36 Rhodora . [FEBRUARY 
Considering these facts, it is most probable that the “vínber” of the 
sagas was Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea, which bears in its specific name a 
token of its long confusion by early botanists of northern Europe with 
the Grape, and which, at least as late as 1633, bore the folk-name 
*"Wyneberry." Whether or not the claims of this particular Wine- 
berry and of the Currant (which in modern times alone bears the name 
Vinbaer in Scandinavia) are now finally settled, their known distribu- 
tion is so similar as to have no material influence upon the main geo- 
graphic problem. 
A very similar distribution is shown when we study the occurrence 
of the Strand Wheat (Elymus arenarius), which has been used as Wheat 
by the Icelanders since the discovery of their island. It occurs in the 
northern regions of Europe, including Iceland, in southern Greenland 
and up the west coast to latitude 70°, 47’;' and from eastern Baffin 
Land southward along the coast in great abundance to the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence, locally to Penobscot Bay, Maine, and very locally indeed 
south of Penobscot Bay, reaching its extreme southern limit on the 
Isles of Shoals (off Kittery and Portsmouth). The Strand Wheat, 
although not mentioned in recent discussions of Vinland, was, it is 
worthy of note, identified in 1749 as the “self-sown wheat" of the 
sagas. Peter Kalm, the Scandinavian traveler and explorer, writing 
in September, 1749, from Cap aux Oyes on the north shore of the 5t. 
Lawrence (west of Murray Bay), said: ‘The Sand-wheat (Elymus 
arenarius) was likewise abundant on the strands. Both of these 
[Elymus arenarius and the Sand Reed, Arundo arenaria] were called 
by the French Seigle de Mer. And, since I was assured, that both of 
these were to be found abundantly in Newfoundland as well as else- 
where along the sea-coast in northern America, and that the places, 
where these grow, look from a distance like fields of grain; we may by 
this be able to explain what in the old Norse sagas is said of Wineland 
the Good, namely, that even there self-sown wheat-fields had been 
found." ? Thus Kalm gives his distinguished support to the present 
interpretation and antedates it by more than 160 years. 
1 See Ostenfeld, Flora Arctica, i. 134 (1902). 
2 '" Der Sand weizen (Elymus arenarius) war gleichfalls an den Ufern häufig. Beide 
diese [Elymus arenarius und das Sandrohr, Arundo arenaria] wurden von den Fran- 
zosen Seigle de Mer genannt. Und da man mir versicherte, dass beide diese in Menge 
sowohl ben Terre neuve als anderswo gegen den Strand des Merres im nórdlichen Amerika 
befindlich würen, und die Oerter, wo diese wachsen, von weiten als Getraideicker ausse- 
hen: so dürfte man hiedurch ausdeuten kónnen, was in den alten Nordischen Geschicht- 
büchern von Winland der goda gesagt wird, nehmlich, dass man daselbst von selbsten 
gesüete Weizenücker gefunden hütte" — Peter Kalm, Reise nach dem nórdlichen Amer- 
ika, iii, 515, 516 (1764). 
