Work Text:
The legend of Vinland has haunted the West for centuries since the Norse stumbled upon it. Some say the sailor Bjarni Herjolfsson, blown off course by a violent storm while on a voyage to Iceland, was the first Norseman to lay eyes upon Vinland’s coast, the eastern coast of Canada, present day Nova Scotia, in 986.
Others say Vinland was already known by Bjarni’s day, had been for over a hundred years.
Whatever the truth of this Bjarni’s sighting sparked ideas of settlement among the Icelanders and Greenlanders.
Among the Greenlanders who did manage to visit Vinland, in 1000, was Leif Ericsson, who spent two years in the country before returning home to tell of his adventures.
These tales inspired Leif’s younger brother, Thorvald, to gather a band of men and attempt a permanent settlement in the country.
In Thorvald’s crew was a young Icelandic man named Hognir Bjornsson, who kept a journal of his journey to North America.
Raised in Western Iceland, Hognir had been educated by an early Christian missionary, an Irishman named Eoghan MacAllien, and as a consequence knew the art of writing even if, much to his former teacher’s dismay, he remained a strong follower of the Germanic Gods.
Hognir’s journal notes the expedition left Iceland in early summer with high spirits. Most of his fellows, like their leader, were younger sons destined to inherit little if anything from their father’s, and so hoped Vinland could provide them with land of their own.
It never occurred to them that the land might already be inhabited.
The expedition reached the coast of Nova Scotia within a week of hard sailing, and sailed along it until reaching the mouth of Musquodoboit harbour, and proceeded to go up it.
On either side, Hognir noted, the trees rose high above them, large imposing things in the land, signs the Gods favored this land, he believed.
The water, teeming with fish, was sweet to drink, as he discovered by cupping his hands together and scooping some up.
The Norse continued up the river until coming to what is today the town of Middle Musquodoboit and came ashore, where immediately Thorvald ordered them to begin clearing trees.
For the better part of an hour they worked steadily undisturbed, but this came to a halt when a band of dark skinned men emerged from the shadows.
For a tense moment the two sides stared at each other then Thorvald, noticing the old man, whom he assumed was the leader, looked curiously at his axe (these men used stone war clubs) and held it up, gesturing for the leader to examine it.
This proved deadly as the Natives, members of the Mi’kmaq people, mistook this friendly move as a threat and attacked, an arrow lodging itself in Thorvald’s right leg, luckily missing any arteries.
Hognir and his companions formed a shield wall, the traditional battle formation of the Germanic peoples, and held off the onslaught for three hours, killing fifteen men, including the elderly leader, while losing only three men themselves, whom they buried along the river in the Christian manner.
Pushing inland the Norse constructed a Great Hall where they passed the winter largely unmolested save for a couple of raids which resulted in a stolen sword, bread, and some footwear, no lives being lost.
Hognir passed the time by hunting, becoming the unofficial provider for the settlement.
When spring came and thawed the ice the Norse fished in the Musquodoboit river, Hognir thanking Jord, the Goddess of the Earth and mother of Mighty Thor, for the plentiful bounty they received.
In June the Mi’kmaq returned.
They sabotaged fishing nets, killed any who strayed from the settlement (claiming three lives: Thorri Ericsson, Magnus Ketilsson, and Bjorn Sigmundsson) and soon surrounded the hall.
Still, Thorvald and his men refused to show fear, preparing for battle.
On the morning of June 15th, 1005, a Mi’kmaq war party of thirty warriors descended upon the Norse, but the descendants of Odin were ready.
Hognir stood alongside Thorvald in the shield wall, the two men bringing down their axes on enemy heads, blood and grey matter splashing on their faces.
Hognir noted later how much he admired the Mi’kmaw’s battle prowess, their fearlessness rivalry the Norse’s own.
Thorvald was struck by an arrow again, this time inside his ribs.
He collapsed, Hognir closing the gap himself.
Seeing Thorvald fall galvanized the Mi’kmaq who threw themselves at the shields, war clubs and stone hatchets beating down on metal, scrapping off paint and sometimes flesh.
Still, they couldn’t break it.
By lunch time fifteen of them lie dead and another five followed within another hour, and they retreated.
In the aftermath Hognir counted the Norse dead, totally thirteen lives lost, including Thorvald.
The survivors buried their comrades along the river, Hognir erecting a wooden cross over Thorvald’s grave to honour his fallen Chieftain.
Together Bjornsson and the others decided it was too risky to remain in Vinland and so, with heavy hearts, the company of men made their way back to Greenland.
Hognir eventually settled back down in Iceland, starting a farm and marrying a woman named Thora, a descendant of Iceland’s first Norse settler Ingolfur Arnarsson, and by her fathered two sons, Thorvald and Thorstein.
Despite his happy home life Hognir never forgot Vinland, often thinking about its plentiful river and beautiful landscape.
In 1016, the year Leif Ericsson died, Hognir gathered a crew, including a few veterans of Thorvald’s expedition, and returned to Vinland, not to settle but to cut timber to sell.
Every summer following, Hognir made trips to the Musquodoboit valley, establishing a successful timber business, recording his adventures in his two journals.
There were no large scale battles between the Norse and the Mi’kmaq in this period, only minor raids and only three resulted in death, on the Mi’kmaq side.
The two peoples came to an understanding of ‘you leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone’ and they even traded in Hognir’s older years.
Hognir Bjornsson died in the summer of 1045 in his sleep at the age of eighty.
His son Thorvald moved to Norway a year later with his wife and his ten year old son Hrolf.
On his person he carried his father’s two journals, which would, in decades to come, inspire new generations of their family to seek out Vinland before ultimately, in the time of Hognir’s 5th great grandson Eric, settle on the Isle of Barra and marry into Clan MacNeil.