IN NORTHERN MISTS 



connect the discovery, and as it could not take that of the dis- 

 coverer of Greenland itself, the aged Eric who was established 

 at Brattalid, it occurred to many to take that of his son; whilst 

 others chose another. It is doubtless not impossible that 

 Leif was the man; but what is suggested above, coupled 

 with so much else that is legendary in connection with the 

 voyages of him and the others, does not strengthen the prob- 

 ability of it. 



But however this may be, it may in any case be regarded 

 as certain that the Greenlanders discovered the American 

 continent, even though we are without any means of deter- 

 mining how far south they may have penetrated. The 

 statements as to the length of the shortest day in Wineland, 

 which are given in the Flateyjarbok's " Gronlendinga-f'attr," are 

 scarcely to be more depended upon than other statements in this 

 romantic tale.^ 



1 It might be objected that when it is so distinctly stated that " it was there 

 more equinoctial [i.e., the day and night were more nearly equal in length] 

 than in Greenland or Iceland, the sun there had ' eykt ' position and ' dagmal ' 

 position [i.e., was visible between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.] on the shortest day " [cf. 

 Gr. h. Mind., i. p. 218; G. Storm, 1891, p. 58; 1887, pp. i f.], this shows that 

 the Greenlanders were actually there and made this observation. In support 

 of this view it might also be urged that it was not so very long (about forty 

 years) before the Flateyjarbok was written that the ship from Markland (see 

 later) arrived at Iceland in 1347, and through the men on board her the Ice- 

 landers might have got such information as to the length of days. This can 

 hardly be altogether denied; but it would have been about Markland rather 

 than Wineland that they would have heard, and Markland is only once men- 

 tioned in passing in the " Gronlendinga-I'attr." Moreover, it was common in 

 ancient times to denote the latitude by the length of the longest or shortest 

 day (cf. Vol I, pp. 52, 64), and the latter in particular must have been natural 

 to Northerners (cf. Vol. I, p. 133). The passage quoted above would thus be a 

 general indication that Wineland lay in a latitude so much to the south of 

 Greenland as its shortest day was longer; they had no other means of ex- 

 pressing this in a saga, nor had they, perhaps, any other means of describing 

 the length of the day than that here used. It appears from the Saga of Eric 

 the Red that Kjalarnes was reckoned to be in the same latitude as Ireland (see 

 Vol. I, p. 326) ; as a consequence of this we might expect that Wineland would 

 lie in a more southern latitude than the south of Ireland, the latitude of which 

 (i.e., the length of the shortest day) was certainly well known in Iceland. If, 

 therefore, in a tale of the fourteenth century, the position of Wineland is to be 

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