Vikings in America (6 page)

A few years after Nadd-Oddur's voyage, Garthar Svavarsson became the leader of the second Viking voyage to Iceland. Garthar was deliberately following Nadd-Oddur's route. Crossing from the Faroe Islands, he made landfall, as Nadd-Oddur had, on the south-east coast and confirmed that this shore was uninviting. There are few harbours, none of them good – indeed, even today the only passenger ferry to Iceland, which is from the Faroe Islands, is forced to use an anchorage in the East Fjords at Seythisfjordur, far removed from the closest Icelandic landfall, as there is no usable anchorage on the closest shore. Almost the whole of the south coast of Iceland is comprised of glacial sands, producing sometimes poor-quality pasture but more frequently no usable land at all. Garthar made the voyage along the south coast, where the narrow strip of ice-free land fringes one of Europe's biggest glaciers, Vatnajokul. Today we know that Vatnajokul contains more ice than all other European glaciers combined, and to Garthar and his Vikings, even if they had seen the glaciers of northern Norway, this massive ice-sheet was an awe-inspiring site. This is the glacier that later caused the land to be known as Iceland. Garthar was looking for good farm land on which to settle, and did not find it on the south coast. The south-east he found a little more attractive, though still without proper anchorages.

He also discovered that the land was not empty. There is a lively debate as to who reached Iceland first, but it certainly wasn't the Vikings. Plausibly Iceland was visited by the ancients, both the Romans and the Greeks. An account of a voyage made in the years 330–325
BC
and described by Pytheas of
Marseille
⁷
contains remarkable details which have long convinced scholars that the voyage really happened. The voyage followed the established trade routes from the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules and then north to Cornwall in Britain's south-west. Cornwall provided tin, which the Mediterranean world lacked, and which was required for the production of bronze. This trade route is well documented. What surprises today is Pytheas's claim that his informants voyaged north to the northern extremity of Britain, then a further six days north to what he called Ultima Thule, now most often identified as Iceland. Here he describes a land where the summer sun does not set, but rather dips to the horizon and skims the ocean before lifting again. Pytheas's informants travelled north again, and a day north of Ultima Thule encountered a dense fog, and a place where the sea congeals to ice. All this is a fair description of Iceland, a land just south of the Arctic Circle where the sun at midnight in midsummer does indeed skim the horizon, and where there are 24 hours of daylight. North of Iceland is found the multi-year sea-ice, which in most summers extends across the ocean from Greenland to Jan Mayen Island and to Spitsbergen. Pytheas gives an accurate account of the midnight sun and the sea-ice, which is hard to explain unless his informants had actually been there and seen them.

Archaeology has produced unexpected evidence of Roman presence in Iceland, in the form of two Roman coins in an archaeological context which suggests their antiquity. While some post-Roman transmission of these coins to Iceland cannot be absolutely ruled out, perhaps as someone's good-luck token, their presence does suggest that at least one Roman galley made it to Iceland.

The Greeks and Romans were hampered by their ships. They could only sail effectively with the wind; they were not able to sail across the wind, or to tack into the wind. Within the Mediterranean basin, waiting for a wind in the right direction is usually possible, but in the North Atlantic this is entirely more problematic. While winds can and do come from any direction, the prevailing wind is from the south-west, and may blow in this direction for days or weeks. Oars were practical only over very short distances, and even with oars the progress that could be made against the wind was negligible. In short, the Greeks and Romans did not have ships with the characteristics needed for North Atlantic voyaging, and their exploration north of the British Isles was minimal. While an informant of Pytheas of Marseille appears to have made a return trip to Iceland his voyage is exceptional, and there is no record of another Greek emulating his achievement. Roman presence is just
about explicable in terms of the fourth-century drive to explore the islands, with at least one Roman circumnavigation of Britain, and the possibility of a ship venturing north by plan or accident, but any visit they made was occasional, and has left no written record. No-one has ever suggested that the Greeks or Romans established any sort of toe-hold on Iceland.

But after the Greeks and Romans had come the Irish. The Irish breakthrough, like that of the Vikings, had been in the area of boat-building. The boats were coracles,
⁸
and are unique in Europe in being made of leather.

Coracles are still occasionally used today by fishermen in the creeks and bays of western Ireland. As used today they are tiny craft, designed for carrying just one man, and while practical for the coastal work they do could never be taken across an ocean. Even leaving aside their tiny size, there is the insurmountable problem of the leather perishing. After several days' exposure to salt water the leather becomes weakened, and the boat must be taken out of the water, dried out, and the leather oiled in order to keep it strong and supple. If this is not done, the leather quickly rots and tears. But the Irish of the early Middle Ages made two innovations. First of all they discovered that if the leather was cured in an oak-bark solution it gained a durability that would enable it to stand up to many months, even several years, of exposure to the sea. And second, they discovered that it was possible to sew many dozens of hides together to produce much larger coracles that could transport up to a dozen men. The coracle of mediaeval Ireland was a functional, sea-going boat, on occasions even an ocean-going boat. It conveyed men along the indented west coast of Ireland, and from Ireland across to Scotland and through the labyrinth of the Hebrides, to Orkney, to Shetland, to the Faroe Islands and to Iceland.

When Garthar reached the south-east of Iceland, where there is soil in places that may be cultivated, he found not the empty land he sought, but rather the Irish living there already. Garthar continued his voyage, travelling to the north of Iceland, when the onset of winter made him decide to over-winter, choosing Husavik as his winter quarters. In the spring that followed he left some of his men in Husavik, and with the remainder of his crew continued onwards. Later saga writers suggested that the men who stayed were not volunteers, but were abandoned there because of arguments. Given the treeless nature of Iceland and therefore the impossibility of building a boat to leave, this abandonment was virtually a death sentence. Ultimately Garthar circumnavigated Iceland, encountering Irish people wherever he went. He returned to the Faroe Islands.

Garthar's exploration encouraged many others. In 860 Floki Vilgertharson decided to make a new life for himself and his family in Iceland. He therefore loaded his ship as a pioneer, with seed, sheep, wood and tools, and set off from his home in Norway. He chose to sail direct to Iceland – perhaps because he felt his wife and children were safer at sea than risking the doubtful hospitality of the inhabitants of the Shetland and Faroe Islands – and we have an account of him using the Viking navigation technique of releasing ravens.
⁹
The story is that the first raven he released flew southeast back towards Norway, the second flew high, circled, then returned and perched on the mast of the ship, while the third flew north-west, guiding him to Iceland. Floki earned himself the nickname in later sagas of Ravens Floki, because his use of a direct route meant that he was reliant on ravens for navigation.

Making landfall in south-east Iceland, Floki chose to sail to the northwest – the opposite corner of Iceland – to establish a farm at Vatnafjorthur. The location is puzzling, as this is not good farm land, and the farm was not a success. After a few years a disenchanted Floki took his family back to Norway.

After Floki, voyages to Iceland become increasingly frequent. In the Faroe Islands in
AD
870, the grandson of Grimur Kamban, Torolvur Torsteinsson, took a ship and explored the corner of Iceland that faced the Faroe Islands. It seems that he didn't like what he saw, as no settlement followed.

The first Viking settlement that lasted is credited to Ingolfur Arnarson, who came to Iceland in 874. Ingolfur had had the bloodthirsty past which drove so many of the Viking voyages. Born in Norway, he had been forced to leave because of some unspecified crimes, and with his blood-brother Hjorleifur had acted as a pirate around the coasts of Britain and in Ireland. In time, the blood-brothers became sufficiently unpopular in this part of the world for them both to seek a new start at the edge of the Viking world, in Iceland, though both acted independently. Hjorleifur set up his farm at what he called Vik, meaning simply ‘the creek', on the south coast of Iceland. During the first winter he quarrelled with and was murdered by his slaves, and his colony fell apart. Hjorleifur has become just a footnote to Icelandic history. It is rather Ingolfur who has been remembered by history and today's Icelanders as the founding father of Iceland, with many stories told of him. Ingolfur is portrayed as a devout pagan. He came to Iceland intending to settle, and properly equipped. Knowing that there was scant wood in Iceland he brought with him the timbers that would form the
structure of his farmhouse. Nearing land, he threw overboard the two chief timbers, asking the gods to direct him to where he should set up his farm. The timbers came ashore at an area where geothermal steam was vented from the earth, and for this reason we are told Ingolfur named the place Reykjavik – ‘smoky bay' (though it is steam, not smoke, that vents) – establishing his farm there. While with the passage of 1,000 years we can scarcely speculate on Ingolfur's religious beliefs, we can suspect that there was a far more prosaic reason for casting timbers into the sea and seeing where they washed up. In Iceland the flotsam and jetsam that the sea brings ashore has always been a source of resources for the inhabitants, and particularly important when a new settlement is being set up which doesn't have the benefits of a previous harvest to feed it. Ingolfur was, in fact, seeing where the sea would deposit its bounty.

Following Ingolfur, Iceland was settled remarkably quickly in the next 60 years. Most settlers came from Norway, driven by land shortage and tyrannical government there, and attracted by the prospect of land for the taking in Iceland. Many came in family groups, many were driven by family problems. So we hear, for example, of Aud Ketildottir, nicknamed the Deep-minded, a Norwegian lady living in Scotland, who came on hard times after the death of her husband. Captaining her own ship, she brought her family to Iceland, and laid claim to a large tract of farmland. Laying claim to land was what mattered, and this act of land-taking is recorded in exhaustive detail in one of Iceland's earliest books, the
Landnamabok
¹⁰
or ‘Book-of-the-Land-Taking', which sets out who settled where, and what the bounds of their farm were.

Although Iceland was not an empty land, for the Irish were already there, Icelandic sources give us a version of events subsequent to the arrival of the Vikings which is remarkably peaceful. According to the Icelanders, the Vikings encountered only a few priests, living lives of solitude and contemplation. These priests were banished – or even went voluntarily – to certain islands off the shore of Iceland where they lived out their lives without troubling the Vikings. Thus Papey, a most unattractive island off the southeast coast, became inhabited by the Irish priests – the name means ‘Island of the Monks'. Similarly a group of islands off the south coast was settled by the Irish – called the Westerman Islands, or Islands of the West Men. This benign account of peaceful co-existence was for long unchallenged.

But the challenge did come from three separate areas, and three different disciplines – history, genetics and military strategy.

The historical account of the Irish expansion suggests that the Irish reached Iceland in the sixth century, and had therefore been living there for around 300 years. The earliest remembered voyage is linked with the name of St Brendan, who is credited with a voyage to the Faroe Islands and Iceland and further west, then back to Ireland, during a period usually given as 565–73. While the account has been garbled by later retelling, there would seem to be at least a kernel of truth in the story of the St Brendan voyage. The Church in Ireland put great store on asceticism, and established many monasteries in Ireland – and indeed in Scotland and northern England. It is in keeping with this convention that Ireland should send out to Iceland men who wished to lead the lives of hermits. However, the implication of many later writers that individual hermits travelled to Iceland is simply not tenable. Single-person coracles could not make the journey to Iceland. Rather, voyages were made by groups of six to twelve men, who are likely to have lived together after their arrival in Iceland. The priesthood of the Celtic Church was not celibate – indeed it encouraged its priests to marry. In three centuries of Irish voyaging to Iceland it seems incredible that some women did not make the journey, and that a permanent Irish settlement did not become established if this is the case. So far archaeology has found some scant remains of habitation prior to the Viking Age, which would lend credence to the idea of Irish colonisation.

The second area of evidence comes from genetics. In 2002–03 the DECODE
¹¹
genetics project, based in Reykjavik, looked at evidence for the ethnicity of the Icelandic people. An island population with excellent genealogical records along with a liberal attitude towards access to personal health records had encouraged the selection of Icelanders as the key population for DNA study for the human genome project. Looking at the ethnic origin of the Icelanders was the logical next step. The results were published in two reports a few weeks apart during the summer of 2003. The first report looked at mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to children, and which indicates the ethnic origin of the original women who made up the Icelandic population. The findings, expressed in broad terms, were that 60 per cent of the first women who settled in Iceland were Irish, and 40 per cent were Norse. The results were greeted with shock in Iceland. Iceland prides itself on being a Viking nation, perhaps the only true surviving Viking nation. This finding at one stroke appeared to demolish that claim. Yet within weeks the findings for the study of the Y-chromosome – transmitted from father to son – were released and produced a very different result. Of the
male population of Iceland, in broad terms 90 per cent of the first settlers were Norse and 10 per cent Irish. For the combined male and female population, around two-thirds of the first settlers were Norse, one-third Irish.