Produced by Al Haines
A Tale of the Discovery of America
Author of
"The Forest Lovers,"
"The Life and Death of Richard Yea and Nay,"
"Love and Lucy," etc.
1918
Copyright, 1918,
By Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.
This tale is founded upon two sagas, which have been translatedliterally and without attempt to accord their discrepancies by YorkPowell and Vigfussen in their invaluable Origines Icelandicae. Aswell as those versions I have had another authority to help me, inLaing's Sea-Kings of Norway. I have blent the two accounts into one,and put forward the result with this word of explanation, which I hopewill justify me in the treatment I have given them.
I don't forget that a "saga" is history, and that these sagas inparticular furnish an account of the first discovery of America, noless a thing. Nevertheless, while I have been scrupulous in leavingthe related facts as I found them, I have not hesitated to dwell uponthe humanity in the tales, and to develop that as seemed fitting. Idon't think that I have put anything into the relation which is notimplied in the few words accorded me by the text. I believe thateverything I give Gudrid and Freydis, Karlsefne and Leif and Eric Redto say or to do can be made out from hints, which I have made it mybusiness to interpret. Character makes plot in life as well as infiction, and a novelist is not worthy of his hire who can't weave atale out of one or two people to whom he has been able to give life.All romantic invention proceeds from people or from atmosphere.Therefore, while I have shown, I hope, due respect to the explorationof America, I admit that my tale turns essentially upon the explorersof it. My business as a writer of tales has been to explore themrather than Wineland the Good. I have been more interested in Gudrid'shusbands and babies than I had need to be as an historian. I am surethe tale is none the worse for it—and anyhow I can't help it. If Iread of a woman called Gudrid, and a handsome woman at that, I am boundto know pretty soon what colour her hair was, and how she twisted itup. If I hear that she had three husbands and outlived them all Icannot rest until I know how she liked them, how they treated her; whatfeelings she had, what feelings they had. So I get to know them aswell as I know her—and so it goes on. Wineland does not fail ofgetting discovered, but meantime some new people have been born intothe world who do the business of discovering while doing their ownhuman business of love and marriage and childbirth.
All this, I say, is implicit in the saga-history. So it is, but it hasto be looked for. The saga listeners, I gather, took character verymuch for granted, as probably Homer's audience did. Odysseus was fullof wiles, Achilles was terrible, Paris "a woman-haunting cheat," Gunnarof Lithend a poet and born fighter, Nial a sage, and so on. The poetgave them more than that, of course. Poetry apart, he did not disdainpsychology. There is plenty psychology in both Iliad andOdyssey—less in the sagas, but still it is there. And when you cometo know the persons of these great inventions there is as muchpsychology as any one can need, or may choose to put there—as much asthere is in Hamlet, as much