"It happened one evening that a man of the party was missing, and this was Tyrker the German. This Leif took much to heart, for Tyrker had been long with his father and him, and loved Leif much in his childhood. Leif now took his people severely to task, and prepared to seek for Tyrker, and took twelve men with him. But when they had got a short way from the house, then came Tyrker towards them and was joyfully received.
Leif soon saw that his foster father was not in his right senses... Then said Leif to him: 'Why were thou so late, my fosterer, and separated from the party?' He now spoke first for a long time in German, and rolled his eyes about to different sides, and twisted his mouth, but they did not understand what he said. After a time he spoke Norsk. 'I have not been much farther off, but still I have something new to tell of; I found vines and grapes.'
'But is that true, my fosterer?' quoth Leif.
'Surely is it true,' replied he, 'for I was bred up in a land where there is no want of either vines or grapes.'
They slept for the night, but in the morning Leif said to his sailors: 'We will now set about two things, in that the one day we gather grapes, and the other day cut vines and fell trees, so from thence will be a loading for my ship.' And that was the counsel taken, and it is said their longboat was filled with grapes. Now was a cargo cut down for the ship, and when the spring came they got ready and sailed away; and Leif gave the land a name after its qualities, and called it Vineland.
They sailed now into the open sea, and had a fair wind until they saw Greenland, and the mountains below the glaciers..."
References:
This account was originally published in Slafter, Edmund F., The Voyages of the Northmen to America (1877) reprinted in The Heritage of America, Commager, Henry Steele and Allan Nevins eds. (1939); Boorstin, Daniel J., The Discoverers (1983).
This goes awfully well with pasta, a Prosecco and any number of Italian red wines.
Regards, Bob
