| Show A VIKING BOLD heriulfo bardsen sailed of bi bjarni arni son WS his clinker built ship through a fog and inadvertently disco discovered vered america before the genovese gained these years ears spores this is as certain as anything taken the word of a poet can be saga on legend there is no other proof beyond and certain large credibility but if a king alfred on the evi ear one is to to accept the chronicles there is is no of deuce dence sg refusing to acknowledge for reason on the son of heriulfo Heri ulf the matter a ani been ahr threshed hed out by the antiquaries antiqua ries as and rafn milr ad d professors gravier a anderson andersen and among of others have argued the question ore re bone these learned men the n to but there on details are do not agree dissentient voices on the I 1 longer ion er any that the vikings fact fact at issue spain main american harbors in in t the he sailed into it is possible that future century tenth upset this theory but at research fe earch search may and accepted so bent present it is sound and E express stays agys the mail theory that there nere is an ill regulated preceded edee columbus in in his prec irishmen wn tain discovery it has been bols V voyage eya of certain specious facts by a w with U tere the professors limme beamed man an of dublin ablin e none of it however the vikings were stark and savage sailing in all waters and adventurers sailing lands ands they entered and d robbing in all in england they ravaged every port scotland they sai sailed led up french drench rivers f charlemagne wept E at lt seeing their dark k into th they carried their forays ir ships robbers africa they they were pirates the norse sagas thieves corsairs cor done by calendar N eugate newgate wad read like a ahr through ough all the black jaohn n milton I 1 turbulence alence of crime and knave knavery ry chefe of high quality heroic a heard a note homeric Ko meric there is something of this of the worm sea a sea jepthe the saga fancied where worms the aie norse men which afi would bore through the timbers af of the ship until she sank swarmed in all ha the waves aies der bjarni larm J Grim Grimal alfson feon was driven with Ws his ship into the irish ocean and they came into a worm sea and straightway began the ship to sink under them one boat they ey had which was smeared with eean oil for the sea worms do not attack t that they went into the boat and then aw that at it could not hold them all then said bjarni since the boat cannot irive roo room to more than half of our men EM it is m 1 my counsel that lots should be drawn for those to go 0 in in the boat for it shall not be abc acc according r to rank this ing thought they all so high agh minded an offer aft that no one would 0 I 1 speak against it icett oid did they so that lots were drawn mad it fe felt 11 upon bjarni to go gd into the boat bak and the half of the men with him f for or the boat had n not ot room for more hut but when they had gone into the boat then said gaid an icelandic man who was av in the shi ship and had come with biardi from iceland cell mg I 1 dost thou intend bjarni to separate from me here bjarni answered so it falls out then said the other very different was thy promise to 40 tty my father when I 1 went with thee fi from am iceland then thus to abandon me aror thou we should both share the same eme f fate ate bjarni replied it shall shaff arat be thus go thou down into the boat bit and I 1 will go up into the ship since I 1 see that thou talou art so desirous to leorr alve then went biama up into the A I 1 ship but this man down into the boat and after that they continued their voyage until they came to dublin in ireland and told there these things but it is most peoples belief that bjarni and his companions were lost in the worm sea for nothing was heard of them since that time by kindly acts of this sort these pirates proved themselves akin to byrons B rons corsair with his one virtue and mr gilberts operate orphans what manner of ship they sailed in you may see by visiting the museum in in or by reading reading a book published by prof anderson ol of the university of wisconsin iston one of them dug out of the blue clay where it had lain for ten centuries may stand for a model she is 78 fee long at her greatest length 17 feet a her greatest width she has ribs draws less than four feet of water is clinker built carries one forty foot mast has sixteen slits on either side through gh which the twenty foot oars swung the only peculiarity the marine editor would notice is that her rudder was on the right side the steer board si side i le if you please and thence starboard the rudder was a large wooden blade fastened to a piece of timber projecting ting a foot from the side of the vessel n red erik was outlawed in iceland and sailing abroad to find a new home discovered disco verea greenland it was not an especially fertile land but said he people p le will w ill be attracted thither if it has a good goo d name he established a colony there in A D among the th e colonists there was a man named ernulf bardsen after a few months his son bjarni determined to follow hi him m he sailed westward with his sea rovers into fog 1 and tempest and in the end came to a land where low wooded shore hills crowded down to the sea this land he knew well was not greenland he was in search of a father and not of a continent so he put to sea again in a few days he came to another land low lying flat and wooded this again he knew was not greenland for there were no glaciers he stood out to sea in a southwest wind for two days and sighted land again this time a white mountainous I 1 land and with glaciers four days more they sailed and came to greenland 13 beamis anis search for a father ended more bore happily happily Tap than larhett larh aph ets he settled in the colony and so sold d his boat to leif leif with a crew of thirty five men set out to explore these lands seen of bjarni they sailed to the white mountainous land with ga glaciers ciers named it bellu land and sailed on they came to another land and named it marchland Marc kland and sailed on A northwest wind bore them on for two days and they came to a land with a island lying to the north of it between these a tide raced and they sailed with it into a river and then into a lake they went ashore and camped for some time they built houses and passed the winter there there was salmon in the lake and deer in the wood the climate was milder than that of greenland and day and night were more nearly equal a german sailor who was with the party discovered one day grap grape e vines and grapes in the woods in the spring they sailed back to greenland the land lan they called by reason of the grapes they had found vinland or wine land A third trip was made by leafs brother thorwald he sailed up the river into the lake and found the huts of leif he and his men spent two winters there they met a party of natives one day and slew all of them but one who esca escaped jed A few days later there came a fleet of skin A i n covered canoes filled with natives there was a fierce batttle and thorwald was slain they buried him on a cape that jutted butted into the sea north of the rivers mouth and sailed away to greenland the next expedition was on a urge arge scale karlsefne a wealthy norwegian led out a colony of sixty men and five women they found grapes and fields of wild corn fish and deer they traded with the high cheeked checked coarse haired natives that winter wife had a child who was called snorri scandinavian antiquities say that the sculptor was one of his descendants in the spring the colony returned to iceland one more attempt was made to colonize finland Yin vinland land tut but it was unsuccessful after the year 1013 it is not probable that it was visited by europeans until columbus drew the attention of spanish adventurers to the forgotten land in there is little peradventure cerad venture about these yearly early voyages of the vikings they are as much a part of authentic history as the doings good and ill of kings knut or charlemagne the last writer of authority on the subject is mr edward john payne of university col lege oxford in the first volume of his history of america published published a week or two t vo ago he shows how ow inevitable it was that the norsemen norseman Nor semen in the swing of the great arctic current should be led to america their voyages are noticed in no fewer than seventeen ancient icelandic documents mr payne points out that adam of bremen writing in the th twelfth century speaks of the newfound island in the great seas as a matter of certain knowledge from danish sources and mentions the voyages of Frie slanders thither in the preceding century the chief significance of these discoveries co sung in in sagas and pictured in fabulous maps lies in the fact that some knowledge of them must have been abroad in in western europe that at all events some remembrance of them sur to the time of columbus A number of fanciful attempts to identify the landing place of the norse discoverers were made a number of years ago at one time the old mill at newport R I 1 was pitched upon as a ruin af b the settlement but it was found that the mill had been built by gov benedict arnold and this theory went to the ground the dighton rock and other stones scratched with indian hieroglyphics were assumed to be records of these norse adventurers but a very little inquiry upset w ke the assumption there is little probability that the harbor into which ajami bardsen sent his high boat will ever ear be identified one fact stands out of all the latter of theories and arguments he discovered america what part of america he discovered is a matter of less amount that columbus may have heard of this vaguely as one hears the gossip of seamen is more than possible lut but there is small reason to believe that he was influenced by it the fact that northward among the icy seas there was an island vinland Vin Fand dyja land or the new land as the fourteenth century map makers called it played no part in his calculations when he sailed his caravels caravell car avels out against the pink dawn it was with an assured conviction and a heroic purpose to find india gold and rhubarb mastic and slaves his greatness is seen in those long lonjo years of study which established his faith that the way to india lay across the western seas he died unconvinced of the fact that he had bad found a new continent he regarded himself not as the discoverer of a new world but as a missionary of the gospel to the indies and as one who was to conquer the opulent east for leon and castile these two discoveries are not to be compared the norse corsairs cor coasting from norway to scotland from scotland to It iceland eland from iceland to Green landwere caught in the grip of the currents that race toward the north american shore and their discovery was one of the inevitable unreasonable things of chance the dogmatic sublime genovese set sail ail with an assured purpose and upon a well grounded conviction he did not gain the indies to be sure this merely proved that his chain of logic was too sr short hort not that it was badly linked so for the present his name will not be written out to make a place for that of bjarni the son of heriulfo bardsen vancie VANCE |
