The Speares

Living the life in Gravenhurst



New Brunswick


The Picture Province


In the very early part of the 6th century, Naomh Breandán, also known as Brendan of Clonfert, Saint Brendan, or in this story, Brendan the Navigator, built a currach. A currach was a type of boat made from a wooden frame interwoven with thin branches or reeds. This made a framework that you could stretch animal hides over. The hides would have been previously tanned in oak bark and sealed with butter, so they made a surprisingly water tight boat. A currach could be rowed or polled, or, if it were a particularly large one such as Brendan had constructed, you could mount a mast and sail in it.

Once Brendan had his ship he and seventeen of his fellow monks fasted for forty days, and then, after a prayer, embarked on a journey to find Tír Tairngire, the Island of Paradise, that Saint Barrid had previously discovered far to the west. They had many adventures along the way, on a series of islands, stretching far out into the Ocean to the very edge of what was known and even a little beyond.


One of the islands that they encountered was populated entirely by birds. These were continually singing psalms and praising God. One of the birds gave the monks a prophesy that they would be journeying for seven years before they were holy enough to reach the Island of Paradise, and that proved to be entirely true.

So after seven years of adventure involving whales, fish, demons, magical monks who did not age, islands that turned out to be sea monsters and even Judas Iscariot on a day pass from hell, the travellers finally arrived at the Promised Land of the Saints, the Island of Paradise, a wide land full of trees bearing fruit. They stayed on the island for forty days gathering gems and fruit before leaving and heading home to County Kerry in the southwest of Ireland. There the little group of monks and Brendan in particular became a part of Irish folklore and their adventures took all of Europe by storm. Brendan's Island was thereafter included on maps of the Atlantic, generally as more of a religious icon on the far edge of the west of the map, past what was firmly known. The tale was transcribed into at least a hundred copies of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis which, for the day, made it an instant best seller. This transcription happened in the latter half of the eighth century. And then the Vikings invaded the Kerry coast.


Viking inheritance customs were very simple. It was patrilineal primogeniture - the eldest son got everything. That meant that as a second and subsequent born son you pretty much had to find some land of your own. And there wasn't any more in Norway. So you travelled. As the Vikings travelled about the people they found were for sure exposed to Viking culture. But the Vikings were also being exposed to the cultures of the people they were invading. When they came to Kerry, if not long before, they would have heard of Saint Brendan's incredible tale, which undoubtedly piqued their interest in what lay to the very far west. A nautical odyssey such as Brendan's in old Ireland was called an Immram; the Viking equivalent of an Immram was a Saga. And that brings us to Eiríks saga rauða, the Saga of Erik the Red, one of the Greenland Sagas.

Erik Thorvaldsson was born in Rogaland, Norway, around 950 A.D. His father, Thorvald Asvaldson, was a bit of a bastard and was banished from Norway for killing someone, a common enough thing, banishment not so much a punishment as a way of avoiding years and years of blood feud. So the family moved to Hornstrandir in Iceland. There, Erik proved himself to be a bit of bastard too by having his serfs start a landslide on the neighbour's farm. Things escalated and Erik ended up killing Eyjiolf the Foul, whose people demanded exile for Erik, his wife, daughter and three sons. So the family sailed west and found Greenland.


Life was tough in Greenland, and there was a famine. One of Erik's sons, Leif Erikson, set out on some adventures and was blown off course to the west, ending up in a land full of wild wheat, grape vines and maple trees. When he returned to Greenland with this tale, it was decided to take a larger party and explore this "Vinland". Vinland can mean various things, but most agree it means Wineland. Grapes would have been incredibly important to turn-of-the-millenium Vikings. They did not grow in any of their lands at the time. And except for Erik the Red, they were all converting to Christianity. You need wine for the Eucharist. A land overflowing with grapes would have been worth exploring. So Thorfinn Karlsefni, Leif Ericson, 160 others, many cattle, but definitely not Erik the Red set off to find adventure.


Enroute, they were blown off course somewhat, as generally happens in Sagas, and found themselves in Helluland, the Land of Flat Rocks, a place of huge stone slabs and foxes, which is generally thought to have been Baffin Island. They travelled south from this barren place and found Markland, Forest Land, thought by many to have been Labrador because the Taiga forest is quite thick there. Heading further south they set up a temporary settlement at Straumfjörð, Stream Fjord, because the cattle did not travel well by boat and needed a bit of a break. After a harsh winter there they continued their journey, eventually ending up in the land that Leif had previously discovered, Vinland.

Those who study this sort of thing are largely happy with the locations of Helluland and Markland, based on the narrative in the Sagas and the logistics of sailing a longship across the north Atlantic from Greenland. But everyone disagrees on the location of Straumfjörð and Vinland. Especially in Massachusetts. So take it with a grain of salt when I tell you that Straumfjörð is current-day L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, and Vinland is the north eastern tip of New Brunswick.

That there was a Viking camp at L'Anse is established; it is a tourist attraction and a Unesco World Heritage Site. And some of the remains at L'Anse are indeed of vines and even butternuts. But the problem, of course, is that grape vines do not grow this far north; neither do butternuts. If we make the assumption that the "wild wheat" in the Sagas is in fact Elymus canadensis, Canadian Wild Rye, then it too is unable to grow this far north. The nearest place that meets all of these criteria is the north-eastern tip of New Brunswick. And so, some scholars have put forward our very own Picture Province as the site of the Viking Vinland, a land overflowing with wild wheat, maple trees, and, most importantly, grapes and butternuts.

Interestingly, the Vikings abandoned their colonization efforts in the new lands due to conflicts with the skrælingjar, the indigenous people they met who did not wish to be either colonized nor converted to Christianity. The skrælingjar would likely have been Thule or Inuit in Helluland, Beothuk in parts of Markland, especially at L'Anse, and Mi'kmaq in Vinland. The word skræling has connotations of dried skin, as in clothing made from dried animal skins, or it can mean to shout or yell. It may also mean barbarian, or even weakling. Be all that as it may, the Vikings came to the realization that "despite everything the land had to offer there, they would be under constant threat of attack from its prior inhabitants". So the brief Viking foray into New Brunswick ended after only a few years, and they withdrew to Straumfjörð, and thence home to Greenland. At about the same time, Brian Boru, high king of Ireland, routed Sigtrygg Silkbeard, King of Dublin and Máel Mórda mac Murchada, King of Leinster, along with their army of Vikings, in the Cath Chluain Tarbh, the Battle of Clontarf. This was the end of the Vikings in Ireland; but I digress. Back to New Brunswick.

The Vikings were of course followed by the French, the Dutch, the Basques, the Bretons, the Portuguese and finally the British. The only ones who really got on well with the indigenous folks were the French, and today you will find that the northern part of New Brunswick is mostly French speaking. New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in Canada.

So here's to New Brunswick, she's the finest in the land.