The Vinland Sagas are stories of Viking journeys made to a land called Vinland around 1000AD. They were first written down in Iceland in the 13th century and were based on oral stories passed down over the centuries. To most scholars of the 19th century the sagas were widely assumed to be a work of fiction. It was only in the 20th century that serious consideration was given to verifying them as factual accounts. The result of this research was the discovery of a Viking site in Newfoundland in the 1960s. But vikings were not the only characters in the sagas. The sagas tell of a people called Skraelings, the indigenous people of Vinland, who the Vikings traded with and warred against. If Vinland is somewhere in present day Canada then the Skraelings were Native Americans possibly Beothuk or St. Lawrence Iroquois.
So what about Native American oral traditions of encountering Viking visitors?
Do any exist?
In this film we will examine this question through the journals of Jaques Cartier.
