Þórhallr the Hunter: Whose God Sent the Whale?

A little while after a whale was driven ashore, and the men crowded round it, and cut it up, and still they knew not what kind of whale it was. Even Karlsefni recognised it not, though he had great knowledge of whales. It was cooked by the cook-boys, and they ate thereof; though bad effects came upon all from it afterwards. Then began Thorhall, and said, "Has it not been that the Redbeard has proved a better friend than your Christ? this was my gift for the poetry which I composed about Thor, my patron; seldom has he failed me."

Poetic account: a saga told by a Christian narrator describes a man on a voyage to Vinland who gives Thor the credit for a stranded whale, and the entry places nothing in a mythic realm.

In Eiríks saga rauða, Þórhallr, called the Sportsman in Sephton’s translation, joins the expedition because he knows the empty country well. The saga describes him as an experienced hunter and fishing companion of Eiríkr, big, dark, gloomy and hard to like, and says he kept away from the Christian faith. The company winters through a hard season with little food, and the fishing fails. Þórhallr vanishes, and after three half-days of searching he is found lying on a crag, staring at the sky and muttering. Soon after, a whale is driven ashore. The men eat it and fall ill. Þórhallr says that Thor, his patron, has proved a better friend than Christ. The others throw the meat away and pray, and fishing then improves.

What is recorded: his description and long service as a hunter, his refusal of the new faith, a hungry winter, his disappearance and finding on a crag, the whale of an unknown kind, the illness after eating it, his claim that Thor had repaid his poetry, and the companions’ rejection of the meat and turn to prayer.

What is not recorded: any words of what he recited on the crag, any prayer or rite to Thor, and the place where the whale came ashore beyond the winter camp. The narrator frames the episode so that Thor’s gift makes people ill and prayer to God brings food, so it is a Christian telling of a heathen man. Whether any such event happened is not known from this text.