IN NORTHERN MISTS 



or less artificial, and no natural explanation has been offered 

 of how the two ideas of wine and wheat, both foreign to the 

 Northerners, could have become the distinguishing marks of the 

 country. 



(lo) In Ireland long before the eleventh century there were 

 many myths and legends of happy lands far out in the ocean to 

 the west; and in the description of these wine and the vine form 

 conspicuous features. 



(ii) From the eleventh century onward, in Ireland and in 

 the North, we meet with a Grape-island or a Wineland, which it 

 seems most reasonable to suppose the same. 



(12) From the Landnamabok it may be naturally 

 concluded that in the eleventh century the Icelanders had 

 heard of Wineland, together with Hvitramanna-land, in 

 Ireland. 



(13) Thorkel Gellisson, from whom this information is de- 

 rived, probably also furnished Are Frode with his statement in 

 the Islendingabok about Wineland; this is therefore probably 

 the same Irish land. 



(14) The Irish happy lands peopled by the sid correspond to 

 the Norwegian huldrelands out in the sea to the west, and the 

 Icelandic elf-lands. 



(15) Since the huldre- and sid-people and the elves are 

 originally the dead, and since the Isles of the Blest, or the 

 Fortunate Isles, of antiquity were the habitations of the happy 

 dead, these islands also correspond to the Irish sid-people's 

 happy lands, and to the Norwegian huldrelands and the Icelandic 

 elf-lands. 



(16) The additional name of "hit G6(5a " for the happy 

 Wineland and the name " Landit G6t5a " for huldrelands in 

 Norway correspond directly to the name of " Insulae Fortu- 

 natae," which in itself could not very well take any other 

 Norse form. And as, in addition, the huldrelands were 

 imagined as specially good and fertile, and the underground, 

 huldre- and sid-people, or elves, are called the " good people," 

 and are everywhere in different countries associated with the 

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