WINELAND THE GOOD 



proved to be untenable. Prof. Schiibeler ^ proposed that it might 

 have been the "wild rice," also called "water oats" (Zizania 

 aquatica), an aquatic plant that grows by rivers and lakes in 

 North America. But apart from the fact that the plant grows 

 in the water and has little resemblance to wheat, although 

 the ripe ear is said to be like a wheat-ear, there is the 

 difficulty that it is essentially an inland plant, which is not 

 known in Nova Scotia. "Though it occurs locally in a few 

 New England rivers, it attains its easternmost known limit 

 in the lower reaches of the St. John in New Brunswick, being 

 apparently unknown in Nova Scotia" [Fernald, 1910, p. 26]. 

 For proving that Wineland was Nova Scotia it is therefore of 

 even less use than the wine. 



It results in consequence that the attempts made hitherto 

 to bring the natural conditions of the east coast of North 

 America into agreement with the saga's description of 

 Wineland 2 have not been able to afford any natural explana- 



1 Schiibeler, Christiania Videnskabs-Selskabs Forhandlinger for 1858, pp. 

 21 f.; Viridarium Norvegium, i. pp. 253 f. 



2 It should be mentioned that the American botanist M. L. Fernald has re- 

 cently (1910) made an attempt to locate the Icelanders' Wineland the Good in 

 southern Labrador, explaining the " vinber " of the Icelandic sagas as a sort 

 of currant or as whortleberry, the self-sown wheat as the Icelanders' lyme- 

 grass (Elymus arenarius), and the "masurr" as "valbirch." By assuming 

 " vinber " to be whortleberries he even thinks he can explain how it was that 

 Leif in the " Gronlendinga-l^attr " was able to fill the ship with " grapes " in the 

 spring (and what of the vine trees that he cut down to load his ship, were they 

 whortleberry bushes?). Apart from the surprising circumstance of the Ice- 

 landers having called a country Wineland the Good because whortleberries 

 grew there, the explanation is inadmissible on the ground that whortleberries 

 were never called "vinber" (wine-berries) in Old Norse or Icelandic. Cur- 

 rants have in more recent times been called " vinbaer " in Norway and Iceland, 

 but were not known there before the close of the Middle Ages. In ancient 

 times the Norse people did not know how to make wine from any berry but 

 the black crowberry; but there are plenty of these in Greenland, and it was 

 not necessary to travel to Labrador to collect them. Fernald does not seem 

 to have remarked that the sagas most frequently use the expression " vinviSr," 

 or else " vinviSr " and " vinber " together, and this can only mean vines and 

 grapes. His explanation of the self-sown wheat-fields does not seem any hap- 

 pier. That the Icelanders should have reported these as something so remark- 

 able in Wineland is not likely, if it was nothing but the lyme-grass with which 



5 



