I think you really do undermine the function of translation if, for whatever well-intentioned reason, you deliberately alter the author's perspective and the flavor of his words. The ideal translation is perfectly transparent- never achievable, of course, but that's the goal. The reader of the Leifssaga Erikssson wants to read the medieval text, and 'feel' the medieval Norse mind behind it- otherwise he'd just read a modern history. Surely you wouldn't want a translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to clean up all the nasty things the monks said about those same Norsemen, would you?
Quote:
The early Norwegian
settlers in Greenland sought to control their natural environment in the same way that they did
in their native Norway. By not recognizing the fundamental differences between their former
environment and their new one their society eventually collapsed.
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A rather obsolescent theory, I'm afraid: work with Greenland ice cores has shown that in Eric's time mean temperatures on the South Greenland coast were much warmer than today, and suitable for Scandinavian-style agriculture. It was the onset of the global cooling known as the 'Little Ice Age' that doomed the Greenland colony- although I suppose they might at that stage tried adapting to Inuit living.