MDDM Ch. 66 Stig's tale

[jbor]

632.2 Mrs Eggslap is in an Emerald-green Sacque with Watteau pleats - after
a style popularised in the paintings of Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721)

http://www.marquise.de/1700/howto/contouche.shtml

http://www.furman.edu/~kgossman/history/rococo/images.htm

632.3 Stig, who in lieu of smoking a Stogie - i.e. après l'acte, so to speak
(and cf. that "stout candle of Swedish Wax"!)

632.3 "Thorfinn Karlsefni"

http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/people/A0848572.html

http://www.athenapub.com/vinland1.htm

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/vikings/saga.html

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/vikings/saga3.html

1005-1006 (winter): Gudrid, widow of Thorstein Eiriksson, marries Thorfinn
Karlsefni.

1006: Thorfinn Karlsefni, a wealthy Norwegian, leads a colonising expedition
to Newfoundland with three ships, 160 men (some with their wives) and a
bull, along with other livestock. Leif Eiriksson agrees to lend Thorfinn his
houses at L'Anse aux Meadows (Leif didn't go with this expedition). The
expedition spends a peaceful winter at L'Anse aux Meadows.

1007 (summer): Gudrid, wife of Thorfinn, gives birth to Snorri. Snorri is
thus the first known European to be born in Newfoundland. The Viking
colonists first meet and trade with the natives.

1007-1008 (winter): A native is killed while trying to steal weapons from
Thorfinn. A battle with the natives later ensues.

1009 (spring): The Karlsefni expedition returns to Greenland where they
spend the winter.

Ingstad, Helge. _Westward to Vinland (The Discovery of Pre-Columbian Norse
House-sites in North America)_. Harper Colophon Books, Harper and Row
Publishers, Inc., 1972, first paperback edition (the first hardcover edition
was published in 1969 by St. Martin's Press); translated from the Norwegian
by Erik J. Friis. Chapter 4, 'The Greenlanders' Saga'.

http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ae050/nflb.html

Also, see 'Erik the Red's Saga':

http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/2/16/h16-4207-e.html

Extracted from Jones, Gwyn. _The Norse Atlantic Saga: Being the Norse
Voyages of Discovery and Settlement to Iceland, Greenland, and America_.
London: Oxford, 1964.

632.8 "... the Skrællings come, to trade pelts for milk. What they really
want are weapons ... "

Skrællings = Native Americans

632.11 Palisado - palisade n. a strong fence made of stakes driven into the
ground, esp. for defence

634.2 Stig's description to Patience Eggslap of "this first Act of American
murder" from the sagas does seem to support the idea that his earlier
mention of "murder, slavery, and the poor fragments of a Magic irreparably
broken" (612.12) refers to the Norsemen killing and enslaving Native
Americans, though the story itself is quite ambiguous ("any question who had
prevail'd come to matter ever less"), and it is noteworthy that it is the
Skrællings who come seeking weapons, against Thorfinn's strict orders, and
who seem to use a rather sinister magic to trick Gudrid, and it's the
Norsemen who end up getting "captur'd and enslav'd" (634.9) after they try
to return to Greenland. I suspect that "the Magic irreparably broken" in
fact refers to the promise and hopes for peace which "Vineland the Good" had
initially held for these Norse settlers: "Thereafter they were men and women
in Despair ... "

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