WINELAND THE GOOD 



most probable that it is the same name, but that — like the tale 

 itself of the Irish king's daughter whose cheek was as blood upon 

 snow — it came from Ireland. The name may thus be a last 

 echo of the Irish mythical ideas, from which the Wineland of the 

 Icelanders arose. 



Curiously enough, Helluland is the only one of the names 

 of the western lands that has been widely adopted in Ice- 

 landic fairy tales and legendary sagas. It has to some ex- 

 tent become a complete fairy-land, with trolls and giants, and 

 it is located in various places, usually far north, even to the north 

 of Greenland, and sometimes on its north-east coast. In 

 this fairy-land was the fjord " Skuggi " (shadow) ; it is mentioned 

 in " drvarodds Saga" (circa 1300), where the hero departs to 

 seek his enemy, the wizard Ogmund, in Helluland, and 

 again in " BarSarsaga Snaef ellsass " (fifteenth century), in the 

 " pattr " of Gunnari Keldugnupsfifl, in the " Halfdanarsaga 

 Bronufostra," in the Saga of Halfdani Eysteinssyni, and in Gest 

 Bardsson's Saga.^ 



In the geography which under the name of " Gripla '* was in- 

 cluded in Bjorn Jonsson's " Gronland's Annaler," it is said of the 

 countries opposite Greenland : 



" FurSustrandir is the name of a land, where is severe frost, so that it is not 

 habitable, so far as people know; south of it is Helluland, which is called Skrae- 

 lingja-land; thence it is a short distance to Wineland the Good, which some 

 people think goes out from Africa. . . ." 



With this may be compared another MS. of the seventeenth 

 century, where we read: 



"West of the great ocean from Spain, which some call Ginnungagap, and 

 which goes between lands, there is first towards the north Wineland the Good, 

 next to it is called Markland farther north, thereafter are the wastes [i.e., the 

 wastes of Helluland] where Skraelings live, then there are still more wastes to 

 Greenland." [Cf. Gronl. hist. Mind., iii. pp. 224, 227.] 



From this it looks as if Helluland was regarded as inhabited 

 by Skraslings, which agrees with the reality, if it is Labrador. 



1 Cf. Gronl. hist. Mind., iii. pp. 516 f.; Storm, 1887, pp. 37 f. 



35 



