Page:The Finding of Wineland the Good.djvu/38

 did not arrive at Brattahlid until the second j-ear after his departure from Iceland, wherefore, if the assumption that he arrived during Leif's absence be sound, it becomes apparent that he must have left Iceland in the summer of the year 998 or 999.

Eric's son, Thorstein, wooed and married Gudrid, and the wedding was celebrated at Brattahlid in the autumn. It is recorded in the saga that Gudrid was regarded as a most desirable match. Thorstein may have promptly recognized her worth, and his marriage may have occurred in the autumn of the same }'ear in which he returned from his unlucky vo3'age. It could not well have been celebrated in the previous year, for Thorstein's allusions on his death-bed to the religion of Greenland, indicate that Christianity must have been for a longer time the accepted faith of the land than it could have been at the close of the year 1000.

In the winter after his marriage, Thorstein died, and in the spring, Gudrid returned to Brattahlid. Thorfinn Karlsefni arrived at Brattahlid about this time, possibly the next autumn after Thorstein's death, and in his company came Snorri Thorbrandsson. Karlsefni was married to Gudrid shortly after the Yule-tide following his arrival. If he arrived in Greenland in the autumn of the 3'ear 1002, this wedding ma}^ accordingl}^, have taken place about the beginning of the 3'ear 1003 Vigfusson, in his essay, ' Um timatal í fslendínga'sögum í fornöld,' in Safn til'sögu Islands, loc, cit. vol. i. p. 339, and also in his edition of the Eyrbjggja Saga, loc. cit. p. 129, assigns as the date of Snorri's departure to Greenland, and, by the same token, Karlsefni's, the year 998 [or 999]. This conclusion he reaches from the passage in Eyrbyggja, alread)' cited p. 1 8, wherein it is stated that ' after the reconciliation of the people of Eyrr and the people of Alpta-firth, Thorbrand's sons, Snorri and Thorleif, went to Greenland.' In Vigfusson's edition of the Erybyggja Saga, the chapter containing this statement is numbered 48, and the next succeeding chapter begins: ' Next to this, Gizur the White and Hialti, his son-in-law, came out to proclaim the gospel, and all the people of Iceland were baptized, and Christianity was legally accepted by the Althing.' The words ' next to this ' in the position which they thus occupy seem to refer to the words of the preceding chapter: 'After the reconciliation of the people of Eyrr and the people of Alpta-firth,' that is, ' next after this ' reconciliation Gizur and his son-in-law came to Iceland. But Gizur and Hialii came to Iceland on this mission in 999, and the obvious inference is that the reconciliation was accomplished prior to this, according to Vigfusson in the previous year, 998. [Cf. Eyrbyggja Saga, ed. Vigfusson, p. 129.] In the eldest vellum fragment of the Eyrbyggja Saga which we now possess, AM. 162 E. fol., chapter 48 of the Vigfusson text does not occupy the place preceding the account of the arrival of Gizur on his mission. The limited contents of this fragment do not, unfortunately, enable us to determine where the chapter did stand in this test, but presumably it occupied the same position as that in which it occurs in the Codex Wolphenbuttelensis, as well as in the vellum fragment of the saga contained in AM. 445 15, 410, namely, after chapter 53 of the Vigfusson edition. [Cf., in that edition, note 11, p. 91.] To the events described in this chapter 55, Vigfusson [Eyrbyggja, p. 129] assigns the date looi. The chapter immediately following this chapter 55 begins with the words; ' Snorri Godi dwelt at Helgafell eight years after Christianity became the legal religion In the summer following his marriage, Thorfinn appears to have undertaken