WINELAND THE GOOD 



" Odyssey." What the mutual relationship may be between Ed- 

 risi's tale and the Irish legends is to us of minor importance. As 

 the Norse vikings had much communication with the Spanish 

 peninsula ^ it might be supposed that the Norse tale, derived 

 from Irish myths, had reached Portugal; but as the Arabic 

 tale has several similarities to the voyages of Brandan and Mael- 

 duin, and to Dicuil's account of the Faroes (with their sheep 

 and birds), which are not found in the Norse narrative, it is more 

 probable that the incidents in the experiences of the Portu- 

 guese adventurers are derived directly from Ireland, which also 

 had close connection with the Spanish peninsula, chiefly 

 through Norse ships and merchants. We must, in any case, 

 suppose that the Icelandic tale of Gudleif's voyage came from 

 Ireland; but it may have acquired additional color from north- 

 em legends. 



There is a Swedish tale of some sailors from Getinge who were driven by 

 storms over the sea to an unknown island; surrounded by darkness they went 

 ashore and saw a fire, and before it lay an uncommonly tall man, who was 

 blind; another equally big stood beside him and raked in the fire with an iron 

 rod. The old blind man gets up and asks the strangers where they come from. 

 They answer from Halland, from Getinge parish. Whereupon the blind man 



1 It is doubtless due to this communication that an unknown Arabic author 

 (of the twelfth century) relates that the " Fortunate Isles " lie to the north of 

 Cadiz, and that thence come the northern vikings ("Magus"), who are Chris- 

 tians. " The first of these islands is Britain, which lies in the midst of the 

 ocean, at a great distance to the north of Spain. Neither mountains nor rivers 

 are found there; its inhabitants are compelled to resort to rain-water both for 

 drinking and for watering the ground" [Fabricius, 1897, p. 157]. It is clear 

 that there is here a confusion of rumors of islands in the north — of which 

 Britain was the best known, whence the vikings were supposed to come — with 

 Pliny's Fortunate Isles; "Planaria" (without mountains) and "Pluvialia" 

 (where the inhabitants had only rain-water). That the Orkneys in particular 

 should have been intended, as suggested by R. Dozy [Recherches sur I'Es- 

 pagne, ii. pp. 317 f.] and Paul Riant [Expeditions et Pelerinages des Scan- 

 dinaves en Terre Sainte, Paris, 1865, p. 236] is not very probable. We might 

 equally well suppose it to be Ireland, which through Norse sailors (" Ost- 

 men ") and merchants had communication with the Spaniards from the ninth 

 till as late as the fourteenth century [cf. A. Bugge, 1900, pp. i f.]. The Arabic 

 name " Magiis " for the Norman vikings come from the Greek fidyo<; 

 (Magian, fire-worshiper), and originally meant heathens in general. 



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