A very well written, well illustrated, and fascinating recounting of Norse overseas activities in the Atlantic. After reaching and settling Iceland in the late 800s and Greenland in the late 900s, on several occasions recently settled Greenlanders indulged their exploratory and settlement urges and sailed for American shores, which Leif Eriksson had found and named Vinland ("Wineland") at his southern reach in about the year 1000.
Erik Wahlgren, a former professor of Scandinavian languages at UCLA, vividly describes the Viking background and the developing Norse culture, of which the Icelandic sagas became, many believe, the first truly notable body of literature in any Germanic language. As penetrating depictions of life, especially the better family sagas still have power to fascinate the modern reader. (This book's title can be a bit misleading since the Iceland and Greenland settlers were not "Vikings," i.e. sea raiders, but settled farmers and stockmen.) After describing the two saga versions of the Vinland story, in an interim chapter the author effectively debunks Minnesota's Kensington Stone as a hoax (the subject of an earlier Wahlgren work) as well as discussing other dubious claims. The rest of the book focuses chiefly on the Vinland ventures.
But just where WAS Vinland? Was it at the northern end of Newfoundland, the ruins Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine Ingstad uncovered and painstakingly excavated in the 1960s while finding a number of undoubted Norse artifacts? Although the Ingstad claim has has been accepted by many, Wahlgren thinks not. "Ingstad's dilemma stems from his natural preference for a thoroughly identified Old Norse habitation site over a theoretical one that has not been physically confirmed." . . . "The reconstructed Norse houses at L'Anse aux Meadows represents a first-class achievement in modern archeology, and a major enrichment of our geographical and historical knowledge." . . . "The Ingstad find stands on its own merits and needs no crutch. By the same token, it is not Vinland." Drawing on geographical, botanical, cultural and linguistic evidence, the author thinks it might have been built and used for a short time by other voyagers of which we have no extant record (the saga literature is very family selective and much of it has been lost over the centuries.) Or even -- in a tentative hunch Wahlgren throws out -- that it might just possibly have been Karlsefni's "Straumfjord" of Erik's Saga.
The author then makes a very plausible case for Leif's Vinland or land of grapes having been in the Maine-New Brunswick coastal border area, which is better left to the interested reader to judge for oneself after considering the cases for locations others have put forth. Wahlgren's theory is intriguing and definitely in the running. A previous reviewer thought his arguments convincing but reasonably expressed a desire to see opposing arguments. One can get a good idea of other major contentions by reading Ingstad and Carl Sauer (see my other reviews by clicking on the above link).
These are by no means all of the Norse activities that Wahlgren discusses interestingly, lucidly and often wittily, including evidence of visits to the High Arctic -- fully as distant a voyage from the primary Greenland settlement area as Norway itself and even more difficult and hazardous. Too, there is definite record of one small ship with seventeen Greenlanders aboard being storm-blown from Markland (Labrador) to Iceland at the late date of 1347 and intimations of periodic visits to those North American shores to secure much-needed timber, "although not one in a hundred of these voyages had the slightest chance of being recorded." Wahlgren's final chapter contains a short but riveting account of what is known of the demise of the Norse Greenland settlements, after existing for half a millennium. For those who wish to get a visceral "feel" of life there, a recent and magnificent piece of historical fiction based on virtually all that is known of that time and place, and written in saga style, is Jane Smiley's "The Greenlanders" (see the Amazon reviews).
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Stan B
Excellent book telling the story of Vikings in North America ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 17, 2016