SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

212 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
The appearance of a major narrative of Greenland history is
an important event. Finn Gad's book is planned on a generous
scale, well-produced and illustrated and reads very well in its
translated form. To a reviewer who lacks the basic knowledge
of the languages from which it derives, the work appears to be one
of real as well as apparent authority. There is in it, and in its
sources, some indication that Scandinavian historians and
archaeologists do not always read material in their field published
in England or America, just as there is a similar lack of study of
Scandinavian publications by English-speaking writers (there are
obvious exceptions to this). But as the sources and the bulk of
the secondary work on Greenland has been done in Scandinavia,
especially in Denmark, omission of papers in English is perhaps
not a serious handicap. What Finn Gad shows is not only a
mastery of the historic materials (which one might expect), but
also a really effective knowledge of the archaeology of the
Greenland settlements and of the ethnographic material on the
Eskimo. The way in which these materials are woven together
into a single narrative is impressive. The scene is well set, the
Icelandic pioneers are installed efficiently in the Greenland
settlements, their prime is chronicled, their society delineated,
and their decline is studied, and, after their disappearance, the
recovery of Greenland by Europeans is discussed against its
Eskimo background. For complete understanding of what has
been done it is necessary to go back to the Danish edition which
has more extensive references to the literature, though notes at the
end give references to sources cited.
The Danish edition (Grenlands Historie I: indtill I7oo) was
published in Copenhagen in 1967 and did not take into account the
finding of a Norse site in Newfoundland some years before this.
H is, therefore, interesting to see what Gad says about the
Vinland voyages (pp. 46-52). He expressly declines suggesting
where Leif's camp may have been; at the same time he indicates
that it was in the vicinity of northern Newfoundland, and that
"In Norse vin may mean 'wine', it is true, but may also be an
altogether different word which means 'grassy plain'." This
explanation is, he says, much more suitable since northern
Newfoundland contains grassland. The self-sown wheat and
vines "must then be seen as the dream-like ravings of minds
entranced by this land of promise" (p. 47). He thus aligns himself
on one side in what is now a very old controversy. Vinland
proved, he considers, less suitable for the Norse way of life than
Greenland, and so was not exploited, except for its timber, in
later times.