This description gives a good insight both into the Norsemen's manner of equipping themselves for voyages to unknown countries, and into their superstition.
It looks as if a dissension now arose between the wayward Thorhall the Hunter and the rest, since he wanted to look for Wineland to the north of Furðustrandir, beyond Kjalarnes.
"But Karlsevne wished to go south along the coast and eastward. He thought the land became broader the farther south it bore;[305] but it seemed to him most expedient to try both ways" [i.e., both south and north].
Thorhall then parted from them; but there were no more than nine men in his company. Perhaps they were desirous of going home; for from an old lay, which the saga attributes to Thorhall, it appears that he was discontented with the whole stay there: he abuses the country, where the warriors had promised him the best of drinks, but where wine never touched his lips, and he had to take a bucket himself and fetch water to drink. And before they hoisted sail Thorhall quoth this lay:
"Let us go homeward, where we shall find fellow-countrymen: let us with our ship seek the broad ways of the sea, while the hopeful warriors (those who praise the land) on Furðustrandir stay and boil whales' flesh."
"Then they parted [from Karlsevne, who had accompanied them out] and sailed north of Furðustrandir and Kjalarnes, and then tried to beat westward. Then the westerly storm caught them and they drifted to Ireland, and there they were made slaves and ill-treated. There Thorhall lost his life, as merchants have reported."
The last statement shows that according to Icelandic geographical ideas the country round Kjalarnes lay directly opposite Ireland and in the same latitude.
Karlsevne, with Snorre, Bjarne, and the rest, left Straumsfjord and sailed southward along the coast [1004].
"They sailed a long time and until they came to a river, which flowed down from the interior into a lake and thence into the sea. There were great sandbanks before the mouth of the river, and it could only be entered at high water. Karlsevne and his people then sailed to the mouth of the river and called the country 'Hóp' [i.e., a small closed bay]. There they found self-sown wheat-fields, where the land was low, but vines wherever they saw heights ('en vínviðr allt þar sem holta kendi'). Every beck ('lökr') was full of fish. They dug trenches on the shore below high-water mark, and when the tide went out there were halibuts in the trenches. In the forest there was a great quantity of beasts of all kinds. They were there half a month amusing themselves, and suspecting nothing. They had their cattle with them. But early one morning, when they looked about them, they saw nine hide-boats ('huðkeipa'), and wooden poles were being waved on the ships [i.e., the hide-boats], and they made a noise like threshing-flails and went the way of the sun. Karlsevne's men took this to be a token of peace and bore a white shield towards them. Then the strangers rowed towards them, and wondered, and came ashore. They were small [or black ?][306] men, and ugly, and they had ugly hair on their heads; their eyes were big, and they were broad across the cheeks. And they stayed there awhile, and wondered, then rowed away and went south of the headland."