WINELAND THE GOOD 



interprets it to mean " another world " where " good awaits her " 

 and " holy men would help her." 



There is further a possibility that some of the conceptions 

 attached to Hvitramanna-land may be connected with ancient 

 Celtic tales which in antiquity were associated with the 

 Cassiterides (in Celtic Brittany) ; in any case there is a 

 remarkable similarity between the mention in Eric the Red's 

 Saga of men who went about in white clothes, carried poles 

 before them, and cried aloud (see Vol. I, 330), and Strabo's 

 description (see Vol. I, p. 27) of the men in the Cassiterides 

 in black cloaks with kirtles reaching to the feet, who wander 

 about with staves, like the Furies in tragedy. That Strabo 

 should see a resemblance to the Eumenides (Furies) and 

 therefore make his men black, while the Northern author 

 has the Christian ideas and in agreement with the name of 

 Hvitramanna-land gives them white clothes, need not surprise 

 us. Even if Storm [1887] is correct in his supposition that 

 the white men's banners, or " poles to which strips were 

 attached " (see Vol. I, p. 330), are connected with ecclesiastical 

 processions, this may be a later popular modification, just as 

 the white hermits out in the ocean may be a modification of 

 pre-Christian, or at any rate non-religious, conceptions in 

 Ireland. 



Reference has been made (p. 32) to the resemblance between the accounts 

 of the inhabitants of Wynthlandia ( = Wineland), who were versed in magic, 

 and of the Celtic priestesses in the island of Sena off Brittany. One might be 

 tempted to think that here again there is some connection or other between 

 these Breton priestesses and, on the one hand the Irishmen in Hvitramanna- 

 land, on the other the men of the Cassiterides (near Sena) who were like the 

 Furies. Dionysius Periegetes [510; cum Eustath. i] relates that in this island 

 of Sena women crowned with ivy conducted nocturnal bacchanals, with shrieks 

 and violent noise (cf. the men in white clothes in Hvitramanna-land, who car- 

 ried poles and cried aloud). No male person might set foot on the island, but 

 the women went over to the men on the mainland, and returned after having 

 had intercourse with them (cf. Vol. I, p. 356). Exactly the same thing is re- 

 lated by Strabo [iv. 198] of the Samnite women on a little island in the sea, 

 not far from the mouth of the Liger (Loire); inspired by Bacchus they honor 

 that god in mysteries and other unusually holy actions. The Druids had their 

 sanctuaries on islands, and Mona (Anglesey) was their headquarters. Tacitus 



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