Showing posts with label Vinland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vinland. Show all posts
Another Viking Ship Discovered
While working to clean up the shores of the Mississippi river near the city of Tennessee, a groupd of volunteers have stumbled upon the remains of an ancient boat sheathed in mud. The archeologists from the University of Memphis were hastily called to the site. During the early archaeological interventions it was confirmed that the ship was a Viking knarr, suggesting the Norse would have pushed their exploration of America a lot further than historians previously thought.
I should say that a Knarr is a type of Viking ship used for merchant purposes. It was built in the same way all the other ships were made (clinker-built - which means the overlapping of planks riveted together) only the configuration was different: the hull was wider, deeper and shorter than a longship and it was handled by a smaller crew.
The ship was heavily damaged. After meticulous work it was possible to know the original size of this ship. It has a length of about 16 meters, a beam of 4.5 meters, and a hull that is estimated capable of carrying up to 24 to 28 tons, a typical size for this type of ship which was capable of carring more cargo than any other Viking ship. It was capable of sailing more or less 121 km (75 miles) in one day and held a crew of about 20 to 30 men.
This is a wonderful new discovery and could well be one of the oldest evidence of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact. It brings to mind the famous colony of “Vinland” mentioned in the Icelandic Sagas, which is another evidence that the first Europeans to find America (by sailing) were the Norsemen. This colony could possibly have been established by Leif Ericson around the same period as the settlement at l’Anse aux Meadows (which I've written about a few posts ago), in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the most famous site of a Norse or Viking settlement in North America outside Greenland.
The estimated dates for this ship are between 990 and 1050 AD, approximately the period associated with Vinland and the various Canadian Norse-archaeological sites. This could mean that Vikings had actually developed a far wider trade network in the Americas than what was traditionnally believed. Unfortunately, very few other artefacts have been found on the site, suggesting the crew must have most likely abandoned the ship and continued on foot, and scattered arround this area and possibly further, there might be some artefacts yet to be found.
Leif Eiriksson - The first European in The New World
I know it wasn't Columbus day by the time i wrote this, but its been a long time since i have written about anything related to the Norse culture and history. So i will be writing about Leif Eiriksson, the first European to step into the unknown New World later called, America.
During the Columbus day, we celebrate the great achievements of this man, no doubt about about it, he really accomplished something extraordinary, however, this day also means the extinction of so many people and cultures, or the events that led to that by the Spanish during this time and the years after when the Portuguese found the south America which was a very hard time to all the indigenous inhabitants all over the Americas.
Nowadays we know of a man who step into this new world 500 years earlier than Columbus, Leif Eiriksson, a Greenlandic settler, the real European ( that we know of so far ) to first enter the New World.
Who was Leif ?
Leif was the son of Erik/Eirik the Red ( Erik Thorvaldsson ), the famous Norwegian, outlawed from his native country for manslaughter, and then fleeing to Iceland to escape justice. When Eirik arrived there, he married Thjodhild, who bore him four children, one of those was Leif, before he was involved in other killing acts, and was outlawed once more. By this time, he fled further west into Greenland, where he remained for three years, waiting for his sentence to expire, and he was the first Norse man to make settlements in that land. After those three years, he returned to Iceland, telling other about the new land he found, which led to more settlers to go there and inhabit the territory. He returned to Greenland, where he built a farm at Brattahlíð near Narsarsuaq today.
Like his father, Leif was an explorer and had already sailed by this time to Norway, where he became the Hirðman* of King Olaf Tryggvason. While Leif was in Norway, he was converted to Christianity, haven't he done so, he would probably had an horrible time before he was killed, for King Olaf often tortured those who didn't want to be christianised, or would torture until they accepted. However his father, Eirik, remained pagan till the end of his days.
Leif knew that there was a land far to the west of Greenland, for another sailor called Bjarni Herjólfsson, had seen the sight of it, and of course to Leif this was an irresistible adventure, and so he mounted hos own expedition. According to legend, His father would also join him in his quest if he hadn't fall from his horse when riding towards the ship, he took this as a bad omen and remained in land.
It isn't clear into which places he first sailed about into this New land, but it is clear that he went to Newfoundland, where he gave the name of Vinland, the place where he and his crew built a settlement, which was later named Leifsbúdir after him of course.
Leif returned to Greenland with some grapes and also timber, which was scarce in Greenland, and this need of having wood to build, led to many more voyages into Vinland, however no one remained there to make a living, for they always return to Greenland, back to their homes.
Vinland wasn't empty of course, and there are many accounts of interections between the Norse people and the natives of that land, to whom the Norsemen called Skrælingjar. Leif's brother Thorvald is thought to be the first European to initiate contact and of course the first European to kill the people he met.
All of these findings had little importance to the Norse people by this time it seems, however people talked about it, so it is possible that Christopher Columbus on one of his voyages to Iceland, had heard about Vinland and the other lands to the west, and so he decided to start his own adventure.
Leif finally settled on the family farm in Greenland with his wife Thorgunna and their son Thorgil. It is said he was a wise man who spent his days converting people to the new religion, much to the consternation of his own father who was still a pagan man, however, this was of much delight to his own mother, it was she who built ( or asked to ) the first church in Greenland, Thjodhild's Church.
Leif isn't as well known as Columbus, but in many places his voyages to Vinland are celebrated, as Leif Eiriksson's Day
* The king’s Hirðman was some kind of bodyguard and also an adviser of the King, incorporated into the army.
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