WINELAND THE GOOD 



came on the East Greenland current did not go very far. 

 It is true that they could not carry much timber on their 

 small vessels; but they had to make the best of the craft 

 they possessed, and they could always carry a suffi- 

 cient supply of the more valuable woods for the manufac- 

 ture of tools, weapons and appliances. They must for in- 

 stance have had great difficulty in obtaining wood for making 

 bows ; driftwood was of little use for this. 



But if this voyage took place in 1347, and we only hear of 

 it through the accident of the vessel getting out of her course 

 and being driven to Iceland, we may be sure that there were 

 many more like it; only that these were not the expeditions 

 of men of rank, which attracted attention, but everyday 

 voyages for the support of life, like the sealing expeditions to 

 NorSrsetur, and when nothing particular happened to these ves- 

 sels, such as being driven to Iceland, we hear nothing about 

 them. We must therefore suppose that, even if they had to give 

 up the idea of forming settlements in the west, the Greenland- 

 ers occasionally visited Markland (Newfoundland or the south- 

 ernmost part of Labrador?), perhaps chiefly to obtain wood of 

 different kinds. 



In the so-called " Greenland Annals," put together from old 

 sources by Bjorn Jonsson of Skardsa (beginning of the 

 seventeenth century), it is said of the districts on the west 

 coast of Greenland, to the north of the Western Settlement, that 

 they " take up trees and all the drift that comes from the bays 

 of Markland" (cf. Vol. I, p. 299). This shows that it was cus- 

 tomary to regard Markland as the region from which wood was 

 to be obtained. The name itself (^woodland) may have con- 

 tributed to this view; but the fact that it survived long after 

 all mention of Wineland had ceased, may probably be due to 

 communication with the country having been kept up in 

 later times, and to this name being the really historical one on 

 the coast of America. 



According to the Icelandic annals the voyagers from 

 Markland who came to Iceland in 1347, proceeded in the 



37 



