Erik’s original crew of ten had now dwindled to seven, but there were still enough help to butcher and divide up the whale meat. A quarter of the minke meat went to Erik and his sons, half was split between the crew, and on Erik’s insistence, the rest was left for the landvaettir, spirits the Norse believed inhabited and roamed the land. The West Fjords was the territory of the Great Bull and the meat was Erik’s tribute to it.
By midday the meat was packed and stowed onboard and the Wave Swine set sail for Budardal.
Erik sat in the prow of the knarr and gathered his boys into his massive arms. Over the swishing sound of the oars as they dipped and glided through the calm waters, and the cry of seagulls circling overhead, Erik told his sons all about the land he had discovered in the west.
“I first saw land after two days of sailing west of Iceland. The sea along the coast was completely frozen, so we sailed south and west for another day to skirt the ice on the western side of the cape I named Hvarfsgnupr. A short distance north of there, we traveled up a fjord, and made landfall on a steep, rocky beach. I named it Brattahlid, Steep Slope, and claimed it for my own.
“These three years away from you, I spent them all exploring this new land. It is many times larger than Iceland, though not all of it is useful— the interior is covered by a great ice sheet. From Brattahlid we sailed two days north along the coast and came to a place I called Nordseta. Longer than the length of Iceland this region was, and abounding with game. There are creatures there that are known here, like reindeer and seal, but there are many I had never seen before; sea beasts with teeth the size of langsaxs, whales with one great horn, massive and shaggy oxen, and bears with fur as white as snow. The sea is full of fish, and the strand is strewn with driftwood. We reaped Nordseta’s bounty for three days yet it was as if we had never been there, so plentiful is that land.
“On our fourth morning in Nordseta, we were approached by men dressed in furs. They were shorter than us, but stouter. In all of our travels, we had never encountered men in this land, so we had assumed it was uninhabited. We were wrong. These men seemed friendly at first and were fascinated with our iron weapons, for they used weapons made only of bone. Though we could not understand their words, they made known to us that they wished to trade for our superior iron weapons. We of course declined. They left that evening, and we made camp.
“Before dawn, we were attacked by ten of the natives, who hid their faces behind driftwood masks. They rushed on our camp with their bone weapons. Their war-cry was like nothing I had ever heard, shrill whooping cries, more like beasts than men. For this, we called them Skraelings, or screechers.
“Mind you, if we knew they were coming to do battle, we would have slaughtered them. But they came while we slept, and taking us by surprise, they killed Thorbjorn and Styr, and Gunnar later died of his wounds. Once roused, we killed five of them on the spot, and the rest fled. After building a pyre for our brothers on the beach and watching the flames take them, we left Nordseta that morning, and sailed once again to the uninhabited south.”
Erik’s original crew of ten had now dwindled to seven, but there were still enough help to butcher and divide up the whale meat. A quarter of the minke meat went to Erik and his sons, half was split between the crew, and on Erik’s insistence, the rest was left for the landvaettir, spirits the Norse believed inhabited and roamed the land. The West Fjords was the territory of the Great Bull and the meat was Erik’s tribute to it.
By midday the meat was packed and stowed onboard and the Wave Swine set sail for Budardal.
Erik sat in the prow of the knarr and gathered his boys into his massive arms. Over the swishing sound of the oars as they dipped and glided through the calm waters, and the cry of seagulls circling overhead, Erik told his sons all about the land he had discovered in the west.
“I first saw land after two days of sailing west of Iceland. The sea along the coast was completely frozen, so we sailed south and west for another day to skirt the ice on the western side of the cape I named Hvarfsgnupr. A short distance north of there, we traveled up a fjord, and made landfall on a steep, rocky beach. I named it Brattahlid, Steep Slope, and claimed it for my own.
“These three years away from you, I spent them all exploring this new land. It is many times larger than Iceland, though not all of it is useful— the interior is covered by a great ice sheet. From Brattahlid we sailed two days north along the coast and came to a place I called Nordseta. Longer than the length of Iceland this region was, and abounding with game. There are creatures there that are known here, like reindeer and seal, but there are many I had never seen before; sea beasts with teeth the size of langsaxs, whales with one great horn, massive and shaggy oxen, and bears with fur as white as snow. The sea is full of fish, and the strand is strewn with driftwood. We reaped Nordseta’s bounty for three days yet it was as if we had never been there, so plentiful is that land.
“On our fourth morning in Nordseta, we were approached by men dressed in furs. They were shorter than us, but stouter. In all of our travels, we had never encountered men in this land, so we had assumed it was uninhabited. We were wrong. These men seemed friendly at first and were fascinated with our iron weapons, for they used weapons made only of bone. Though we could not understand their words, they made known to us that they wished to trade for our superior iron weapons. We of course declined. They left that evening, and we made camp.
“Before dawn, we were attacked by ten of the natives, who hid their faces behind driftwood masks. They rushed on our camp with their bone weapons. Their war-cry was like nothing I had ever heard, shrill whooping cries, more like beasts than men. For this, we called them Skraelings, or screechers.
“Mind you, if we knew they were coming to do battle, we would have slaughtered them. But they came while we slept, and taking us by surprise, they killed Thorbjorn and Styr, and Gunnar later died of his wounds. Once roused, we killed five of them on the spot, and the rest fled. After building a pyre for our brothers on the beach and watching the flames take them, we left Nordseta that morning, and sailed once again to the uninhabited south.”
From: Leif Eriksson - Part One: Early Life, by Andrew Boynton, http://skrawl.com/skrawls/2524-Leif-Eriksson-Part-One-Early-Life/read/5