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curiosity than do the Icelandic settlement of Greenland and the discovery of America. The settlements in Greenland lasted for about 500 years, beginning with Eirik the Red’s arrival from Iceland in
985–6
. They perished by gradual stages in the fifteenth century, apparently on account of increasingly cold weather and the difficulties of sailing in ice-filled waters to and from Iceland and Norway. Archaeologists have excavated the remains and even the earliest of them are as impressive as Icelandic sites of the same period. A movement is now under way to reconstruct some of the Viking Age buildings in Greenland, as has been done in Newfoundland and, of course, Iceland. In the Saga Age, Greenland was an independent country with a population at the height of its prosperity of about 4,000. It had an annual national assembly like Iceland’s at a place called Gardar. An extremely interesting and well-told episode in
The Saga of the Sworn Brothers
takes place at the assembly at Gardar. Six other
Íslendinga sögur
have episodes set in Greenland.
    The story of the discovery and exploration of America is told in two works,
Eirik the Red’s Saga
and the shorter
Saga of the Greenlanders
. These differ from each other in a number of details,
Eirik the Red’s Saga
agreeing more frequently with other written sources, such as
Heimskringla
. Neither work is among the best sagas, and yet in their blending of myth and historical tradition they are typical of the genre. Modern archaeology, especially the work of Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad in the 1960s at L’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland, has confirmed that explorers from Greenland and Iceland spent time in North America and constructed buildings of the sort found in Iceland.
The Saga of the Greenlanders
attributes the first sighting of America to a merchant named Bjarni Herjolfsson, who in about 985 went off course on his way to Greenland, whereas
Eirik the Red’s Saga
gives the credit to Eirik the Red’s son Leif, who made the discovery through a similar accident about 1000. Altogether,
The Saga of the Greenlanders
describes six trips to America, including Bjarni’s sighting and an extensive expedition by Leif.
Eirik the Red’s Saga
mentions only three, the most thorough of which was made by Thorfinn Karlsefni, a very able Icelandic merchant who also figures importantly in
The Saga of the Greenlanders
.
    The sagas describe three different landscapes from north to south along the American coast,
Helluland
(Stone slab land, probably southern Baffin Island or northern Labrador),
Markland
(Forest land, southern Labrador) and
Vínland
(Vine land, possibly the St Lawrence Valley, but more likely the coast of New England). Written evidence indicates that the Greenlanders maintained a connection with
Markland
as a source of timber until at least the fourteenth century. With
Vinland
, however, contact seems to have been lost after the explorations of Leif and Karlsefni in the early eleventh century. About the country we know very little with precision, although we do know that it was not an invention of the two sagas. Well before they were written
Vinland
was mentioned by Ari in
Íslendingabók
and even earlier by Adam of Bremen in his
History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen
of about 1075. Both
The Saga of the Greenlanders
and
Eirik the Red’s Saga
describe a land that has wine grapes, maples and self-sown grain (probably wild rice). They report that the weather in
Vinland
was warm enough for cattle to graze outside all winter, pointing to both a southerly location in New England or Long Island and a milder overall temperature than exists today. (There is much other evidence, including the demise of the settlements in Greenland, that the northern hemisphere experienced a radical cooling off in the fourteenth century.) The accounts of
Vinland
include descriptions of a fierce native population, whom the sagas call
Skraeling jar
(the origin of this word is obscure: it may be