In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery

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In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery

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In Search of First Contact is a monumental achievement by the influential literary critic Annette Kolodny. In this book, she offers a radically new interpretation of two medieval Icelandic tales, known as the Vinland sagas. She contends that they are the first known European narratives about contact with North America. After carefully explaining the evidence for that concl...more In Search of First Contact is a monumental achievement by the influential literary critic Annette Kolodny. In this book, she offers a radically new interpretation of two medieval Icelandic tales, known as the Vinland sagas. She contends that they are the first known European narratives about contact with North America. After carefully explaining the evidence for that conclusion, Kolodny examines what happened after 1837, when English translations of the two sagas became widely available and enormously popular in the United States. She assesses their impact on literature, immigration policy, and concepts of masculinity.Kolodny considers what the sagas reveal about the Native peoples encountered by the Norse in Vinland around the year A.D. 1000, and she recovers Native American stories of first contacts with Europeans, including one that has never before been shared outside of Native communities. These stories contradict the dominant narrative of "first contact" between Europeans and the New World. Kolodny rethinks the lingering power of a mythic American Viking heritage and the long-standing debate over whether Leif Eiriksson or Christopher Columbus should be credited as the first discoverer. With this paradigm-shattering work, Kolodny shows what literary criticism can bring to historical and social scientific endeavors.

Annette Kolodny is College of Humanities Professor Emerita of American Literature and Culture at the University of Arizona. She is the author of Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century and the editor of The Life and Traditions of the Red Man, by Joseph Nicolar, both also published by Duke University Press. In addition, she is the author of The Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630–1860, and The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters.

"Having long argued that English-language texts alone provide an inadequate understanding of frontier history, Annette Kolodny now challenges the Eurocentric assumptions involved in what constitutes a 'literary' source. She makes the case that North American literary history begins not with the European exploration narratives customarily taken as its start, but with 'contact texts' culled from the pictographic materials of tribes in the Algonquian-speaking Wabanaki Confederacy and from the Norse sagas with which she suggests they intersect. Kolodny's sophisticated understanding of the theoretical implications of her findings, her meticulous and fair attention to previous scholarship, and her indefatigable and innovative efforts to mine material that has not previously figured prominently in these conversations result in a book that is exciting, fresh, and more ambitious and synthetic than any previous effort to explore contact narratives."—Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities and Director of the American Studies Program, Stanford University

"In Search of First Contact contributes a great deal to scholarly knowledge of the Vinland narratives. Annette Kolodny explains what those stories help us to comprehend about the indigenous peoples of the northern Atlantic coast, and she illuminates the process by which people in Anglo-America have come to understand their own history on this continent. Her exposition of the sagas is absolutely superb. This is an outstanding and important work."—Robert Warrior, Director of the American Indian Studies Program, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction.

"In Search of First Contact is a tour de force. In this masterful exploration of the Anglo-American fascination with Vikings in North America, Annette Kolodny unravels the mythology around Viking contact with the continent and explains how it has inspired Americans' search for their roots, been used politically, and served to set newcomers apart from the inhabitants already here. She brings a penetrating perspective to bear on the notion of first contact and what it might have meant both to Native Americans and to the Norse. This brilliantly written book is bound to become a classic."—Birgitta Linderoth Wallace, archaeologist and author of Westward Vikings: The Saga of L'Anse aux Meadows.(less)

Paperback, 448 pages

Published May 29th 2012 by Duke University Press Books

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Jul 19, 2012 Amy Sturgis rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 21st-century, native-america, us-history, political-thought, medieval-history, canadian-history

I'll make this a brief review, as I'm currently writing a longer one for publication in Reason. This book is both well written and well worth reading.

Kolodny considers the two Icelandic sagas that depict Norse in North America (the so-called Vinland Sagas, The Greenlander's Saga and Eirik the Red's Saga) and what they tell us about first contact with Native Americans. She goes on to analyze how the "proof" of the Norse in what would become the United States - both compelling and doubtful, honest...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Kelsey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, history, non-fiction

This book is about the Viking exploration of North America and how Anglo-Americans have used that history to suit their needs at different points in time. Two Icelandic Sagas that deal with the Viking exploration of Greenland and the North American continent (the "Vineland" in the title) are used as both literary and historical texts to give context to the information laid out later in the book. What follows is a discussion about the nineteenth century Anglo-American response to the English tran...more This book is about the Viking exploration of North America and how Anglo-Americans have used that history to suit their needs at different points in time. Two Icelandic Sagas that deal with the Viking exploration of Greenland and the North American continent (the "Vineland" in the title) are used as both literary and historical texts to give context to the information laid out later in the book. What follows is a discussion about the nineteenth century Anglo-American response to the English translation of these texts and the many historical and literary books that sprung from America's need to feel as antiquated as Europe. Issues of race, religion, and immigration are viewed through this lens. The book ends with an interesting yet brief section about the Native American stories that tell of first contact with Europeans in New England and Eastern Canada (an area referred to as "Dawnland" in the title).

The middle section of this book that deals with the Anglo-American response is lengthy and a little repetitive. The author lays out the arguments and works written by a particular person, telling us why the conclusions were wrong and what impact those views had on American culture. Instead of moving onto a different point of view, several other people's opinions and writings are dissected which are almost identical to the original person being discussed. I would have preferred being told "Mr. A, Mr. B, and Ms. C all had similar viewpoints and wrote extensively about the matter (see footnote for list of works)." I felt like I was being hit over the head with the same brick over and over, even though I understood the concept quite well. This is an academic work, so it's the nature of the beast, I suppose.

Overall, this was a very interesting read about a subject that I find fascinating. I would have preferred much more about the Native American early contact stories and more about their response to the Viking issue, but that just shows how interested I was in the work.

I won this book through a Goodreads giveaway.(less)

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Mar 10, 2012 Shiloh (SnarkyWriter) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: netgalley, non-fiction

Duke University Press provided me with a free copy of this book for review purposes.

The modern understanding of the discovery of America is heavily colored by two hundred or more years of historical or pseudo-historical research by Americans and Europeans alike, all shaped by personal, political, and social biases. In In Search of First Contact, Annette Kolodny has taken on the massive task of sorting through all of the extant material, from American historians to Icelandic sagas to Native Ameri...more Duke University Press provided me with a free copy of this book for review purposes.

The modern understanding of the discovery of America is heavily colored by two hundred or more years of historical or pseudo-historical research by Americans and Europeans alike, all shaped by personal, political, and social biases. In In Search of First Contact, Annette Kolodny has taken on the massive task of sorting through all of the extant material, from American historians to Icelandic sagas to Native American stories, in order to clarify the arguments and help readers understand the tangled histories.

The first chapter compiles and explores the body of literature written about the Native Americans and the European and American assumptions about their history. These assumptions mostly served the dominant Eurocentric ideology of the time and were usually in place to facilitate European destruction or resettlement of the natives. Not until 2000, she claims, did historians begin insisting upon a reexploration of history that would give the natives their own history rather than defining them in terms of European discoveries.

The second chapter is a close reading of the Vinland sagas--The Greenlanders' Saga and Eirik the Red's Saga--meant to show that the strange land the various Viking groups landed on was America and the Skraelings they dealt with were Native Americans. Conflicts between the groups are explained through cultural analysis and the Vikings' description of the natives is compared to current knowledge of the native tribes and their customs. Kolodny concludes that, while we cannot be certain that Vinland is America and the Skraelings are Native Americans, mostly due to the lack of detail in the sagas, there is strong evidence, both textual and archaeological, for both conclusions.

The third chapter explores the surge of interest in pre-Colombus American discoveries, primarily driven by the desire of the Romantics to have a Classical, or at least pre-English, American heritage. While the wide-open prairies and undiscovered country west of the Mississippi intrigued people, they also wanted castles and ancient ruins. The Norse discovery and settlement of America would have provided this in spades. Hence, literature, history, and archaeology all began to seek or create the signs of Viking settlement in North America. Later, of course, much of the evidence for a Norse settlement was called into question, though most people continued to believe that such a settlement existed, though they were unable to find it. Some even claimed that the Norse had discovered a settlement of Irish in the regions now known as Georgia and South Carolina. Continuing the previous belief that the Native Americans had destroyed a more advanced culture, these people claimed that the more advanced culture was Irish and Norse in nature. These claims helped to support the Indian-removal policies which were rampant at the time as well as the exclusion of immigrants with darker skin, hair, or eyes. The politics and social attitude of the time were that American belonged to white Protestants, and any historical evidence of the Norse or Irish having settled America before the Native Americans only helped to fuel these attitudes and policies.

Chapter four examines the misconceptions of archaeologists unearthing burial mounds and the concurrent romanticization of Norse mythology through the work of poets such as Longfellow and Whittier. This romanticization also became useful for post-Civil War men with the Vikings' perceived hypermasculinity and for the early women's movement with the perceived societal equality of the Danes. Fascination with Norse culture, therefore, swept through the nation, and being able to (however erroneously) connect America with the Vikings gave America a sense of an ancient history that the Native Americans did not provide.

In the late 1800s, religious squabbling broke out over who discovered America. At first, the fight was merely between Columbus and the Puritans; one Catholic, one Protestant. However, as chapter five chronicles, the Catholic church glommed on to the idea of the Norse not only discovering America, but evangelizing, as well, which gave them double the claim to the continent. This began a mass attempt at discrediting the whole idea that the Norse had landed in America, rather than just Greenland, in the first place, as well as attempts to cast Columbus as a scientific explorer rather than a religious one (which, if I'm not mistaken, is when this whole ridiculous idea that Columbus discovered the Earth was round began. Kolodny doesn't discuss this, though). Ultimately, it was WWI which removed the Northmen from the public consciousness as discoverers of America; any association with Germanic forebears was now unthinkable.

Chapter seven shifts focus to the natives and the evidence of first contact which might be available from their point of view. Obviously, their point of view is filtered through the European point of view, and hence suspect, but Kolodny further filters the information through what we know of the instructions given to European settlers and their biases. Otherwise, our information about European first contact comes through native petroglyphs, which must be interpreted rather than read. This examination continues to native lore in the final chapter, examining one specific tale and its potential meaning as well as the European hype surrounding it.

Kolodny's conclusion is that the evidence for Norse settlement of America is thin, though it cannot be entirely ruled out. Neither can the possibility that they landed but didn't necessarily settle.

In Search of First Contract is a dense, heavily-researched book which pulls together a wealth of information about the purported Norse settlement and where our modern understanding of it came from. It shows a great deal of work and clear synthesis which scholars of the subject would find quite helpful. This is not for beginners in the subject, certainly, but would be quite helpful as a resource for graduate students or other middle-level historians curious about the Norse and America.(less)

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Aug 29, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: anthropology, natives

If this book had maps, I would add a star to my rating. Before reading it, I only knew the fragments of sagas that were usually mentioned in passing within other books. Now, I feel like I have a grasp on the events. The author doesn't present any far-flung theories that require leaps of faith. Overall, excellent.

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May 31, 2012 Stacey marked it as to-read

I've been homeschooling my son and we recently studied the explorers. This topic was especially interesting to me and I was planning on doing my own research on the Vinland stories. I'm looking forward to reading this!

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Jun 08, 2012 Marie marked it as to-read

Shelves: first-reads

After reading the description of this book I was intrigued so I entered the first-reads giveaway and to my surprise I was a winner! Looking forward to reading this book.

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Sep 07, 2012 Duke University added it

Shelves: american-studies, history, indigenous-rights, literary-criticism

“Reading ‘In Search of First Contact’ (Vikings, Sagas, Native Americans, Literature): Annette Kolodny. Fascinating!” --Margaret Atwood, on Twitter

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Land Before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860

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