内容正文:
外刊精读:海盗奇闻
内容摘要
Viking sagas of transatlantic journeys have thrilled people for centuries. Historians are sorting fact from fiction-from accounts of clashes with First Nations to where the Norse really settled.
阅读理解
Questions:
1. What is the common theme of two sagas ?
A. Trade in peace.
B. Lethal conflict.
C. Norse made a getaway.
2. Which title can best generalize paragraph 3 ?
A. Facts on the ground.
B. Traces of L'Anse anx Meadows.
C. Sagas and sources.
结构分析
内容解读
Anyone standing today by the wind-swept shore of Epaves Bay at the northern tip of Newfoundland might find it hard to comprehend the enormity of the modest archaeological site that extends around them. Here, at L’Anse aux Meadows—the name is probably a garbled reference to an old French naval vessel—lies what is still the only known Norse settlement in North America. It is an astonishing place, but its significance was only recognized in relatively recent decades. Until as late as the 1960s, the Viking adventure in North America was known only second-hand from the Icelandic sagas, the great epic tales that form one of the jewels of northern medieval literature. These stories mostly concern the Viking age of roughly A.D. 750-1050, but they were written down hundreds of years later, primarily in the 13th century. The degree to which they preserve genuine memories of the saga-writers’ ancestors, or whether they are more a form of historical fiction, still divides scholars today. The entire narrative of Norse voyages to North America is contained in just two of these texts, the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red. Both sagas tell the story of an unknown country west of Greenland, found by ships blown off course, with exploring expeditions and the brief settlement that follows. In fact, the two sagas frequently contradict each other, with different versions of who first sighted land, who was the first to sail there, and even the number of separate voyages involved.
■ stand by
原文中搭配为by