IN NORTHERN MISTS 



But these MSB. belong to the seventeenth century, and may 

 be influenced by the geographical knowledge of later times. In 

 Gripla there is evident confusion, as FurSustrandir has 

 been confounded with Helluland, and the latter with 

 Markland.^ 



No record is found of any voyage to Wineland after 

 1121; but on the other hand there is mention more than 

 two hundred years later of the voyage, referred to above, to 

 Markland from Greenland in 1347. Of this we read in the 

 Icelandic annals (" Skalholts- Annals ") for that year: "Then 

 came also [i.e., besides ships from Norway already mentioned] 

 a ship from Greenland, smaller in size than the small vessels 

 that trade to Iceland. It came to Outer Straumfjord [on the 

 south side of Snaefellsnes] ; it was without an anchor. There 

 were seventeen men on board [in the Flatey-annals there are 

 eighteen men], and they had sailed to Markland, but after- 

 wards [i.e., on the homeward voyage to Greenland] were 

 driven hither." 



As the " Skalholts-Annals " were written not many years after 

 this (perhaps about 1362), it must be regarded as quite certain 

 that this ship had been to Markland; but on the homeward voy- 

 age, perhaps while she lay at anchor, was overtaken by a storm, 

 so that the cable had to be cut, and was driven out to sea past 

 Cape Farewell right across to the west coast of Iceland. It 

 is not likely that they sailed so far as Markland simply to fish, 

 which they might have done off Greenland; the object was 

 rather to fetch timber or wood for fashioning implements, 

 which was valuable in treeless Greenland; the driftwood which 



1 G. Storm [1890, p. 347] thinks that something is omitted in " Gripla " and that 

 it should read: " su5r fra er Helluland, I'd er Markland, JJat er kallat Skraelinga- 

 land" (to the south is Helluland, then there is Markland, which is called 

 Skraelingaland). But this seems doubtful; it would not in any case explain 

 why FurSustrandir is placed to the north of Helluland. When Storm alleges 

 as a reason that Helluland is never mentioned as a place of human habitation, 

 but only for trolls (in the later legendary sagas), he forgets that the Skrae- 

 lings were trolls, or, as he himself puts it elsewhere [1890, p. 357], that the 

 Skraelings were not accounted " true human beings." 



36 



