Vinland Analysis

Vinland, in spite of all of of its bounties, was abandoned for a multitude of reasons, but in addition to those reasons there is another created by the primary reasons, present throughout the stories, but is especially see in Freydis’ treachery. Simply put the plentitude of misfortunes that occurred during the Vikings exploration had soured their desire to remain there. Despite the pleasant climes and abundant food sources the Vikings were plagued by misfortune the entirety of the voyage. It was far easier for them to cut their losses and retreat to Greenland where they already had well established farms and settlement. Looking at the reasons for this retreat the reasons to be addressed in this paper are far from comprehensive, but include
The fateful trip that would lead Bjarni Herjolfsson to discover what they would call Vinland, began as a trip to Greenland. Greenland and the Greenland Sea had been discovered only a decade before by Eirik the Red and as such was still fairly new to the Vikings. So it was not surprising that neither Bjarni Herjolfsson nor any of his crew had actually been there before, which makes what The Vinland Sagas tells the reader of their voyage unsurprising, the saga reports that they “[…] sailed for three days, until the land had disappeared below the horizon. Then the wind dropped and they were beset by winds from the north and fog; for many days they did not know where they were sailing.” Shortly after that land, land that was not Greenland, was sighted. It would be roughly another ten days without setting foot on land that they would finally reach their original destination. Gudrid’s husband’s ship also fell afoul of the storms of the area, Thorvald’s ship would be dashed against the rocks by one, and later Thorhall’s ship while sailing westward was driven to Ireland where he and his crew were enslaved. The weather of the North-West Atlantic was a plague on the Vikings throughout the entirety of The Vinland Sagas, yet may also have been in its strange twisted way been at the
For although they did end up attacking the Vikings in the begin, while cautious, they were more than willing to trade with the Vikings even when the Vikings refused to trade weapons with then. It was only after Karlsefni’s bull seemed to try to attack them that they became antagonistic. Subsequently after the Skraeling’s first attack on their camp, the Vikings came to realize not only did the Skraeling know the terrain, they also severely outnumbered them by entire nations. After this encounter, the Skraelings were seen as antagonists to the Vikings in their attempts to settle what would one day be the north-east coast line of the United States of American and Canada. After this the Vikings policy in regard to the Skraelings became one of kill on site rather than lose any more of their own. They knew that it would be possible to co-exist with the Skraeling as can be seen in the following quote, “The party then realized that, despite everything the land had to offer there, they would be under constant threat of attack from its prior inhabitants (pg. 46). Following this the party began to retreat