WINELAND THE GOOD 



called in Sweden, by Professor F. Laffler, to the fact 

 that the Swedish philologist, Professor Sven Soderberg, 

 whose early death in igoi is much to be regretted, had an- 

 nounced views about Wineland similar to those at which I 

 have arrived. The manuscript of a lecture that he delivered on 

 the subject at Lund in May, 1898, but which was never printed, 

 was then found, and has been published in the " Sydsvenska 

 Dagbladet Snallposten " for October 30, 1910. As I have thus 

 become acquainted with this interesting inquiry too late to be 

 able to include it in my examination I think it right to mention 

 it here. 



Professor Soderberg thinks, as I do, that there can be no 

 doubt about the Norsemen having discovered a part of North 

 America; but he looks upon the tales of the wine and 

 everything connected therewith as later inventions. He 

 maintains that the name of " Vinland " originally meant 

 grass-land or pasture-land (from the old Norse word 

 "vin" = pasture), therefore something similar to the 

 meaning of Greenland, and that it may have been the 

 name of a country discovered in the west. Curiously enough, 

 I took, at first, the same view, and thought, too, that Adam of 

 Bremen might have misunderstood such a word, just as 

 Soderberg thinks; but I allowed myself to be convinced by 

 the linguistic objection that the word " vin " (pasture) seems to 

 have gone out of use before the eleventh century (cf. Vol. I, 

 p. 367 f.). However, Soderberg's reasons for supposing that 

 the word was still in use appear to have weight; and he also 

 makes it probable that the name formed thereby might be 

 Vinland and not Vinjarland. (In support of this Mr. A. 

 Kiaer gave me as an example the Norwegian name " Vinas.") 

 Professor Soderberg then thinks that Adam of Bremen heard 

 this name in Denmark, and, misinterpreting it as a foreigner 

 to mean the land of wine, himself invented the explanation 

 of the country's being so called. Soderberg gives several 

 striking examples to show how this kind of " etymologizing " 

 was just in Adam's spirit (e.g., Sconia, or Skane, is derived 



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