IN NORTHERN MISTS 



various editions of Higden's map is called Witland, Wint- 

 landia, Wineland, etc., is placed out in the ocean on the 

 west, it is possibly connected with the old Wineland 

 which was an oceanic island; but as it is mentioned together 

 with Dacia, it may also be confused with Vindland (Vend- 

 land),^ and the circumstance that the inhabitants are supposed 

 to have sold winds to sailors who came to them may have con- 

 tributed to this. This may be connected with what Mela [iii. 

 6] says about the island of Sena in the British Sea, off Brittany 

 (see Vol. I, p. 29), where the nine priestesses of the oracle of 

 the Gaulish deity 



" set seas and winds in motion through their incantations, change them- 

 selves into what animal they please, cure sickness . . . know the future and 

 foretell it, but they only assist those sailors who come to ask counsel of them." 



But the wind-selling wizards of the " Polychronicon " have 

 also evidently been confused with the Finns (Lapps) of 

 Finmark, whom Adam of Bremen had already described as 

 particularly skilled in magic. The " Polychronicon " is a free 

 revision of an earlier English work, the " Geographia 

 Universalis," of the thirteenth century. In this " Win- 

 landia " (or " Wynlandia ") and its inhabitants, who sell 

 winds, are described at greater length; it is there placed on 

 the continent on the sea-coast and borders on the mountains 

 of Norway on the east.- It is therefore Finland, or perhaps 

 rather the country of the Lapp wizards, Finmark. Thus 

 through similarity of sound three countries may have been 

 confused in the " Polychronicon " : Wineland, Vindland, and 

 Finland (Finmark). Evidently the " Vinland " to be found 

 on the continent in the map of the world in the " Rudimentum 

 Novitiorum" of Liibeck (1475) refers to Finland, and likewise 

 the " Vinlandia " mentioned in a Liibeck MS. of 1486-1488, 

 which is an extensive island reaching as far as Livonia.^ 



1 In a similar fashion Torfaeus [1705] confused Vinland and Vindland. 



2 Cf, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, etc. Rerum Britanicarum Medii 

 ^vi Scriptores, London, 1865, i. p. 322; Eulogium Historiarum, etc. Rer. 

 Brit. Script., i860, ii. pp. 78 f.; W. Wackernagel, 1844, PP* 494 f* 



3 Cf. Nordenskiold, 1889, p. 3; A. A. Bjornbo, 1909, pp. 197, 205, 240. 



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