MDDM Ch. 66 Stig's Tale: An Interpretation

[jbor]

> I don't think Stig's tale is a representation of the clash between
> different moral systems, one better or more pure than the other,
> especially with this group of Vikings who've seem to have fled much
> of "the european" on their journey to Vineland. It is their weaponry
> and the technology which produced it that differentiates the two
> cultures, that is coveted by the Skraelings, hoarded by the Vikings
> and that leads to this particular murder.
> 
> Technology, like Stig's axe, seems to be highlighted by
> this narrative.

I don't disagree, but there's still always the issue of what a particular
technological implement is being used for. Using an axe to chop down a tree
or build a dwelling is different to using it to split someone's skull, and
it's certainly different to what Stig is doing with his axe in bed with
Patience Eggslap. There's a psycho-sexual neurosis involved in the
peccadillo there, certainly, one which is taken up in Pynchon's symbolic
detail of the "stout Candle of Swedish Wax burn[ing] in a Candle-stick of
Military design" at 633.3, but I'm not sure that it's meant as much more
than comic relief. (Although, Stig did start to rave on about those
"techniques from the Prussian Plains, where Science and Slaughter were ever
fruitfully conjoin'd .... " at 613-4)

The Norse settlers are nowhere depicted as intending or wanting to use their
axes aggressively, but I think the point is made (in the various
translations of the sagas, at least, if not so strongly in Pynchon's text)
that they were fearful that the "Skraellings" wanted the axes and so forth
as *weapons*. In all versions of the episode the "Skraelling" assaults the
Norseman and tries to steal his weapon, and is killed as a result, and the
violence escalates from there.

I don't think the group of Norse settlers under Thorfinn Karlsefni, as
depicted in both sagas, ever intended to use the axes and swords against the
"Skraellings" except in order to defend themselves, and from all the
different accounts and translations I've read it seems that their intentions
were peaceful, or that that is the way the sagas depicted the historical
episode. It is emphasised that the "Skraellings" wanted to trade their pelts
and goods for weapons but that this was "forbidden" by Thorfinn. The earlier
visit by Thorvald Ericksson, where Thorvald is eventually killed by a
"Skraelling" arrow, explicitly portrays the Norsemen instigating violence
against the Native Americans, so I'd imagine Pynchon deliberately chose to
use the later, *peaceful* attempt to settle in Vineland for a purpose.

" ... They found an anchorage for their ship, and put out the gangway to the
land; and Thorvald and all of his companions went ashore. "It is a fair
region here, said he; "and here I should like to make my home." They then
returned to the ship, and discovered on the sands, in beyond the headland,
three mounds: they went up to these, and saw that they were three skin
canoes with three men under each. They thereupon divided their party, and
succeeded in seizing all of the men but one, who escaped with his canoe.
They killed the eight men, and then ascended the headland again, and looked
about them, and discovered within the firth certain hillocks, which they
concluded must be habitations. ... "

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1000Vinland.html

1002 (summer): Thorvald Eiriksson, Leif's brother, learns of Leif's exploits
and sails with a crew to L'Anse aux Meadows and spends the winter there in
peace. 

1003 (spring and summer): Thorvald Eiriksson explores Newfoundland's west
coast.

1003-1004 (autumn and winter): Thorvald returns and spends another winter at
L'Anse aux Meadows.

1004 (summer): Thorvald sails north to Labrador and is killed by an arrow
during an exchange with the natives.

1004-1005 (autumn and winter): Thorvald's crew returns and winters at L'Anse
aux Meadows.

1005 (spring): Thorvald's crew returns to Greenland with the news of his
death. 
 
[...]

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.

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

As far as the episode recounted in the novel, I think that Thorfinn and his
group are depicted in the various translations and retellings of the sagas,
and in Pynchon's text, as deeply regretful for and saddened by this "first
Act of American murder", and that it is the battle with the "Skraellings"
which causes them to leave the New World when they do. It's not the act or
the outcome they had planned; they did not arrive in Vineland with violent,
imperialist intentions.

The various versions of the two sagas are quite different in recounting the
battle "upon the Headland". This retelling or translation of 'Erik the Red's
Saga' certainly paints a different picture of the attack:

http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/2/16/h16-4205-e.html

As does this one:

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

This one seems to present a more romantic image of the "Skraellings", as
instinctively non-violent, but I wonder at the sort of poetic liberties
taken by the translator. Whatever, some of the details still diverge or are
absent from _M&D_:

"There was one man among the Skrellings, of large size and fine
bearing, whom Karlsefni concluded must be their chief. One of the
Skrellings picked up an axe; and, having looked at it for a time, he
brandished it about one of his companions, and hewed at him, and on the
instant the man fell dead. Thereupon the big man seized the axe; and, after
examining it for a moment, he hurled it as far as he could out into the
sea. Then they fled helter skelter into the woods, and thus their
intercourse came to an end."

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1000Vinland.html

As far as the battle "upon the Headland" goes, Pynchon's Stig's text
certainly equivocates on the issue of who "won" the day, or even what it
might mean to have "won" the day: "any question of who had prevail'd come to
matter ever less, as Days went on .... " (634.5). In fact, things are left
pretty much as ambiguous as the fate of Hsi and Ho at the end of Ch. 64.

best