Incidents such as the bartering for skins with the Wineland Skrælings, and the combat with unfortunate results, seem to refer to something that actually took place; they cannot easily be explained from the legends of the Fortunate Isles, nor can representations of fighting in which the Norsemen were worsted be derived from Greenland. They must rather be due to encounters with Indians; for it is incredible that the Greenlanders or Icelanders should have described in this way fights with the unwarlike Eskimo, or at all events with the Greenland Eskimo, who, even if they had been of a warlike disposition, cannot have had any practice in the art of war. This in itself shows that the Greenlanders must have reached America, and come in contact with the natives there.

The very mention of the countries to the south-west: first the treeless and rocky Helluland (Labrador ?), then the wooded Markland (Newfoundland ?) farther south, and then the fertile Wineland south of that, may also point to local knowledge. It must be admitted that this could be explained away as having been put together from the general experience that countries in the north are treeless, but become more fertile as one proceeds southward; but the names Helluland and especially Markland have in themselves an appearance of genuineness, as also has Kjalarnes. The different saga-writers, in the Saga of Eric the Red and in the Flateyjarbók’s “Grönlendinga-þáttr,” give different explanations of the reason for the name of Kjalarnes, which shows that the name is an old one and that the explanations have been invented later (cf. vol. i. p. 324). A point which agrees remarkably well with the trend of the Labrador coast and may point to a certain knowledge of it, is that Karlsevne steers well to the south-east from Helluland; but this may possibly be connected with the idea mentioned later in the saga, that Wineland became broader towards the south, and the coast turned eastwards, which was evidently due to the assumption that it was connected with Africa (cf. vol i. p. 326).

Felling trees. Marginal decoration of the Jónsbók (fifteenth century)

The oldest and most original part of Eric’s Saga, as of most other sagas, is probably the lays. Of special interest are the lays attributed to Thorhall the Hunter; they give an impression of genuineness and do not harmonise well with the prose text, which was evidently composed much later. One of the lays, which describes the poet’s disappointment at not getting wine to drink in the new country instead of water, shows that a notion was current that wine was abundant there, and this notion must have come from the myth of the Fortunate Land or Wineland; for, if we confine ourselves to this one saga, the notion cannot have been derived from the single earlier voyage thither that is there mentioned—namely, Leif’s: during his short visit he cannot possibly have had time to make wine, even if he had known how to do so. The lay seems therefore to show that men had really reached a country which was taken to be the “Wineland,” or Fortunate Isles, of legend, but which turned out not to answer to the ideas which had been formed of it. The second lay attributed to Thorhall (see vol. i. p. 326) may also point to the country they had arrived at not being so excessively rich, for they had to cook whales’ flesh on Furðustrandir (and consequently were obliged to support themselves by whaling). This gives us an altogether more sober picture than the prose version of the saga; the latter, moreover, says nothing of whales except the one that made them ill and was thrown out.

The surest historical evidence that voyages were made to America from Greenland is the chance statement, referred to later, in the Icelandic Annals: that in 1347 a ship from Greenland bound for Markland was driven by storms to Iceland. This reveals the fact that, occasionally at any rate, this voyage was made; and if the sagas about the Wineland voyages must be regarded as romances, or as a kind of legendary poetry—which therefore made no attempt whatever to give a historical exposition of the communication with the countries to the south-west—then many more voyages may have been made thither than the sagas had use for. A prominent feature of the different tales is that of the Greenlanders bringing timber from thence; this appears already in the story of Leif’s discovery of the country—he found various kinds of trees and “mǫsurr,” and brought them home with him—and still more in the tales of the Flateyjarbók, where on each voyage it is expressly stated that they felled timber to load their ships, as though that were their chief object. In the Icelandic geography mentioned on p. 1, there is an addition, probably of late date:

In the Flateyjarbók’s “Grönlendinga-þáttr” it is stated that Karlsevne, in Wineland, cut down timber to load his ship, and that he had a “húsa-snotra” of “masur” from Wineland. Both accounts show how highly timber was prized in Greenland and Iceland. It is likely enough that this was so, since they had no timber in Greenland but driftwood, dwarf birch and osiers. But in order to find timber the Greenlanders need have gone no farther south than Markland (Newfoundland ?); and this name (perhaps also Helluland) may therefore have the surest historical foundation.

If Adam of Bremen (circa 1070) mentions no more than Wineland, this is doubtless because he has only heard of that legendary country; the belief in its existence may already have been confirmed in his time by the discovery of new lands. More remarkable is the statement of the sober Are Frode (circa 1130) as to the Skrælings who “inhabited Wineland” (“Vínland hefer bygt”). This looks as if Wineland was familiar to him; it may be the mythical name that has passed into a common designation for the countries discovered in the south-west (cf. vol. i. pp. 368, 384). But there is also a possibility that only the mythical country is in question, and that, as suggested above (vol. i. p. 368; vol. ii. p. 16), its inhabitants are merely the Skrælings of myths, since this mythical land and its inhabitants were the best known and most talked of. If this be so, it does not exclude the possibility of Are’s having heard of other, less well known, but actually discovered countries in the south-west, which he does not mention. To make use of a parallel, let us suppose that Utröst with its fairy people was better known in Nordland than the islands to the north with their semi-mythical Lapps. If then we had read of a discovery of Finmark that traces had been found there of the same kind of folk (“þjóð”) who inhabit Utröst, then we should no more be able from this to conclude that Utröst was a real land than that Vesterålen and Senjen, for instance, had not been discovered. It must be remembered that it does not appear with certainty from Are’s words where he got his Wineland from (cf. vol. i. p. 367).

Another document of a wholly different nature, wherein possibly the name of Wineland is mentioned, has been found—namely, the runic stone of Hönen.

On the estate of Hönen, in Ringerike, there was found at the beginning of last century a runic stone, which was still from to be seen there in 1823, when the inscription was copied. Afterwards the stone disappeared.[20] The drawing made in 1823 is now only known from a somewhat indistinct copy; but from this Sophus Bugge [1902] has attempted to make out the runic inscription, and he reads it thus:

“Ut ok vítt ok þurfa
þerru ok áts
Vínlandi á ísa
í úbygð at kómu;
auð má illt vega,
[at] döyi ár.”

The existing drawing of the runic stone from Hönen, Ringerike (S. Bugge, 1902)

In prose this verse may, according to Bugge, be rendered somewhat as follows:

Bugge regards this reading of this somewhat difficult inscription as doubtful; but if it is correct, this verse may be part of an inscription cut upon one or more stones in memory of a young man (or perhaps several) from Ringerike, who took part in an expedition by sea. According to his explanation, they were then driven far out into the ocean in the direction of Wineland, and were lost, perhaps in the ice on the east coast of Greenland (which in the sagas is generally called the uninhabited country, “ubygð”); they abandoned their ship and had to take to the drift-ice. He (or they) to whom the inscription refers thereby met his death at an early age, while at any rate some one must have made his way back and brought the tale of the voyage. Probably there was a commencement of the inscription, now lost, giving the name of the young man, who must certainly have been of good birth; for otherwise, as Bugge points out, a memorial with an inscription in verse would hardly have been raised to him. He or his family belonged to Ringerike, and to the neighbourhood in which the stone was put up.

The form of the runes makes it probable, according to Bugge, that the inscription dates from the eleventh century, and perhaps from the period between 1000 and 1050; scarcely before that, though it may be later. The inscription would thus acquire a value as possibly the earliest document in which Wineland is mentioned. What kind of expedition the inscription records we cannot tell; there is nothing to show that it was a real Wineland voyage; the words seem rather to point to their having been driven against their will out to sea in the direction of “Wineland,” whether we are to regard this as the Wineland of myth or as a historical country; it might well be used figuratively in an epitaph to describe more graphically how far they went from the beaten track. It may equally well have been on a voyage to Ireland, the Faroes, Iceland, or merely to the north of Norway that the disaster occurred, and they were driven by storms to the Greenland ice; but since it cannot be denied that, as the verse has been translated, the expressions appear somewhat unnatural, it is difficult to form any opinion as to this.[21]

If this runic inscription from Ringerike has been correctly copied and interpreted—which, as has been said, is uncertain—then this and Adam of Bremen’s information from Denmark would show that Wineland was known and discussed in various parts of the North in the eleventh century, long before Icelandic literature began to be put into writing. But strangely enough, in the Norwegian thirteenth-century work, “Historia Norwegiæ,” no mention is made of Wineland, although in other respects the author has made extensive use of Adam of Bremen’s work; he merely states that Greenland approaches the African Islands, by which, as pointed out above (p. 1), he shows clearly enough that Wineland was regarded as belonging to the African Islands, or Insulæ Fortunatæ. The “King’s Mirror,”[22] which gives a detailed description of Greenland, does not mention Wineland, although the author evidently held the view that Greenland approached the universal continent (i.e., Africa) on the south. The knowledge of it must soon have been forgotten in Norway, or it was regarded as a mythical country, while the tradition persisted longer in Iceland.

The last time we meet with the name of Wineland in connection with a voyage is in the “Islandske Annaler,”[23] where it is related in the year 1121 that “Eirikr, bishop of Greenland [also called Eirikr Upsi], went out to seek (leita) Wineland.” But we are not told anything more of this expedition. The use of “leita” shows that Wineland was not a known country, it can only apply to lands about which legends or reports are current; just in the same way Gardar in the Sturlubók “went to seek (‘fór at leita’) Snælandz” on the advice of his mother, who had second sight (vol. i. p. 255), or Ravna-Floki “fór at leita Gardarshólms” (vol. i. p. 257), and Eric the Red “ætlaði at leita lands þess” which Gunnbjörn had seen, etc. (vol. i. p. 267). As soon as the way was known, it was no longer necessary to “leita” countries. If the voyage is historical, it may have been to seek for the mythical country, the happy Wineland that Bishop Eric set out, as St. Brandan in the legend sought for the Promised Land, and as, 359 years later, the city of Bristol actually sent men out to look for the happy isle of Brazil; but as the coast of America seems to have been known, it may apply to a country there, of which reports had come, and to which the name of the mythical country had been transferred. As Eric is called a bishop, it has been thought that this was a missionary voyage, which met with disaster [cf. Y. Nielsen, 1905, p. 8]; but who was there to be converted in an unknown land, for which one had first to “seek”? It would have to be the unknown Skrælings; but is this really likely, when we hear of no mission to the Skrælings of Greenland? There must have been enough of the latter to convert for the time being, if it had been thought worth the trouble. Nor do we know much more about this Eric Upsi.[24] Probably he was the same man who is called in the Landnámabók “Eirikr Gnupssonr Grönlendinga-byskup.” It is possible that the see of Greenland was founded as early as 1110,[25] and that Eric was the first bishop of Greenland, and went out there in 1112,[26] but he cannot have been solemnly consecrated at Lund, like later bishops after 1124. It is possible that Eric was lost, for we hear no more of him, and in 1122 and 1123 the Greenlanders made efforts to obtain a new bishop, who was consecrated at Lund in 1124; but it is curious that nothing is then said about any earlier bishop; moreover, the entry in the annals about Eric dates at the earliest from the thirteenth century.

The name of Wineland occurs extremely rarely in mediæval literature and on maps outside Iceland, and as a rule it is confused with Finland, as already mentioned (vol. i. p. 198), or again with Vindland (Vendland). Ordericus Vitalis (1141) gives “The Orkneys and Finland, together with Iceland and Greenland” as islands under the king of Norway.[27] As the passage seems to be connected with Adam of Bremen, who also erroneously mentions these islands and Wineland as subject to the Norwegians (see vol. i. p. 192), this Finland may be Wineland. It was pointed out in vol i. p. 198, that the Latin “vinum” was translated into Irish as “fín.” Ordericus (1075-1143), who lived in England until his tenth year, and wrote in an abbey in Normandy, may well have had communication with Irishmen. In Ranulph Higden’s “Polychronicon” (circa 1350) the following are described as islands in the outer ocean (surrounding the disc of the earth): first the “Insulæ Fortunatæ” (see vol i. p. 346), immediately afterwards “Dacia” (== Denmark), and to the west of this island “Wyntlandia,” besides “Islandia,” which has Norway to the south and the Polar Sea to the north, “Tile” (Thule) the extreme island on the north-west, and “Noruegia” (Norway). As this “Wyntlandia,” which in the various editions of Higden’s map is called Witland, Wintlandia, Wineland, etc., is placed out in the ocean on the west, it is possibly connected with the old Wineland which was an oceanic island; but as it is mentioned together with Dacia, it may also be confused with Vindland (Vendland),[28] and the circumstance that the inhabitants are supposed to have sold winds to sailors who came to them may have contributed to this. This may be connected with what Mela [iii. 6] says about the island of Sena in the British Sea, off Brittany (see vol. i. p. 29), where the nine priestesses of the oracle of the Gaulish deity

But the wind-selling wizards of the Polychronicon have also evidently been confused with the Finns (Lapps) of Finmark, whom Adam of Bremen had already described as particularly skilled in magic. The Polychronicon is a free revision of an earlier English work, the “Geographia Universalis,” of the thirteenth century. In this “Winlandia” (or “Wynlandia”) and its inhabitants, who sell winds, are described at greater length; it is there placed on the continent on the sea-coast and borders on the mountains of Norway on the east.[29] It is therefore Finland, or perhaps rather the country of the Lapp wizards, Finmark. Thus through similarity of sound three countries may have been confused in the Polychronicon: Wineland, Vindland, and Finland (Finmark). Evidently the “Vinland” to be found on the continent in the map of the world in the “Rudimentum Novitiorum” of Lübeck (1475) refers to Finland, and likewise the “Vinlandia” mentioned in a Lübeck MS. of 1486-1488, which is an extensive island reaching as far as Livonia.[30] Whether we regard Wineland as merely a mythical country, or as a country actually discovered to which the name of the mythical land was transferred, this limited dissemination of it in literature and on maps is striking. It shows that knowledge of the myth, or of the country with the mythical name, belonged to older times, was not very widely spread outside the Scandinavian countries and Ireland, and was afterwards forgotten, in spite of the frequent communication that existed between the intellectual world of the North and that of the South [cf. Jos. Fischer, 1902, pp. 106, ff.].

While probably the name of Hvítramanna-land is still preserved in the fairy-tale of Hvittenland, it is possibly the name of Wineland that has been preserved in that “Vinland” which is mentioned in the Faroese lay of “Finnur hinn Fríði”;[31] but if so, it is the only known instance of its occurrence in popular poetry. The Norwegian jarl’s son, Finnur hinn Fríði (Finn the Fair), courts Ingebjörg, the daughter of an Irish king; she is beautiful as the sun, and the colour of her maiden cheeks is like blood dropped upon snow.[32] She makes answer: “Hadst thou slain the Wine-kings, then shouldst thou wed me.” To Wineland is a far voyage, with currents and mighty billows. But Finn begs his brother, Halfdan, to go with him over the Wineland sea. They hoist their silken sail, and never lower it till they arrive at Wineland. There they found the three Wine-kings. Thorstein, the first, came on a black horse, but Finn tore him off at the navel; the second, Ivint, also came on a black horse. But the third transformed himself into a flying dragon; arrows flew from each of his feathers, and he killed many of their men. The worst was that he shot venom from his mouth under Finn’s coat of mail, who, though he could not be killed by arms, had to die. He then drew a golden ring from his arm and sent it by Halfdan to Ingebjörg, bidding her live happily. But Halfdan sprang into the air, seized the third Wine-king, and tore him off at the navel. Halfdan sailed back to Ireland, brought Ingebjörg these tidings and the ring, and slept three nights with her, but on the fourth she dies of grief, since she can love no chieftain after Finn. Halfdan had a castle built for himself and passed his years in Ireland, but all his days he mourned for his brother. Although the whole of this legend seems to have no connection with what we know about Wineland, it is most probable that it is the same name, but that—like the tale itself of the Irish king’s daughter whose cheek was as blood upon snow—it came from Ireland. The name may thus be a last echo of the Irish mythical ideas from which the Wineland of the Icelanders arose.

Map by the Icelander Jón Gudmundsson, born 1574 (Torfæus, 1706)

Curiously enough Helluland is the only one of the names of the western lands that has been widely adopted in Icelandic fairy-tales and legendary sagas. It has to some extent become a complete fairyland, with trolls and giants, and it is located in various places, usually far north, even to the north of Greenland, and sometimes on its north-east coast. In this fairyland was the fjord “Skuggi” (shadow); it is mentioned in Örvarodds Saga (circa 1300), where the hero departs to seek his enemy, the wizard Ǫgmund, in Helluland, and again in Bárðarsaga Snæfellsáss (fifteenth century), in the “Þáttr” of Gunnari Keldugnúpsfífl, in the Hálfdanarsaga Brönufóstra, in the Saga of Hálfdani Eysteinssyni, and in Gest Bárdsson’s Saga.[33]

In the geography which under the name of “Gripla” was included in Björn Jónsson’s “Grönland’s Annaler,” it is said of the countries opposite Greenland:

With this may be compared another MS. of the seventeenth century, where we read:

From this it looks as if Helluland was regarded as inhabited by Skrælings, which agrees with the reality, if it is Labrador. But these MSS. belong to the seventeenth century, and may be influenced by the geographical knowledge of later times. In Gripla there is evident confusion, as Furðustrandir has been confounded with Helluland, and the latter with Markland[34].

No record is found of any voyage to Wineland after 1121; but on the other hand there is mention more than two hundred years later of the voyage, referred to above, to Markland from Greenland in 1347. Of this we read in the Icelandic Annals (Skálholts-Annals) for that year: “Then came also [i.e., besides ships from Norway already mentioned] a ship from Greenland, smaller in size than the small vessels that trade to Iceland. It came to Outer Straumfjord [on the south side of Snæfellsnes]; it was without an anchor. There were seventeen men on board [in the Flatey-annals there are eighteen men], and they had sailed to Markland, but afterwards [i.e., on the homeward voyage to Greenland] were driven hither.”

As the Skálholts-Annals were written not many years after this (perhaps about 1362), it must be regarded as quite certain that this ship had been to Markland; but on the homeward voyage, perhaps while she lay at anchor, was overtaken by a storm, so that the cable had to be cut, and was driven out to sea past Cape Farewell right across to the west coast of Iceland. It is not likely that they sailed so far as Markland simply to fish, which they might have done off Greenland; the object was rather to fetch timber or wood for fashioning implements, which was valuable in treeless Greenland; the driftwood which came on the East Greenland current did not go very far. It is true that they could not carry much timber on their small vessel; but they had to make the best of the craft they possessed, and they could always carry a sufficient supply of the more valuable woods for the manufacture of tools, weapons and appliances. They must for instance have had great difficulty in obtaining wood for making bows; driftwood was of little use for this.

But if this voyage took place in 1347, and we only hear of it through the accident of the vessel getting out of her course and being driven to Iceland, we may be sure that there were many more like it; only that these were not the expeditions of men of rank, which attracted attention, but everyday voyages for the support of life, like the sealing expeditions to Nordrsetur, and when nothing particular happened to these vessels, such as being driven to Iceland, we hear nothing about them. We must therefore suppose that, even if they had to give up the idea of forming settlements in the west, the Greenlanders occasionally visited Markland (Newfoundland or the southernmost part of Labrador ?), perhaps chiefly to obtain wood of different kinds.

In the so-called Greenland Annals, put together from old sources by Björn Jónsson of Skardsá (beginning of the seventeenth century), it is said of the districts on the west coast of Greenland, to the north of the Western Settlement, that they “take up trees and all the drift that comes from the bays of Markland” (cf. vol i. p. 299). This shows that it was customary to regard Markland as the region from which wood was to be obtained. The name itself (== woodland) may have contributed to this view; but the fact that it survived long after all mention of Wineland had ceased may probably be due to communication with the country having been kept up in later times, and to this name being the really historical one on the coast of America.

According to the Icelandic Annals the voyagers from Markland who came to Iceland in 1347, proceeded in the following year (1348) to Norway. This was no doubt with the idea of getting back to Greenland, as there was no sailing to that country from Iceland, and they would not trust their vessel on another ocean voyage. But in Norway, where they arrived at Bergen, they had a long while to wait. “Knarren,” the royal trading ship, seems to have been the only vessel that kept up communication with Greenland at that time. We know that “Knarren” returned to Bergen in 1346, and did not sail again until 1355. From a royal letter of 1354, which has been preserved, it appears that extraordinary preparations were made for the fitting-out and manning of this expedition, to prevent Christianity in Greenland from “falling away.” Perhaps the presence in Norway of these Markland voyagers from Greenland had something to do with the awakening of interest in that distant country, and perhaps it is not altogether impossible that the intention was not only to secure and strengthen the possessions in Greenland, but also to explore the fertile countries farther west. It cannot be remarked, however, that it brought about any change in the fading knowledge of these valuable regions, and we hear no more of them until their rediscovery at the close of the fifteenth century.

Ebbe Hertzberg, Keeper of the Public Records of Norway, has shown [1904, pp. 210, ff.] that there is a remarkable and interesting similarity between the game of lacrosse, which is played by the Indians of the north-east of North America, and the ancient Norse game, “knattleikr” (i.e., ball-game), so far as we know it from the sagas. It was greatly in favour in Iceland. If Hertzberg is right in his supposition that the Indians may have got this game from the Norsemen, this would lend strong support to the view that the latter had considerable intercourse with America and its natives.

The game of Lacrosse among the Menomini Indians (after W. J. Hoffmann, 1896).
On the left, a “crosse,” about a yard long

Hoffmann thinks that the game is undoubtedly derived from one of the eastern Algonkin tribes, possibly in the valley of the St. Lawrence. Thence it reached the Huron Iroquois, and later it spread farther south to the Cherokees, etc. In a similar way it was carried westwards and adopted by many tribes. This then points to its having originated in just those districts where one would have expected it to come from, if it was brought by the Norsemen, as Hertzberg thinks. That the game is so widely diffused in America and has become so much a part of the Indians’ life, even of their religious life, shows that it is very ancient there, and this too supports Hertzberg’s assumption that it is derived from the Norsemen. It is true that Eug. Beauvois[36] has pointed out the possibility of the game having been introduced into Canada by people from Normandy after the sixteenth century; but before such an objection could carry weight, it would have to be made probable that the characteristic Norse game was really played in Normandy; but this is not known. In support of Hertzberg’s view it may also be adduced—a point that he himself has not noticed—that the Icelanders appear to have introduced the same ball-game to another American people with whom they came in touch, namely, the Eskimo of Greenland. Hans Egede [1741, p. 93] says:

Game of ball among the Eskimo of Greenland (Hans Egede, 1741)

This description, together with Egede’s drawing, from which it appears, amongst other things, that the opponents are arranged in pairs, seems to show that the Eskimo game was very like the Icelanders’ “knattleikr” and the Indians’ “lacrosse”; but with the difference that according to Egede’s account the Eskimo did not use any club or crosse; moreover, from Egede’s drawing it looks as if both men and women took part, as with certain Indian tribes. That there is a connection here appears natural. The most probable explanation may be that the Eskimo as well as the Indians got this ball-game from the Norsemen. That the Eskimo should have learnt it from the whalers after the rediscovery of Greenland in the sixteenth century is unlikely, as also that it should have come to the Indians from the Eskimo round the north of Baffin Bay and through Baffin Land and Labrador; nor is it any more likely that the Icelanders should have learnt it of the Eskimo in Greenland, who again had it from America.

It is in itself a strange thing that the discovery of a country like North America, with conditions so much more favourable than Greenland and Iceland, should not have led to a permanent settlement. But there are many, and in my judgment sufficient, reasons which explain this. We must remember that such an outpost of civilisation as Greenland offered poor opportunities for the equipment of such settlements; the settlers would have to be prepared for continual conflicts with the Indians, who with their warlike capacity and their numbers might easily be more than a match for a handful of Greenlanders, even though the latter had some advantage in their weapons of iron—and of these too the Greenlanders never had a very good supply, as appears from several narratives. There would also be need of ships, which were costly and difficult to procure in Greenland; the few that were there certainly had enough to do, and could hardly manage more than an occasional trip to Markland for timber. Moreover, as the Greenland settlements themselves and their oversea communications declined after the close of the thirteenth century, so also of course did their communication with America decrease, until it finally ceased altogether.

It would thus appear, from all that has been put forward in this chapter, that Wineland the Good was originally a mythical country, closely connected with the happy lands of Irish myths and legends—which had their first source in the Greek Elysium and Isles of the Blest, in Oriental sailors’ myths, and an admixture of Biblical conceptions. The description of the country has acquired important features from Isidore’s account of the Insulæ Fortunatæ and from older classical literature. This mythical country is to be compared with “Hvítramanna-land” (the white men’s land), “which some call Ireland the Great (‘Irland hit Mikla’).” Of this the Landnáma tells us (cf. vol i. p. 353) that it lay near Wineland, in the west of the ocean, six “dœgr’s” sail west of Ireland (according to the Eyrbyggja Saga it lay to the south-west); the Icelandic chief Are Mársson was driven there by storms, was not allowed to depart, but was baptized there and held in great esteem. Furthermore, the same land is mentioned in the Saga of Eric the Red as lying opposite Markland (cf. vol. i. p. 330). Finally, in the Eyrbyggja Saga there is a tale of a voyage (see later) which evidently had the same country as its object, though it is not mentioned by name. Since Thorkel Gellisson is given as the authority for the story in the Landnáma, the legend may have reached Iceland about the close of the eleventh century.

This Irish land may also be derived from an adaptation of the ancients’ myth of the western Isles of the Blest,[37] and it evidently corresponds to one of the mythical countries of the Christianised Irish legends. It bears great resemblance in particular to “the Island of Strong Men” (“Insula Virorum Fortium”) in the Navigatio Brandani, which is also called there “the Isle of Anchorites” [Schröder, 1871, pp. 24, 17]. Three generations dwelt there: the first generation, the children, had clothes white as driven snow, the second of the colour of hyacinth, and the third of Dalmatian purple. The name itself, which in Old Norse would become “Starkramanna-land,” shows much similarity of formation; besides which it is the Isle of Anchorites that is in question, and one of the three generations wears white garments; we are thus not far from the formation of a name “Hvítramanna-land.” There is yet another point of agreement, in that, just as Are Mársson was not allowed to leave Hvítramanna-land, so one of Brandan’s companions had to stay behind on the Isle of Anchorites. It may also be supposed that the name of the White Men’s Land is connected with the White Christ and with the white garments of the baptized; the circumstance of Are Mársson being baptized there points in the same direction.[38] But to this it may be added that various myths and legends show it to have been a common idea among the Irish that aged hermits and holy men were white. The old man who welcomes Brendan to the promised land in the “Imram Brenaind” [cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 139; Schirmer, 1888, p. 34] has no clothes, but his body is covered with dazzling white feathers, like a dove or a gull, and angelic is the speech of his lips. In the Latin account of Brandan’s life (“Vita sancti Brandani”) the man is called Paulus, he is again without clothes, but his body is covered with white hair,[39] and in both tales the man came from Ireland [cf. Schirmer, 1888, p. 40]. The cave-dweller Paulus on an island in the Navigatio Brandani [Schröder, 1871, p. 32] is without clothes, but wholly covered by the hair of his head, his beard and other hair down to the feet, and they were white as snow on account of his great age. It is evident that the whiteness is often attributed, as in the last instance, to age; but it is also the heavenly colour, and the white clothing of hair (or feathers) may also have some connection with the white lamb in the Revelation. In the tale of Maelduin’s voyage, which is older than those of Brandan’s, Maelduin meets in two places, on a sheep-island and on a rock in the sea, with hermits wholly covered with the white hair of their bodies—they too were both Irish—and on two other islands, the soil of one of which was as white as a feather, he meets with men whose only clothing was the hair of their bodies[40] [cf. Zimmer, 1889, pp. 162, 163, 169, 172, 178]. In the Navigatio Brandan also meets on the island of Alibius an aged man with hair of the colour of snow and with shining countenance. (Cf. Christ revealing himself among the seven candlesticks to John on the isle of Patmos: “His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire” [Rev. i. 14].)

It seems natural that these ideas—of whiteness as specially beautiful, and mostly applied to the “síd” or elves, to the garments of baptism, and to holy men and hermits—led to a name which, in conformity with the Strong Men’s Island of the Navigatio, would become the White Men’s Land, for the mythical western land oversea, where Are Mársson was baptized, but which he could not leave again, and where, according to the Eyrbyggja Saga, the language resembled Irish. This, then, is precisely the “Isle of Anchorites.” The country may have originated through a contact of ideas from the religious world and the profane, original conceptions from the latter having become Christianised. Doubtless the white garments, which were connected with the other world, and which became the heavenly raiment of the Christians, have also played a part. In Plato a white-clad woman (i.e., one from the other world) comes to Socrates in a dream and announces to him that in three days he is to depart. During the transfiguration on the mountain Jesus’ face “did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light” [Matt. xvii. 2], or “his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow” [Mark ix. 3]. On the basis of this Christian conception the image of the world beyond the grave has taken the form of a fair, shining land, as in the immense literature of visions; and thus too in the Floamanna Saga [Grönl. hist. Mind., ii. p. 103], where Thorgils’s wife Thorey sees in a dream a “fair country with shining white men” (“menn bjarta”), and Thorgils interprets it to mean “another world” where “good awaits her” and “holy men would help her.”

There is further a possibility that some of the conceptions attached to Hvítramanna-land may be connected with ancient Celtic tales which in antiquity were associated with the Cassiterides (in Celtic Brittany); in any case there is a remarkable similarity between the mention in Eric the Red’s Saga of men who went about in white clothes, carried poles before them, and cried aloud (see vol. i. p. 330), and Strabo’s description (see vol. i. p. 27) of the men in the Cassiterides in black cloaks with kirtles reaching to the feet, who wander about with staves, like the Furies in tragedy. That Strabo should see a resemblance to the Eumenides (Furies) and therefore make his men black, while the Northern author has the Christian ideas and in agreement with the name of Hvítramanna-land gives them white clothes, need not surprise us. Even if Storm [1887] is correct in his supposition that the white men’s banners, or “poles to which strips were attached” (see vol. i. p. 330), are connected with ecclesiastical processions, this may be a later popular modification, just as the white hermits out in the ocean may be a modification of pre-Christian, or at any rate non-religious, conceptions in Ireland.