IN NORTHERN MISTS 



describe the self-grown vine and the unsown cornfields in these 

 Fortunate Isles, and that long afterwards fertile lands and 

 islands, where wild vines and various kinds of wild com grew, 

 should be discovered in the same quarter. Since we have the 

 choice, it may be more reasonable to assume that the 

 Icelanders got their wine from Isidore, or from the same 

 vats that he drew his from, than that they fetched it from 

 America. Again, even if the Greenlanders and Icelanders had 

 found some berries on creepers in the woods — is it likely that 

 they would have known them to be grapes? They cannot 

 be expected to have had any acquaintance with the latter.^ 

 The author of the " Gronlendinga-f>attr " in the Flateyjarbok 

 is so entirely ignorant of these things that he makes grapes 

 grow in the winter and spring (like the fruits all the year 

 round on the trees in the myth of the fortunate land in the 

 west), and makes Leif's companion, Tyrker, intoxicate himself 

 by eating grapes (like the Irishmen in the Irish legends), and 

 finally makes Leif cut down vine trees (" vinviS ") and fell 

 trees to load his ship, and at last fill the long-boat with grapes 

 (as in the Irish legends) ; in the voyage of Thorvald Ericson 

 they also collect grapes and vine trees for a cargo, and Karls- 

 evne took home with him " many costly things : vine trees, 

 grapes and furs." It is scarcely likely that seafaring Green- 

 landers about 380 years earlier had any better idea of the vine 

 than this saga writer, and we hear nothing in Eric's Saga about 

 Leif or his companions having ever been in southern Europe. 

 No doubt it is for this very reason that the *' Gronlendinga-f'attr " 

 makes a " southman," Tyrker, find the grapes. 



Wheat is not a wild cereal native to America. It has there- 

 fore been supposed that the " self-sown wheat-fields " of Wine- 

 land might have been the American cereal maize. As this 



1 " Vinber " (grapes) are mentioned in the whole of Old Norse literature 

 only in the translation of the Bible called " Stjorn," in the " Gronlandinga- 

 t'attr," and in a letter [Dipl. No. v.] where they are mentioned as raisins or 

 dried grapes. In addition, " vinberjakonguU " (a bunch of grapes) occurs in 

 the Saga of Eric the Red. 



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