Thus ends the story of the last serious effort to colonise Vinland, and
the Saga, while giving no definite cause for this failure upon failure,
seems to show that even the trifling annoyance of the Skraelings was
enough to turn the scale. Natural difficulties were so immense, men were
so few, that a pigmy enemy had all the power of the last straw in a
load, the odd man in a council. The actual resistance of American
natives to European colonists was never very serious in any part of the
continent, but the distance from the starting-point and the
difficulties of life in the new country were able, even in the time of
Raleigh and De Soto, to keep in check men who far more readily founded
and kept up European empires in the Indian seas.

So now, though on Thorfinn's return the "talk began to turn again upon a
Vinland voyage, as both gainful and honourable," and a daughter of Red
Eric, named Freydis, talked men over--especially two brothers, Helge and
Finnboge--to a fresh attempt in the country where all the House of Eric
had tried and failed; though Leif lent his booths as before, and sixty
able-bodied men, besides women, were found willing to go, the colony
could never be firmly planted. Freydis and her allies sailed in 1011,
reached the settlement, which was now for the third time recolonised,
and wintered there;--but jealousies soon broke up the camp, Helge and
Finnboge were murdered with all their followers, and the rest came back
in 1013 to Greenland, "where Thorfinn Karlsefne was just ready for
sailing back to Norway, and it was common talk that never did a richer
ship leave Eric's Fiord than that which he steered." It was that same
Karlsefne who gave the fullest account of all his travels, concludes the
Saga, but whether Thorfinn ever returned to Vinland, whether there were
any more attempts to settle at Leif's Booths or elsewhere, whether the
account we have of these voyages is really an Eric Saga, only telling
the deeds of Red Eric and his House--for after Bjarni, almost every
Vinland leader is of this family--we cannot tell. We can only fancy that
all these suggestions are probable, by the side of the few additional
facts known to the Norse Skalds or Bards. The first of these is, that in
983-4, Are Marson of Reykianes in Iceland was driven by storms far West
to White Man's Land, where he was followed by Bjarni Asbrandson in 999,
and by Gudleif Gudlangson in 1029. This was the tale of his friend Rafn,
"the Limerick