1913 Andrews,— “Plants of Wineland the Good” 31 
in that such use of it in Norwegian or English is more or less local, 
vinber in Danish-Norwegian still meaning regularly grape. In modern 
Icelandic vinber means grape, as it did also in Old Icelandic in all cases 
of its use preserved to us. In view of these facts the use of the fer- 
mented juice of the currant in lieu of wine should not constitute an 
argument of great weight, but it may be said that we are tolerably 
well informed as to the details of life in Iceland in the saga-period (as 
we are for that matter of the Icelandie vocabulary) and that the 
fermented drinks of those troublous times were of an entirely different 
nature. Wine was of course known, but is usually spoken of as an 
expensive article of import, a luxury of gods, kings and the very 
wealthy. For the substitute use of the fermented juices of native 
berries there is not much evidence, nor would one be inclined to suppose 
that such a beverage, if actually made, would have been dignified with 
the name of vin. Still it may be of passing interest to note that the 
saga of Bishop Páll? does speak of such wine made of crow-berries 
(Empetrum nigrum) but the making of it came as a new suggestion 
brought by Bishop Jón who had just arrived from Greenland, the 
latter having received the suggestion from the Norwegian king 
Sverrir. There is a corresponding entry in the Icelandic annals 
under date of 1203? that berry-wine was made that year for the first 
time in Iceland. The fact is also referred to in Finnur Jónsson's 
Ecclesiastical History of Iceland,* the author being disinclined to 
believe that such wine was used for communion purposes (the cir- 
cumstances connected with the report might well suggest that it was 
hit upon as a means of providing a substitute for communion-wine, 
which must have been expensive or often difficult to get at all in 
Iceland and even more so in Greenland) and stating that he knew a 
man of his own time who had made the same experiment with a 
degree of success, though the product was not of remarkable quality. 
The earliest reference to the vines from which Vinland took its name 
is of course Adam of Bremen's Latin vitis. If Fernald had simply 
argued that the Norsemen were not competent to know exactly what 
a grape was and might conceivably have taken something else for it, 
! Cf. Weinhold, Altnordisches Leben, 151ff. 1856; Kálund in Paul, Grundriss der 
germanischen Philologie, iii?, 448. 
3 Biskupa sógur, i, 135. 
* Islenzkir Annálar, 84. 
5 Finni Johannaei Historia ecclesiastica Islandiae. Tom. i, 305, note b. Havniae, 
1772. Cf. Olafsen & Povelsen, Reise igiennem Island, i, 171 f. 1772 (Reise durch Island. 
1, 92, 1774). 
