“Local history is a sort of benchmark to which all more generalized
and specialized kinds of history must come back to, for verification,
as a point of reference.”
— Lewis Mumford,
“The Value of Local History,” 1927
“Nine centuries had passed from the time of Leif Ericsson’s Vinland
discovery when the Icelanders again felt the urge to take up the trail
to the West and immigrate to America.”
— Thorstina Walters,
Modern Sagas: The Story of the Icelanders in North America, 1953
When Icelandic settlers in Manitoba’s Interlake region
composed two of their local histories, they used
the term saga in the titles: Gimli Saga (1975), authored by
The Gimli Women’s Institute,
and Icelandic River Saga
(1985), authored by Nelson Gerrard. By using the term saga, these authors
appropriately set their local history books within an extended Icelandic
historiographical tradition with roots in medieval Icelandic saga-writing, which
commenced in the latter part of the twelfth century and continued through the
remainder of the medieval period.
In this article, we introduce the Icelandic saga as a literary form and then
survey the practice of local history writing, focusing chiefly on the genre’s
significance in Canada. We then analyze selected episodes from the two so-
called Vínland sagas, specifically Grœnlendinga saga and Eiríks saga rauða [The
Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red’s Saga]. Next, we describe the two
local histories noted above, compare specific episodes from them and their own
Icelandic-language forerunners to episodes in the Vínland sagas, revealing an
association between the two sets of texts that has been cultivated by the modern
local history authors.
The Vínland sagas describe the lives of Norse merchant-explorers who
travelled along the eastern shores of what is now North America, c. 1000 CE,
when they briefly settled and encountered an unfamiliar landscape inhabited
by an unfamiliar people.
Near to nine hundred years later, in 1875, Icelandic
immigrants arrived and settled in what is now Manitoba’s Interlake region (at
that time part of Canada’s Northwest Territories), after an arduous journey of
their own. Like their medieval predecessors, these nineteenth-century settlers
encountered a landscape they had never visited that was inhabited by people
they had never met. Unlike the Norse explorers, who departed the so-called
Vínland settlements shortly after contact with Indigenous people, the
Icelanders in 1875 settled the Interlake permanently. The settlers called their
settlement Nýja Ísland—New Iceland.
The stories of the Icelandic settlers in the Interlake are recorded in local
Icelandic newspapers and annual almanacs published in Canada as early as 1877
(see, e.g., Framfari; Almanak Ólafs S. Thorgeirssonar), and then later, during the
first half of the twentieth century, book-length Icelandic texts were composed
to record the history of the early years of Icelandic settlement in North America.
Þorleifur Jóakímsson Jackson’s Brot af Landnámssögu Nýja Íslands (1919), a key
text in the New Iceland historiographical tradition, is the first attempt at a
comprehensive history of New Iceland. The work consists of written memories
of early settlers in the region, accompanied by short biographies. Another key
source is Þorsteinn Þ. Þorsteinsson and Tryggvi Oleson’s five-volume Saga
Íslendinga í Vesturheimi (1940-53), volume 3 (1945) of which focuses on New
Iceland.
While these and other Icelandic language texts are foundational for
Icelandic heritage communities in Manitoba’s Interlake, not to mention other
Icelandic settler communities in North America, it is the translation of the
community’s early history into English in local history books during the 1970s
and 1980s that is the focus of the present article.
Gimli Saga and Icelandic River Saga, like the texts on which they are based,
include episodes that allude to narrative sequences from the Vínland sagas. Due
to the accessibility of Gimli Saga and Icelandic River Saga in local and family
libraries in the Interlake, their contents continue to be significant for English
language readers in the community. We highlight these textual references,
indicate their earlier Icelandic-language sources, if any, and conclude that these
modern texts make use of the medieval past and selectively interpret the more
recent past. As a result, these texts inform the community’s identity as settlers
with deep historical attachments to what is now North America. How a
community narrates its relationship to peoples and lands in its
historiographical tradition is an act of making history, so we scrutinize the
selected historical texts, how they have been made, and ask what alternative
histories or episodes might have been omitted.
Introduction: What Is a Saga?
In Icelandic, the word saga is a feminine noun in the nominative singular form.
The noun is related to the verb segja, which means, among else, “to say” or “to tell.”
One primary meaning for the noun form saga is thus what is said or what is told. As
a literary form, the saga can be considered a narrative that focuses on people and
their actions and combines dialogue with narration. Medieval Icelandic sagas are
often considered to be stories that mix fiction and fact, invention and tradition,
though early saga audiences could very well have interpreted the depicted events
as historically accurate retellings. Another primary meaning for the noun form of
saga is “history,” so the duality of story-history or invention-description is
embedded in both the word and the narrative form.
Among the intentions of saga authors was documentation of the settlement
of Iceland, c. 870 to 930, and the subsequent patterns of land ownership. Sagas
also affirmed or consolidated a family’s historical claims to influence in district
and island politics and they frequently narrate events connected to the
conversion to Christianity of the Icelandic population, c. 1000. Sagas served to
entertain readers, and continue to do so, drawing from accounts of saga-age
characters and an abundance of interpersonal and regional conflicts. Some
sagas might have been formed orally, perhaps in outline form, during the period
between the time of represented narrative action and the time of authorship,
but it is likely that the versions of the sagas as we now have them were
determined by authorship. When the anonymous saga authors wrote the sagas
into parchment manuscripts during the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and
sixteenth centuries, not to mention the many paper copies made in subsequent
centuries, any number of liberties might have been taken with the inherited
source material, such as adjustments to align with authorial intention,
preferences of the manuscript patron, or to bring the action into alignment
with Christian values, for the Catholic Church was a significant presence in
Iceland from the eleventh century onward.
The temporal gap between the time
of represented action and the time of authorship for the Icelandic sagas is
summed up well by Theodore M. Andersson: “It goes without saying that saga
authors in the thirteenth century could not reproduce anything resembling the
truth from the Saga Age, but they and their listeners must have thought they
could” (2008, 9). Put another way, Andersson adds: “the sagas were considered to be
truthful, that is to say, they were considered to stand in a narrative continuity
from some original truth” (12).
In English, the loan word saga retains one of its Icelandic meanings, which
refers to an Old Norse-Icelandic prose narrative that recounts the history of
saga-age Icelandic families, Norwegian kings, Icelandic bishops, as well as
narratives that tell stories about a large inventory of legendary characters,
sometimes loosely based on historical or legendary figures from European
continental traditions. In English, the word saga is also often used colloquially
to refer to a long and complicated account of a series of events.
Gimli Saga and
Icelandic River Saga are titled as sagas for a specific purpose: the inclusion of the
noun saga in both titles positions these local histories as a continuation of the
Icelandic saga-writing tradition.
Not only do the titles of the narratives
indicate their connection to the medieval Icelandic saga tradition, their
accounts of Icelandic settlement in the Interlake represent specific versions of
that process: the versions presented and likely believed to be truthful, or
“considered to stand in a narrative continuity from some original truth”
(Andersson 2008, 12), by the local history authors and their audiences in the 1970s
and 1980s.
In the present article, we limit ourselves to the analysis of selected episodes
in two groups of texts—the Vínland sagas and two local history books from
Manitoba’s Interlake region—that represent contact between Norse or Icelandic
settlers and Indigenous peoples in what is now North America. The selected
episodes, which we argue are comparable, demonstrate the use of direct
reference or indirect allusion by the modern authors to the medieval Icelandic
sagas. The saga episodes, we conclude, served as inspiration for the early-
twentieth-century Icelandic language texts that were subsequently adopted and
translated into English by the modern local historians. Before we compare the
selected episodes from the two sets of texts, we first outline the origins and
practice of local history.
The Local History Genre
Local history writing is a popular format for public memory for
communities in North America, as it is elsewhere. Joseph A. Amato writes “Local
history carries with it the potential to reconstruct our ancestors’ everyday
lives” (2002, 3). Local histories, often focused on community ancestry, hold the
potential to be deeply personal texts for community members.
In Manitoba, there are hundreds of local history books, written not only to
commemorate the founding and growth of towns, neighbourhoods, regions, and
cities, but also to document the circumstances of families, farms, churches, and
other types of institutions.
Many local histories are authored by amateur
historians and are sometimes labelled as vernacular histories. Other terms for
local history, most frequently used by non-amateurs employed in academia,
include microhistory, community history, social history, heritage studies, and
public history. Whether considered amateur or professional, local history might
be defined as “the opposite of national or international history,” the key term
“local” denoting geographical scale (Dymond 2011, 27). John Beckett writes that local
history is a key factor for public memory, though it remains difficult to define:
“Today, local history is practised in one form or another by so many different
individuals and groups, that offering any sort of definition will doubtless offend
someone” (2007, 2). Beckett hazards a definition, however: “the study of a place,
whether it is a house, a village, a town, a county, or a region, or even a nation .
. . and the people and communities that lived in them” (2). This definition for
local history matches quite well with the above definition for saga.
Local history writing itself has medieval roots. Beckett points to the Anglo-
Saxon chronicles from the twelfth century as early examples: William of
Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (1125) and Gerald of Wales’
Topographica Hibernica (1187) [“Deeds of the Bishops of the English” and
“Topography of Ireland,” respectively] are two examples he cites as
predecessors to modern local histories, but he states that even though these
works focused on local people and places, they were not part of a tradition of
local writing. When so-called chorographies began to be written in England
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a more systematic genre arrived
that led subsequently into county histories which developed into what is
considered the local history tradition in England today. Chorographies, writes
Beckett, “were studies of places. They brought together history with
genealogies, antiquarian collections, and topographical description” (2007, 8). The
chorographic tradition was practiced from the fourteenth through eighteenth
centuries in England, with more focused county histories emerging in the late
sixteenth century, specifically in William Lambarde’s A Perambulation of Kent
(1576): “the reader was guided through the county, and current institutions
were discussed as the journey proceeded” (16). Beckett adds: “Lambarde set an
agenda for county histories, in which the study of antiquities was combined
with topographical description, and current information” (16). By about 1700,
according to Beckett, the unit of the county had become the acknowledged area
of study for a local history. Taken together, these many local histories (i.e.,
county histories) added significantly to the collective history of Britain.
For twenty-first-century academics, however, the concept of “local
history” does not simply refer to a precise, methodological inventory of a
region’s physical, economic, and genealogical characteristics intended to
inform past, present, and future residents about their area. The term has
undergone a slow process of linguistic broadening since its inception, with
works now including “newspapers and newspaper clippings, magazines, letters,
diaries, records . . . photographs . . . [and] ‘self-generated’ material of oral
histories, reminiscences, and autobiographical writings,” alongside maps,
family trees, and descriptions of antique architecture (Cosson 2017, 50). It can be
argued, then, that the list of academically reputable forms of local history has
been expanded over time to include works that incorporate the aforementioned
materials. This expansion can partially be explained by the introduction of
technology that better preserves historical artifacts in their original forms.
Without the ability to record the human voice, for instance, it would be
impossible to preserve oral histories without first transcribing them into
written accounts, which cannot fully capture the dialectical nuances,
inflectional quirks, and physical or vocal mannerisms present in a live
recording.
The growing popularity of technology that could preserve these features,
then, alongside a burgeoning interest in the life of the everyperson, likely
provoked a reframing of the established conventions for collecting and
analyzing local histories. Over time, “history has become more inclusive by
dealing with the whole spectrum of society . . . [many local historians seek] to
broaden the scope of . . . histories . . . beyond their traditional fixation with the
lords of the manor” (Dyer, et al. 2011). Such a reframing would have made room
for artifacts like photographs, video interviews, audio recordings, old
postcards, family correspondences, and more—the types of media now
concomitant to many modern local history collections. These media, the types
of relics that “enable the researcher to move away from state and official
records and narratives, from the manor house to the terraced house, from the
parsonage to the factory” (Cosson 2017, 50), are integral to the study of local history
as it relates to the Interlake’s Icelandic community.
Works of local history serve to provide Canadians with concrete evidence
of their cultural heritage—provincial, national, or otherwise. According to Jean
Lock Kunz and Stuart Sykes, “Canada’s multicultural diversity is a product of
three cultural drivers: Aboriginal peoples, the English and French ‘Charter’
groups, and immigrants from around the world” (2007, 3). With such an ethnically
diverse population, it is no wonder that local histories play an important role in
the formation of Canadian identities. Canada’s local histories “[connect]
individuals to wider social memories and practices and [serve] as a means of
sustaining place identities through times of change for both long-term and
newer residents” (R. Wheeler 2017, 481). They provide comfort and relative stability
for diverse residents of established communities by anchoring them somewhere
within their area’s cultural and physical landscape, thus affording them a
bulwark against time. This facet of local history scholarship certainly casts the
field in golden light; however, any merit gleaned from the genre’s ability to
provide cultural durability for a region’s inhabitants is challenged by its
inherent connection to settler colonialism in Canada. Within these histories,
three archetypal figures come to the fore: “the colonist, the pioneer, and the
settler . . . . These three figures are associated with different meanings and
values. A settler is a founder of political order, and both the colonist and the
pioneer can be understood as historically specific versions of a settler”
(Hjorthén 2018, 63-64). New Iceland—formerly the Icelandic Reserve in what is now
Manitoba’s Interlake—was initially established as an ethnic settlement reserve
for Icelandic immigrants only (Eyford 2016, 47), so early key figures were in fact
colonists, who were accompanied and followed by many pioneers who worked
to transform the landscape of the area. Hjorthén adds: “Settlers, whether
colonist or pioneers, are par2017, t of the literal construction of new societies,
breaking ground and building cities in places previously described as
wilderness” (64). The settler in North American local history almost always
comes into contact with Indigenous people who inhabited and traversed
territories prior to the settler’s arrival: “Sites of settling are contact zones
between European colonists and indigenous populations. They are the locus of
stories about encounters, figuring—although in decidedly different ways—in
the imaginaries of settler nations and in the mythologies of indigenous peoples”
(Hjorthén 2018, 70-71).
Gimli Saga and Icelandic River Saga exemplify how, in part, younger
generations of Icelandic settlers in Manitoba reflect on their ancestral contact
with the Indigenous people of Manitoba’s Interlake. Fittingly, to explore this
ancestral first contact, the writers of these local histories translate into English
earlier Icelandic narratives of contact between Icelandic settlers and
Indigenous people in the Interlake. These earlier sources—specifically those
mentioned above by Þorleifur Jóakímsson Jackson (1919) and Þorsteinn Þ.
Þorsteinsson (1945)—drew thematically from the much earlier stories about
contact between the Norse and the Indigenous people in what is now North
America. Like their generic cousins the sagas, local histories often exist in a gray
area between objective fact and fiction. The medieval Icelandic saga tended to
combine known or suspected historical events with sensationalized details and
narratives, creating a work that was neither nonfiction text nor a wholly
invented one. Similarly, since many local histories are comprised of materials
that were not always created with the intention of immortalizing objective
historical truth (letters, diary entries, oral histories, ethnic histories, etc.), it is
fair to assume that there is some degree of fiction or embelishment within most
local histories, especially the ones originally created with the intent to
entertain. Thus, on a scale with “fiction” and “historical fact” serving as the two
extremes, both “saga” and “local history” would be placed somewhere between
the two ends, existing together as narratives that are neither objective
historical retellings nor fictitious stories.
Critiques of local history writing generally revolve around the genre’s
aforementioned factual ambiguity; specifically, it is often the intrinsic bias
present in many source materials that provokes a raise of the scholarly brow.
As author Glenn Sigurdson affirms in his semi-autobiographical account of life
in the Interlake, “who you are and what you do are so vitally intertwined that
you [as a writer of local histories] are in a unique position to have each inform
the other” (2014, 20). Bits of local lore found in letters, diary entries, and
oral histories are not likely to be left untouched by the experiences,
motivations, morals, and relationships of the local history authors who use
these source materials, just as settler-colonial justification for occupancy in
Gimli Saga and Icelandic River Saga is certainly influenced by the authors’
identities as inheritors of an appropriated land. This concept as it relates to
omission and distortion of Indigenous stories in the local history texts will be
explored in the final section of the article. Before focusing in on these modern
texts, we travel back in time to the saga age, where we will explore selected
episodes from the Vínland sagas.
The Vínland Sagas
In chapter 4 of Grœnlendinga saga, Þorvaldr Eiríksson, son of Eiríkr rauði
Þorvaldsson [Eirik the Red], reaches Vínland with a group and locates his
brother Leifr Eiríksson’s camp, built by Leifr when he previously explored
Vínland. After having stayed in Vínland for two winters, while exploring lands
to the east of Leifr’s camp, Þorvaldr and his companions see: “á sandinum inn
frá hǫfðanum þjrár hæðir ok fóru til þangat ok sjá þar húðkeipa þrjá ok þrjá
menn undir hverjum” [three hillocks on the beach inland from the cape. Upon
coming closer they saw they were three hide-covered boats, with three men
under each of them] (Sveinsson and Þórðarson 1935b, 255; Kunz 1997b, 25).
The settlers capture eight of the nine Indigenous people and kill them, with one
Indigenous person managing to escape. Shortly afterward, “Þá fór innan eptir
firðinum ótal húðkeipa, ok lǫgðu at þeim” [A vast number of hide-covered boats
came down the fjord, heading towards them], and the Indigenous people “skutu
á þeim um stund” [shot at them for a while], with one arrow mortally wounding
Þorvaldr (Sveinsson and Þórðarson 1935b, 256; Kunz 1997b, 25). The action
we highlight from this episode—in anticipation of our identification of allusions
in the set of local histories below—is what we term communication from boats.
In chapter 6 of the same saga, Þorfinnr Karlsefni settles in Vínland with a
party. After the first winter has passed, the group becomes aware of Indigenous
people, who emerge from the woods, become frightened by the settler’s bull,
and run off. Next, however, the natives “snúa til bœjar Karlsefnis ok vildu þar
inn í húsin; en Karlsefni lét verja dyrrnar. Hvárigir skildu annars mál” [headed
for Karlsefni’s farm and tried to get into the house there, but Karlsefni had the
door defended. Neither group understood the language of the other]
(Sveinsson and Þórðarson 1935b, 262; Kunz 1997b, 28). Following this, the two
groups—settler and Indigenous— trade goods, but Karlsefni forbids the settlers
to trade weapons. At the beginning of the settlement party’s second winter in
Vínland, the Indigenous people return in a larger group and trading occurs once
again. However, during this second visit an Indigenous person is killed while
attempting to take weapons from a Norse settler’s servant. The remaining
members of the Indigenous trading group depart, but Karlsefni expects them to
return with a still larger group. The Indigenous group does return for a third
time: “Nú kómu Skrælingar í þann stað, er Karlsefni hafði ætlat til bardaga. Nú
var þar bardagi, ok fell fjǫlði af liði Skrælinga” [The natives soon came to the
place Karlsefni had intended for the battle. They fought and a large number of
the natives were killed] (Sveinsson and Þórðarson 1935b, 263; Kunz
1997b, 29). Ultimately, as a result of the hostilities, the settlers abandon the Vínland
settlement and return to Greenland. The action we highlight here is the initial
encounter between Karlsefni’s group and the Indigenous group, the latter
attempting to enter Karlsefni’s house without invitation.
The plot of Eiríks saga rauða is similar to that of Grœnlendinga saga, though
there are some differences. In chapter 10 of Eiríks saga, after Karlsefni and his
group have arrived in Vínland, we read: “Ok einn morgin snimma, er þeir
lituðusk um, sá þeir mikinn fjǫlða húðkeipa, ok var veift trjám á skipunum, ok
lét því líkast sem í hálmþúst, ok var veift sólarsinnis” [Early one morning they
noticed nine hide-covered boats and the people in them waved wooden poles
that made a swishing sound as they turned them around sunwise]
(Sveinsson and Þórðarson 1935a, 227; Kunz 1997a, 15).
Snorri Þorbrandsson, a
settler, interprets the communication from boats as follows: “Vera kann, at
þetta sé friðarmark, ok tǫkum skjǫld hvítan ok berum at móti” [It may be a sign
of peace; we should take a white shield and lift it up in return]
(Sveinsson and Þórðarson 1935a, 227; Kunz 1997a, 15). The two groups then meet and
interact before the Indigenous people depart in their boats. In Eiríks saga, the
waving of poles in boats replaces the shooting of arrows from boats that occurs
in Grœnlendinga saga upon initial contact between the Norse and the Indigenous
inhabitants of so-called Vínland. Both actions constitute communication from
boats.
In chapter 11 of Eiríks saga, the following spring, this sequence is repeated:
“En er vára tók, sá þeir einn morgin snimma, at fjǫlði húðkeipa reri sunnan fyrir
nesit, svá mart sem kolum væri sáit fyrir hópit; var þá ok veift af hverju skipi
trjánum” [One morning, as spring advanced, they noticed a large number of
hide-covered boats rowing up from the south around the point. There were so
many of them that it looked as if bits of coal had been tossed over the water,
and there was a pole waving from each boat] (Sveinsson and
Þórðarson 1935a, 228; Kunz 1997a, 15). The settlers raise a white shield, as before, and trade
ensues, until a bull owned by the settlers scares the natives away. The natives
do not return for three weeks. But: “En er sá stund var liðin, sjá þeir fara sunnan
mikinn fjǫlða Skrælinga-skipa, svá sem staumr stœði. Var þá trjánum ǫllum
veift andsœlis, ok ýla upp allir mjǫk hátt” [After that they saw a large group of
native boats approach from the south, as thick as a steady stream. They were
waving poles counter-sunwise now and all of them were shrieking loudly]
(Sveinsson and Þórðarson 1935a, 228; Kunz 1997a, 15). Instead of raising a white
shield and engaging in trade, as the settlers did in the two earlier encounters
with the Indigenous group in Eiríks saga rauða, they pick up their red shields and
combat ensues. The Indigenous people have two weapons that function as
projectiles in this battle: valslǫngur [catapults] and a large knǫtt [ball] that was
raised on a pole and projected at the land. The latter weapon scares the settlers
so severely that they retreat from their battle position. This confrontation
ultimately leads to the withdrawal of the settlers from Vínland back to
Greenland. As in Grœnlendinga saga, the Indigenous people approach the settlers
in canoe-like boats, but instead of immediately shooting at the settlers with
arrows, in Eiríks saga rauða they communicate by moving poles in certain
directions, either sunwise or counter-sunwise. When the Indigenous people
approach the settlers for what the settlers perceive to be peaceful trade, the
poles are waved sunwise; but when the Indigenous people approach for what
the settlers perceive to be conflict, the natives wave the poles counter-sunwise.
In both sagas, projectiles are launched from the natives’ boats at the settlers:
arrows in Grœnlendinga saga and catapults and large balls in Eiríks saga.
In both sagas, there is a scene in which the natives come into contact with
a metal axe for the first time. In chapter 6 of
Grœnlendinga saga, after a battle
between the natives and Karlsefni’s group, the following action unfolds:
Einn maðr var mikill ok vænn í liði Skrælinga, ok þótti Karlsefni, sem
hann myndi vera hǫfðingi þeira. Nú hafði einn þeira Skrælinga tekit
upp øxi eina ok leit á um stund ok reiddi at félaga sínum ok hjó til
hans; sá fell þegar dauðr. Þá tók sá inn mikli maðr við øxinni ok leit á
um stund ok varp henni síðan á sjóinn, sem lengst mátti hann.
(Sveinsson and Þórðarson 1935b, 263-64)
[One of the men in the natives’ group was tall and handsome and
Karlsefni thought him likely to be their leader. One of the natives
then picked up an axe, peered at it awhile, and then aimed at one of
his companions and struck him. The other fellow was killed outright.
The tall man then picked up the axe, examined it awhile, and then
threw it as far out into the sea as he could.]
(Kunz 1997b, 29)
In chapter 11 of
Eiríks saga rauða, divergently, after the battle between
Karlsefni’s group and the Indigenous group, an axe appears as part of the action:
“Þeir Skrælingar fundu ok mann dauðan, ok lá øx í hjá. Einn þeira tók upp øxina
ok høggr með tré ok þá hverr at ǫðrum, ok þótti þeim vera gersimi ok bíta vel.
Síðan tók einn ok hjó stein, svá at brotnaði øxin, ok þá þótti þeim engu nýt, er
eigi stózk grjótit, ok kǫstuðu niðr” [The natives also found one of the dead men,
whose axe lay beside him. One of them picked up the axe and chopped at a tree,
and then each took his turn at it. They thought this thing which cut so well a
real treasure. One of them struck a stone, and the axe broke. He thought a thing
which could not withstand stone to be of little worth, and tossed it away]
(Sveinsson and Þórðarson 1935a, 230; Kunz 1997a, 16). These comparable
instances in both sagas constitute what we refer to as natives’ encounter with a
settler’s axe.
The differences in the accounts of the Norse-Indigenous contact in so-called
Vínland demonstrate that the saga narratives existed in divergent versions. In
both of the Vínland sagas the Norse arrive in Vínland, and in both sagas
Indigenous people communicate with the settlers from boats, sometimes
trading ensues but ultimately in both sagas conflict follows contact: In
Grœnlendinga saga, the natives shoot arrows from their boats upon first contact
with Þorvaldr Eiríksson’s party—the initial Indigenous-settler encounter in that
saga—whereas in Eiríks saga rauða the Indigenous people wave poles from their
boats to communicate with the settlers, peacefully at first. In Grœnlendinga saga,
the Indigenous people attempt to enter Karlsefni’s farmhouse without
invitation. In both of the Vínland sagas, there is a scene that depicts the natives’
encounter with a settler’s axe, though the specific action connected to the axe
diverges in the two accounts, but in both cases the axe is ultimately discarded.
These three actions—communication from boats, attempted entry without
invitation, and an encounter with an axe—also appear in Gimli Saga and Icelandic
River Saga. In the local histories, the scenes and characters are different than in
the Vínland sagas, but through the use of literary allusion, the modern accounts
connect the Icelandic community in Manitoba’s Interlake with the Norse
explorers of the saga age.
Two Sagas from New Iceland
In his foreword to
Icelandic River Saga, Nelson Gerrard draws a direct link
between his work and the work of medieval Icelandic historiographers.
Specifically, he writes:
Like the settlement of Iceland between AD 875 and 930, the
settlement of New Iceland in 1875 marked the beginning of a new
page in history, and just as the names and landclaims of those who
first populated Iceland’s remote fjords were recorded in the
mediaeval chronicle Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements) –
penned some eight centuries ago by ‘Ari the Learned’ and ‘Kolskeggur
the Wise’ – an attempt is made here to account for each and every
pioneer whose landclaim lay within the bounds of the Icelandic River
and Ísafold Settlements of New Iceland.
(1985, iv)
This description draws an explicit connection between the work of
Icelandic
River Saga and
Landnámabók. The latter survives in five versions, three of which
are from the Middle Ages and two from the seventeenth century. The earliest
writers of
Landnámabók, generally accepted to include Ari inn fróði [Ari the
Learned] and Kolskeggr inn fróði [Kolskeggr the Learned], were actively
compiling the book during the early decades of the twelfth century
(Benediktsson 1986, cix-cx).
The work details the settlement of Iceland c. 870 to 930
by the original settlers and their descendents. Hermann Pálsson and Paul
Edwards note that
Landnámabók foregrounds how “the early settlers of Iceland
were people who, by breaking away from their original societies, had shown
themselves to be more than averagely independent” (1972, 8).
Gerrard also directly correlates the migration of Icelanders from Iceland to
America with the earlier Norse explorations of what is now North America,
some of the details of which have been discussed above. About the late-
nineteenth-century migration, Gerrard writes:
Reports filtered back to Iceland, and as letters, articles, and accounts
of other Scandinavian settlements in America began appearing in
Icelandic newspapers a few individuals and small groups began to
venture west across the seas – to the land their ancestral hero Leifur
Eiríksson had once named Vínland.
(1985, 16)
Gerrard indicates that emigrants from Iceland in the nineteenth century found
inspiration for their journeys in the Vínland sagas, or at least that there is a
stated pair of precedents for the nineteenth-century migration: specifically the
emigration of people from Norway westward to Iceland in the ninth and tenth
centuries, followed by the westward explorations made by the Vínland settlers
during the early years of the eleventh century. Relatedly, in the fifth issue of
Framfari, published 10 December 1877, in the cover article titled “Ferðir
íslendinga til ameríku” [Journeys of Icelanders to America], we read an early
statement correlating the migration of the Icelanders to North America in the
nineteenth century with the migration of Norwegians to Iceland in the ninth
century:
Jeg vil sem fæzt geta mjer til um, af hvaða hvötum Íslendingar fyrst
fóru að flytja til muna af Íslandi. Má vera að nokkrir hafi illa þolað
margbreyttar, ófyrirsynju, álögur, og ýmislegan ójöfnuð af hálfu
yfirmanna sinna, á líkan hátt og forfeður þeirra í Noregi, fyrir rúmum
þúsund árum. Svo er heldur eigi ólíklegt, að óblíða tíðarfarsins á
Íslandi hafi átt nokkurn þátt í mannflutningum þaðan. Getur og verið,
að nokkrir hafi íhugunarlítið ráðist til brottferðar, ef til vill með
þeirri hugmynd, að þurfa ekki neitt að hafa fyrir lífinu framar.
Hverjar sem nú orsakirnar hafa verið í fyrstu, þá er nú svo komið, að
á nálægt 6 árum, eða síðan 1871, hafa nærfellt tvær þúsundir manna
flutt frá Íslandi til Ameríku, en mjög fáir munu hafa flutt til annara
landa.
(Briem 1877, 1)
[I want to mention as briefly as possible the reasons which first
impelled Icelanders to emigrate from Iceland to any extent. It may be
that some found unendurable the many kinds of blunder,
burdensome taxes and other unjust treatment on the part of the
government, just as their forefathers in Norway, about a thousand
years ago. It is also not unlikely that the inclemency of the Icelandic
climate affected emigration from there. It may also be that some
people emigrated without giving the matter much thought, perhaps
under the impression that all their problems would thereby be
solved. Whatever the reasons may have been at first, within
approximately six years, or since 1871, almost two thousand people
have emigrated from Iceland to America, but very few have probably
gone to other countries.]
(Framfari: 1877 to 1880 1986, 43)
This early example of discourse within the Icelandic community in North
America associates Icelandic migration to North America with the movements
of people in the saga age.
There were two groups of Icelandic migrants who arrived over a period of
two years in the Interlake, which at that time fell within the boundaries of the
North-West Territories. The first group (1875) arrived after a journey that
brought them from the Kinmount and Toronto areas in Ontario, where they had
attempted settlement in 1874. On their journey to the North-West Territories,
they were joined by 13 Icelanders who were at that time living in Wisconsin
(Kristjanson 1965, 29). The Icelanders who immigrated to the North-West Territories
in 1875 were a group of about 285 in total. A much larger group followed the
next year (1876), made up of 1200 to 1400 Icelanders. For a variety of reasons,
including a smallpox epidemic (1876-77), a flood in 1879, and religious division
within the community, the population of New Iceland had dwindled to some 250
settlers by 1881 (Wolf 1992, ix).
The association of the nineteenth-century Icelandic migration to New
Iceland with the eleventh-century Norse explorations of so-called Vínland has
been a longstanding feature of not only local and ethnic histories within
Manitoba’s Icelandic community but of Western Icelandic literature on the
whole.
Kirsten Wolf argues that this identification—of Icelandic settlers in
Manitoba with the eleventh-century Norse explorers—was a key feature of the
settler community’s identity formation within a multicultural Canadian
framework that, though multi-ethnic, tended toward assimilation:
For each generation of Icelandic-Canadian writers, Vínland and Leifr
Eiríksson took on different meanings. Regardless of what motives are
ascribed, however, common to each generation of writers is that
Vínland stood at the center of a created and shaped mythos of origins
and inherited traditions that gave definition to and serves as a
rallying point for cultural identity.
(2001, 218)
Wolf’s assertion of the centrality of Vínland for Icelandic immigrant identities
in North America is well-founded, as from 1883 to 1886 there was a weekly
newspaper published in Winnipeg titled
Leifur, after Leifr Eiríksson. Twenty
years later, during the first decade of the twentieth century, there was a
monthly Icelandic language newspaper published in Minnesota titled
Vínland.
By the time
Gimli Saga and
Icelandic River Saga were composed, Vínland and the
medieval Icelandic sagas that were set there served as long-standing inspiration
for Western Icelandic storytelling. Wolf adds: “Leifr Eiríksson has come to stand
as a symbol of romanticized self-imaging that creates a superficial or surrogate
link to a motherland that is itself part of the symbolic construction” (2001, 217).
In the first part of
Gimli Saga, there is a section titled “The First Encounter
with Indians” in which we read that after the settlers had spent their first
winter at Gimli:
Three families went northward to the banks of the Icelandic
(formerly Whitemud) River, near the present site of Riverton. This
led to the first encounter with Indians, who doubtless considered this
their territory. While the first log hut was under construction on the
north bank of the river, an Indian named John Ramsay tried to
prevent the Icelanders from continuing with it. He pushed their boat
away from the bank, till one of the three advanced with lifted axe. He
then desisted and rowed away at great speed. During the day the
Indians rowed up and down the river shooting at birds, but
sometimes apparently into the air, possibly to frighten the settlers’
families.
(1975, 17)
The settlers’ axe persuades John Ramsay to grudgingly permit the settlers to
land on the north side of the river and to continue to build their cabin, in
territory the Indigenous people considered to be theirs by right. After being
galvanized by the “lifted axe” and in response to the settlers’ encroachment on
their territory, some Indigenous people patrol in boats, shooting from the boats,
not at the settlers, but at birds and into the air. This patrol action and gunfire
serves to communicate displeasure with the settlers in a form that combines
action observed in the Vínland sagas, where the Indigenous people shoot arrows
from boats in one saga and wave poles that make sound in the other (not to
mention launching objects from catapults), thus communicating from boats.
The shots fired in
Gimli Saga are issued as warnings, like the poles that are
rotated counter-sunwise in
Eiríks saga rauða before the major confrontation
between the Indigenous group and Karlsefni’s settlement group.
This scene is followed by a vocal confrontation in Gimli Saga during which
Indigenous people enter the settlers’ hut, and then “Ramsay entered with an
Indian interpreter, to demand that they leave, stating that the Icelanders’
colony extended only to the Icelandic River, and that they were encroaching on
the lands of the Indians” (17-18). As in Grœnlendinga saga, Indigenous people
attempt an uninvited entry into the settlers’ home in Gimli Saga (though the
attempt was unsuccessful in the medieval saga). Even though Ramsay insisted
that Indigenous people maintained rights to their lands north of the river, the
settlers eventually receive a favourable though controversial decision from the
local Indian Agent determining that their land does extend into the disputed
territory. Gimli Saga claims, however, that “thereafter there was no further
dispute, and Ramsay became a friend and helper of the settlers, with several
other Indians” (1975, 18). At the beginning of Gimli Saga, there is a bibliography
(vii), which includes one of the key Icelandic sources mentioned above,
Þorsteinn Þ. Þorsteinsson’s Saga Íslendinga í Vesturheimi, which we recognize as
Gimli Saga’s source for the above episode.
In volume three of
Saga Íslendinga í Vesturheimi, we find an extended account
of the passage from
Gimli Saga narrated above.
Meðan bjálkahús Ólafs var í smíðum, bar það við morgun einn, að
þegar landnemarnir þrír róa bát sínum yfir kílinn til vinnu sinnar,
stendur Ramsay reiðilegur við lendinguna og hrindir bátnum aftur
frá landi. Hann talaði litla ensku, en gerði þeim það ljóst með
bendingum, að hann bannaði þeim landtökuna. Þeir láta sem ekkert
hafi í skorist og leggja að landi í annað sinn. En það fór á sömu leið og
fyrra skiftið, að hann hratt bátnum frá. Þá gengur Ólafur fram í bátinn
með öxi sína og segir hinum að róa að landi. Hörfaði þá Ramsay frá,
en landar náðu lendingu og ganga til smíða sinna.
(Þorsteinsson 1945, 19)
[While Ólafur’s log cabin was being built, it occurred one morning
that as the three settlers rowed their boat across the creek to their
work, Ramsay stood angrily at the landing and pushed the boat away
from the shore. He spoke little English, but made it clear to them with
gestures that he prohibited them from landing. They made out that
nothing had been refused and came up to land a second time. But it
went in the same way as the first time, that he pushed the boat away.
Then Ólafur stepped forward in the boat with his axe and he told the
others to row to land. Ramsay then fell back, and the settlers reached
the landing and went to their work.]
After some more information about Ramsay, the narrative continues, referring
to the observations of three Icelandic boys who were nearby, Friðrik,
Gunnlaugur, and Pétur. According to the account given: “Heyrðu þeir þá
skothvelli og sáu rétt á eftir hvar Rauðskinnar fóru upp fljótið á kænum sínum,
og voru að skjóta fugla á flugi, en stundum virtist drengjunum þeir skjóta úr
byssum sínum út í loftið, og hugðu að með því vildu þeir hræða Íslendinga”
[Then they heard a gunshot and saw just after where the Redskins were
travelling up the river in their canoes, and were shooting birds in flight, but
now and then it seemed to the boys that they were shooting their guns into the
air, and they thought that with this they wanted to intimidate the Icelanders]
(Þorsteinsson 1945, 19).
At the beginning of this particular episode in
Saga Íslendinga
í Vesturheimi, there is a footnote that directs the reader to Thorleifur Jóakímsson
Jackson’s
Brot af Landnámssögu Nýja Íslands, the earliest source to include
description of this encounter between the Icelandic settlers and John Ramsay,
a key text which was used as a direct source for
Icelandic River Saga.
In
Icelandic River Saga, specifically within the section titled “Encounters
with the Swampy Crees,” Nelson Gerrard translates Friðrik Sveinsson’s
narrative of the initial encounter between Icelandic settlers and Indigenous
people at Icelandic River. The account by Friðrik Sveinsson, who is one of the
boys referred to above in
Saga Íslendinga í Vesturheimi, was first published in
Thorleifur Jóakimsson Jackson’s
Brot af Landnámssögu Nýja Íslands, so Gerrard’s
work in fact draws from the original source material, translating it directly into
English in print for the first time. In the following passage, Sveinsson states that
at that time, “a few families of natives were living in tents”
at Icelandic River,
and that shortly after the settlers’ arrival, “Ramsay soon began to make his
presence felt to these white men who were responsible for driving the natives
from their lands” (Gerrard 1985, 34).
Gerrard then translates from
Brot af
Landnámssögu Nýja Íslands at length, noting that for a while nothing of any
significance transpired between the settlers and Ramsay:
One morning, however, things took a turn for the worse when the
three settlers rowed across the creek to their work. Ramsay was
awaiting them with an angry look, and when they attempted to land
he pushed the boat out again, making it clear by his actions that he
was forbidding them to step ashore though he knew very little
English. The three put in to shore a second time, and once again
Ramsay shoved the boat away, but the third time Ólafur walked to the
bow with his axe and instructed the others to row in. They then
succeeded in getting ashore and proceeded in their work on the
house. Ramsay, obviously enraged, jumped into his canoe and rowed
off down the river.
(Gerrard 1985, 27)
Gerrard’s quotation from
Brot af Landnámssögu Nýja Íslands continues, the
narrator Sveinsson stating that he and two others were:
around that time . . . on a little boat a short distance down the river.
We heard several gunshots downstream and saw a number of
birchbark canoes fully manned by Indians. They were shooting birds
on the wing, and would occassionally fire shots at nothing – likely to
strike fear into the hearts of us Icelanders.
(1985, 27)
As in the Vínland sagas, the Indigenous people communicate from boats, in both
cases resulting from the arrival of the settlers. In Vínland, the communication
from boats was ultimately followed by conflict and settler retreat to Greenland.
In the Interlake during the 1870s Icelandic settlement had support from the
Government of Canada, so there would be no retreat back to Iceland—or to
anywhere else—by the settlers. The narrator, Sveinsson, continues:
We boys hurried home as fast as we could to tell the news. The Indians
appeared within a short time, and landing their canoes near our
temporary home they filed up the bank and walked in uninvited.
Seating themselves in a semi-circle just inside the door, their guns in
hand, they indicated to us – who were at the other end of the room –
that they did not understand English. The two groups then stared at
each other for a good while, and the younger children became
terrified by this unexpected intrusion.
(Gerrard 1985, 27)
The Indigenous people, as in
Grœnlendinga saga, attempt to enter the settlers’
house without invitation, though in
Icelandic River Saga the uninvited entry is
successful. Ramsay arrives and communicates through an interpreter that the
settlers have encroached on the Indigenous people’s land. The settlers then
approach the local Indian Agent, who judges that the Icelanders do have rights
to the land north of the river. Both of these sagas of New Iceland—like the
earlier key Icelandic sources they are based on—insist that the two groups got
along well after that.
Ryan Eyford’s research, much of it also based on archival documents
contemporary to the settlement of the Interlake, further challenges the
narrative of happy coexistence that the sagas of New Iceland and their sources
assert followed the initial confrontation at Icelandic River. Shortly after the
encounter narrated by the sources above, a smallpox epidemic broke out in the
area. At this point in time, according to Eyford, “friendly exchanges between
the two groups appear to have ended. Ramsay later reported to Dr. James
Spencer Lynch that the Icelanders had refused to offer assistance to his people
when they became ill and even demanded payment for helping to bury the
dead” (2016, 106). Eyford does add, however, that several Indigenous people did assist
the settlers during the early years of their settlement, Ramsay included (118).
The local histories analyzed above are no less tales of greed than their
Vínland predecessors, but the greed is not necessarily, or at least solely, on the
part of the Icelandic settlers. The Dominion of Canada denied contested lands
to Indigenous people in the Interlake region and elsewhere, granting the same
lands instead to settlers, and it is no surprise that Indigenous people resisted
settler encroachment. The local histories, composed in English in the 1970s and
1980s and still read today in the twenty-first century, rationalize the settlement
of the region at the expense of the region’s Indigenous inhabitants. The sagas
of New Iceland—like the medieval sagas—are selective records and serve to
emphasize the claimed legitimacy of the settlers’ occupation of the region. The
inclusion of narrative sequences that allude to narrative sequences that appear
in the Vínland sagas signifies the settlement of the Interlake as a continuation
of a process that began with the short-lived settlement in so-called Vínland.
The inevitable intrusion of personal bias into local histories and their
factual ambiguity makes reaching a concrete conclusion about the exact details
of the Interlake’s early Icelandic history effectively impossible; it is therefore
fortunate that the value of these sources does not lie within their ability to relay
objective truth. In fact, the state of the local histories’ verity is of little
consequence to this investigation. The real merit of these texts rests on their
ability to implicitly communicate precious information about a group’s values,
beliefs, and cultural identity via their storytelling conventions. For instance,
due to Gimli Saga’s omission of John Ramsay’s efforts to reclaim his homeland,
readers can better understand the possessiveness the Icelanders felt over the
Interlake region, predicated on the historic arrival of their ancestors to that
land in the late nineteenth century.
An instructional narrative strategy is used in these two sagas of New Iceland
to connect the Icelandic settlers in the Interlake to the Norse of the Vínland
sagas (and to the original settlers of Iceland who migrated westward from
Norway beginning in the late ninth century). This connection is palpable when
the episodes depicting intercultural contact in the two sets of sources are
analyzed together; such comparison invites readers to speculate that the local
history authors embraced the literary allusion evident in their source material
as a means of emphasizing their claim to the land. This use of allusion implies
that Icelandic settlers in the 1870s advanced a process their Norse ancestors
initiated, settlement of land in the west, and were thus returning to
Vínland/America to complete a long-delayed journey. The nineteenth-century
New Iceland settlement had the full support of Canadian imperialism, so rather
than retreat after contact and conflict, Icelanders established a community,
later integrating into Canadian society while retaining elements of their Nordic
heritage, including the saga-writing tradition.