstaðir at the conference, “Cultural and Environmental History in Nordic Viking Age and Medieval Time,” Hólar University, Iceland, August 5, 2005. Thomas H. McGovern and his colleagues presented a summary of their analysis of the animal bones from Sveigakot and Hofstaðir at the 2005 Hólar conference.

Guðmundur Ólafsson writes about Eirik the Red’s farmstead in a booklet published by the National Museum of Iceland, Eiríksstaðir í Haukadal: Fornleifarannsókn á skálarúst, Rannsóknaskyrslur Fornleifadeildar 11 (1998); there is an English summary. He and Hörður Ágústsson compare Eiríksstaðir to Stöng and other longhouses in The Reconstructed Medieval Farm in Þjórsárdalur and the development of the Icelandic Turf House, published by the National Museum of Iceland and Landsvirkjun, the National Power Company (no date). See also Thorsteinn Erlingsson’s Ruins of the Saga Time (1899; rpt. 1982).

Other sources include:

Colin Amundsen, et al., “Fishing Booths and Fishing Strategies in Medieval Iceland,” Environmental Archaeology 10.2 (2005)

James H. Barrett, ed. Contact, Continuity, and Collapse: The Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic (2003)

P. C. Buckland, et al., “Holt in Eyjafjallasveit, Iceland: A Paleoecological Study of the Impact of Landnám,” Acta Archaeologica 61 (1990)

Paul Durrenberger and Gísli Pálsson, eds. The Anthropology of Iceland (1989)

Bjarni Einarsson, The Settlement of Iceland, a Critical Approach: Gránastaðir and the Ecological Heritage (1995)

Grétar Guðbergsson, “Í norðlenskri vist,” Búvisindi: Icelandic Agricultural Sciences 10 (1996)

Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir, The Awakening of Christianity in Iceland: Discovery of a Timber Church and Graveyard at Þórarinsstaðir in Seyðisfjörður, University of Gothenberg Ph.D. dissertation (2004)

Thomas H. McGovern, Gerald Bigelow, Thomas Amorosi, and Daniel Russell, “Northern Islands, Human Error, and Environmental Degradation,” Human Ecology 16 (1988)

Christopher D. Morris and D. James Rackham, eds. Norse and Later Settlement and Subsistence in the North Atlantic (1992)

Kevin P. Smith, “Landnám: the settlement of Iceland in archaeological and historical perspective,” World Archaeology 26 (1995)

 

HISTORY OF GREENLAND

 

Early descriptions of the Viking ruins are found in:

Sigurður Breiðfjörð, Frá Grænland (1835; rpt. 1961)

Árni Magnússon, Ferðasaga Árni Magnússon frá Geitastekk 1753–1797, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson (1945)

Other sources include:

Per Danker, This Is Greenland 2000–2001: The Official Directory (2000)

Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004)

Guðmundur J. Guðmundsson, Á Hjara Veraldar: Saga norrænna manna á Greenland (2005)

Birgitte Jacobsen, Claus Andreasen, and Jette Rygaard, eds. Cultural and Social Research in Greenland 95/96: Essays in Honour of Robert Petersen (1996)

Robert McGhee, The Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of the Arctic World (2005)

Jens Rosing, Things and Wonders: The Norsemen in Greenland and America (2000)

Kirsten Seaver, The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America (1996)

Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Greenland (1944)

 

ARCHAEOLOGY IN GREENLAND

 

The Farm Beneath the Sand is discussed in the collections recommended above. See also Guðmundur Ólafsson and Svend E. Albrethsen, “Bærinn undir sandinum,” Árbók hins íslenzka fornleifafélags 98 (2000); Else Østergård, Woven into the Earth (2004); and Jette Arneborg’s introduction to Inge Bødker Enghoff, “Hunting, fishing and animal husbandry at the Farm Beneath the Sand, Western Greenland,” Meddelelser om Grønland, Man & Society 28 (2003).

Other sources include:

Svend E. Albrethsen and Christian Keller, “The Use of the Stæter in Medieval Norse Farming in Greenland,” Arctic Anthropology 23 (1986)

Jette Arneborg, Saga Trails: A Visitors’ Guidebook (2006)

Jette Arneborg, et al., “Change of Diet of the Greenland Vikings Determined from Stable Carbon Isotope Analysis and 14 C Dating of Their Bones,” Radiocarbon 41.2 (1999)

Colleen E. Batey, Judith Jesch, and Christopher D. Morris, eds. The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney, and the North Atlantic: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Eleventh Viking Congress (1993)

Vagn Fabritius Buchwald, Ancient Iron and Slags in Greenland, Meddelelser om Grønland, Man & Society 26 (2001)

Paul C. Buckland, et al., “Bioarcheological and climatological evidence for the fate of Norse farmers in medieval Greenland,” Antiquity 70 (1996)

Karen Marie Bojsen Christensen, “Aspects of the Norse Economy in the Western Settlement in Greenland,” Acta Archaeologica 61 (1990)

Bent Fredskild, “Agriculture in SW Greenland in the Norse period (ca. 982-ca. 1450),” PACT 31 (1990)

Bent Fredskild and Lilli Humle, “Plant remains from the Norse farm Sandnes in the Western Settlement, Greenland,” Acta Borealis 1 (1991)

Ole Guldager, Steffen Stummann Hansen, and Simon Gleie, Medieval Farmsteads in Greenland: The Brattahlid Region 1999–2000 (2002)

Christian Keller, “Vikings in the West Atlantic,” Acta Archaeologica 61 (1991)

Knud J. Krogh, Viking Greenland (1967)

Thomas H. McGovern, “Bones, Buildings, and Boundaries” in Norse and Later Settlement and Subsistence in the North Atlantic, ed. Morris and Rackham (1992)

Thomas McGovern, Paul Buckland, et al., “A Study of the Faunal and Floral Remains from Two Norse Farms in the Western Settlement, Greenland,” Arctic Anthropology 20 (1983)

Julie Megan Ross, Paleoethnobotanical Investigation of Garden Under Sandet, a Waterlogged Norse Farm Site, Western Settlement, Greenland (Kaiaallit Nunaata). Master’s thesis in anthropology, University of Alberta (1997)

Aage Roussell, “Sandnes and the neighboring farms,” Meddelelser om Grønland 88 (1936)

G. Richard Scott, Carrin M. Halffman, and P. O. Pedersen, “Dental conditions of medieval Norsemen in the North Atlantic,” Acta Archaeologica 62 (1991)

C. L. Vebaek, “Narsaq—a Norse Landnáma farm,” Meddelelser om Grønland, Man & Society 18 (1993)

—————, “Hunting on land and at sea and fishing in Medieval Norse Greenland,” Acta Borealis 1 (1991)

 

VINLAND

 

Helge Ingstad’s curriculum vitae was drawn from his New York Times obituary, printed March 30, 2001; Ingstad lived to be 101. He published Westward to Vinland (1969) eight years before the University of Oslo brought out Anne Stine Ingstad’s archaeological results in The Discovery of a Norse Settlement in America: Excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, 1961–1968 (1977). The Ingstads collaborated on The Viking Discovery of America (2001).

“Leif Eiriksson Slept Here” was the title of a lecture Birgitta Wallace gave at Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland, on August 23, 2006. She describes her reassessments of the Ingstads’ work in the three collections recommended above, as well as in “L’Anse aux Meadows: Gateway to Vinland,” Acta Archaeologica 61 (1990).

Other sources consulted include:

Rasmus B. Anderson, The Norse Discovery of America (1906)

Geraldine Barnes, Viking America: The First Millennium (2001)

Catherine Carlson, “The (In) Significance of Atlantic Salmon,” Federal Archaeology (Fall/Winter 1996)

A. M. Davis, J. H. McAndrews, and Birgitta Lindroth Wallace, “Paleoenvironment and the archaeological record at the L’Anse aux Meadows site, Newfoundland,” Geoarchaeology 3 (1988)

James P. Howley, The Beothucks or Red Indians: The Aboriginal Inhabitants of Newfoundland (1914)

Gwyn Jones, The Norse Atlantic Saga (1964)

Farley Mowat, Westviking (1965)

Richard Perkins, “Medieval Norse Visits to America,” Saga-Book 28 (2004)

 

GUDRID’S PILGRIMAGE TO ROME

 

One scholar who believed Gudrid spoke about Vinland on her pilgrimage was Father Josef Fischer, to whom Kirsten Seaver ascribes the design of the notorious Vinland Map. This map, purchased by Yale University in October 1965, is said by Yale’s experts to be an authentic medieval map and by nearly everyone else to be a forgery. Seaver argues that Father Fischer made it for himself while living in Germany under the Nazi regime, not with the intention of fooling anyone else, but as an aid to his own scholarship. She writes in Vinland Revisited (2003): “Fischers convictions came from combining the saga information with modern cartographical knowledge, and from his certainty that there had once been cartographical representations which took into account information reaching Rome directly, beginning with Gudridr Thorbjarnardottir’s pilgrimage in the eleventh century.” See also Seaver’s Maps, Myths, and Men: The Story of the Vinland Map (2004). Novelist Margaret Elphinstone provides us with a fictional realization of Gudrid’s conversations with a churchman in Rome in The Sea Road (2000).

For the history of the popes, I depended on the Catholic Encyclopedia (1909), online at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/index.html. For the pilgrim routes across Europe, see Association Via Francigena (http://www.francigena-international.org/).

Several papers presented at the Thirteenth International Saga Conference, Durham and York, 6–12 August 2006, address this topic and are available as preprints at http://www.dur.ac.uk/medieval .www/. See in particular:

Gísli Pálsson and Astrid Ogilvie, “Weather and Witchcraft in the Sagas of Icelanders”

Tommaso Marani, “The Roman Itinerary of Nikulás of Munkajsverá: Between Reality and Imagination”

Bernadine McCreesh, “Elements of the Pagan Supernatural in the Bishops’ Sagas”

Jens Ulff-Møller, “The Gaelic Impact on Churches in Iceland and Greenland”

Other sources consulted include:

Tore Ahlbäck, ed. Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic Place-Names (1990)

Jessica A. Browner, “‘Viking’ Pilgrimage to the Holy Land,” Essays in History 34 (1992)

Martin Carver, ed. The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300–1300 (2003)

Victoria Clark, The Far-Farers: A Journey from Viking Iceland to Crusader Jerusalem (2003)

H. R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (1964)

Thomas A. DuBois, Nordic Religions in the Viking Age (1999)

Eleanor Shipley Duckett, Death and Life in the Tenth Century (1971)

Richard Erdoes, A.D. 1000: Living on the Brink of Apocalypse (1988)

Henri Focillon, The Year 1000 (1971)

Joyce Hill, “Pilgrimage and Prestige in the Icelandic Sagas,” Saga-Book 23 (1993)

Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger, The Year 1000 (1999)

Katherine Morris, Sorceress or Witch? (1991)

James Reston, The Last Apocalypse (1998)

Margaret Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes (1994)

Rudolf Simek and Judith Meurer, eds. Scandinavia and Christian Europe in the Middle Ages: Papers of the Twelfth International Saga Conference (2003)