The Vinland Sagas

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America is the melting pot of the world. Many have heard this saying and many have walked away from it understanding something, others nothing. It is a saying for the way in which uniform societies develop, in which the ingredients in the pot, people of different cultures, races and religions, are combined to develop a multi-ethnic, diverse community. Immigrants from different countries coming to America, mingling and becoming one society is what makes America the melting pot. I will be so bold as to say that although we believe ourselves to be a diverse person, the larger percentage of us, are not. We share many common traits with the Vikings from the Vinland Saga. In reading there accounts of American history we can learn that living within a non-diverse community we are setting ourselves up for a very large, very disappointing culture shock.

In the book, The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discover of America, the Vikings are living within a singular community, one that consists of only one race, one ethnicity, one culture, the members know only one notion of identity, they are Vikings living in a white Viking society. If you are born of a Viking womb then you are a Viking baby. Identity was not hard to figure out in such a non-diverse community. Within both sagas, Graenlendiga and Eirik’s, the very first and second chapters set up a certain family tree. They speak of the bloodline of Eirik and the community and how its laws function. The narrator, within the first two chapters of both sagas is painting a picture of an idea of how Vikings behave within their home society. The narrator displays through the values and actions what a Viking is. They are a rough and tumble people and above all they were adventurous, seafaring men. They were the pirates of their time.

Speaking of pirates, upon pirate ship you would find a captain, a first mate, a second mate, and your regular ol’sailor. All these titles depict one thing rank. Rank though can be interchangeable with many words: grade, level, status, or class. And seeing that Viking society was not a purely communistic society, they too had rank and class. Families bestow upon each other power, prestige, or in the other extreme slavery. The level of society of which your family belonged covered the whole family and each member was painted as being that class. Since the rich don’t marry the poor and the poor don’t hit wealth from one day to the other, the class you belonged to was pretty much the class you were stuck to for your entire life. If your family was rich you were born into wealth, if your family poor then so are you and worse yet if your mother was a slave then that was the title that passed onto you. But the Viking notion of slavery was slightly different then the one that has been portrayed in the current U.S. Their slaves were not black nor were they from Africa or Brazil. Vikings raided tier neighboring lands. Assuming that they came out of Norway and Sweden, they were going into and raiding modern day England and France. They were raiding other predominantly Anglo-Saxon lands. The slaves they brought back home were not black, they were white. This lends a hand to the fact that still to this point Vikings were color-blind; they knew only one color, white

When it came time for Eirik to search for the land that Gunnbjorn, son of Ulf Crow, came from, he found himself on Greenland. Later, as they continued to westward they came upon to pleasant surprises, Vinland and the Skraelings. The Vikings were surprised by the Skraelings, like wise I’m sure the Skraelings were even more shocked than the Vikings. Both groups, the Vikings and the Skraelings, faced a problem that neither had predicted or assumed, they were standing face to face with something they had never seen before- men of another color, another culture, another way of life. The end result is unpredictable in that we neither know neither peoples prior experiences nor knowledge. Within both sagas, Graenlendiga and Eirik’s, we are shown a different outcome to their meeting. Both end in violence though. But why? We see the shortcomings of both groups within the sags. Besides a language barrier, the Skraelings were a primitive people. They knew not of metal or of advanced weaponry. They had no knowledge to what milk was or who these people were. I am sure, like many of us, coming across a new people we would be left with curiosity and fear. The Vikings, also suffering from a language barrier and a lack of knowledge of who the Skraelings were, were at an advantage though. They were sailors and pirates, who had been to other lands and traded with many another people. They had, in respect to the Skraelings, at least a minimal advantage at hand. In the end though, battle broke out due to misunderstandings and blood was shed due to the unknown.

Non-diversity, it’s a killer. And we see that first hand within the Vinland Sagas. Living within a diverse community allows one to live, work, and learn from all the different backgrounds. Every person in a diverse community is different; their make up (for a lack of a better word) is made up from so many inputs that the output is different every time. Religion, class, race, ethnicity- these are just a few of the things we can learn. Living in a diverse environment is very important for everyone, people of different backgrounds and different make ups help a person learn and can even help build moral fiber. A diverse environment gives a person a chance to expand their knowledge of different cultures and make you a better rounded individual. At the very least it can soften the blow of culture shock if ever we step out from the community.

In the end, what does it mean to live in an explicitly non-diverse community? Not very much. You grow up one sided. Everything about you is one sided. And when the going gets tough, you will only have one way to live. Growing up with diversity is a gift that never stops giving; you learn from so much and you continually change and shed your skin to become a better person. Without this you are ultimately setting yourselves up for a very large, very disappointing culture shock the minute you are confronted with difference. You will be stripped down to what you are, a one sided individual who in the end will show his true face, a man who looks down at anything that is different and will rely on violence to rid himself of change.