Nor were these people such barbarians as some have fancied, to whom it is easier to rob a whole people of its character by a single word than to take the pains to inquire into its history.  They were bold warriors and bolder sailors.  The voyage between Iceland and Norway, or Iceland and Orkney, was reckoned as nothing; but from the west firths of Iceland, Eric the Red—­no ruffian as he has been styled, though he had committed an act of manslaughter—­discovered Greenland; and from Greenland the hardy seafarers pushed on across the main, till they made the dreary coast of Labrador.  Down that they ran until they came at last to Vineland the good, which took its name from the grapes that grew there.  From the accounts given of the length of the days in that land, it is now the opinion of those best fitted to judge on such matters, that this Vineland was no other than some part of the North American continent near Rhode Island or Massachusetts, in the United States.  Their ships were half-decked, high out of the water at stem and stern, low in the waist, that the oars might reach the water, for they were made for rowing as well as for sailing.  The after-part had a poop.  The fore-part seems to have been without deck, but loose planks were laid there for men to stand on.  A distinction was made between long-ships or ships of war, made long for speed, and ... ships of burden, which were built to carry cargo.  The common complement was thirty rowers, which in warships made sometimes a third and sometimes a sixth of the crew.  All round the warships, before the fight began, shield was laid on shield, on a rim or rail, which ran all round the bulwarks, presenting a mark like the hammocks of our navy, by which a long-ship could be at once detected.  The bulwarks in warships could be heightened at pleasure, and this was called “to girdle the ship for war”.  The merchant ships often carried heavy loads of meal and timber from Norway, and many a one of these half-decked yawls no doubt foundered, like Flosi’s unseaworthy ship, under the weight of her heavy burden of beams and planks, when overtaken by the autumnal gales on that wild sea.  The passages were often very long, more than one hundred days is sometimes mentioned as the time spent on a voyage between Norway and Iceland.

As soon as the ship reached the land, she ran into some safe bay or creek, the great landing places on the south and south-east coasts being Eyrar, “The Eres,” as such spots are still called in some parts of the British Isles, that is, the sandy beaches opening into lagoons which line the shore of the marsh district called Floi; and Hornfirth, whence Flosi and the Burners put to sea after their banishment.  There the ship was laid up in a slip, made for her, she was stripped and made snug for the winter, a roof of planks being probably thrown over her, while the lighter portions of her cargo were carried on pack-saddles up the country.  The timber seems to have been floated up the firths and rivers as near as it could be got to its destination, and then dragged by trains of horses to the spot where it was to be used.