DECLINE OF GREENLAND SETTLEMENTS 



tants are Swedes by descent). It may seem as if this inscrip- 

 tion also was connected with Scolvus, and we thus get the third 

 Scandinavian country as his native land ; but this word " Suedi " 

 may be derived from Olaus Magnus, who happens to have often 

 used it in the sense of Scandinavians — i.e., Swedes and Norwe- 

 gians. 



In 1597, the Dutchman Cornelius Wytfliet in his description 

 of America (" Continens Indica ") states that its northern part 

 was first discovered by " Frislandish " fishermen (i.e., from the 

 imaginary Frisland of the Zeno map), and subsequently further 

 explored about 1390 during the voyage of the brothers Zeno 

 (which is fictitious). 



" But [he continues] the honor of its second discovery fell to the Pole 

 Johannes Scoluus [Johannes Scoluus Polonus], who in the year 1476— eighty- 

 six years after its first discovery — sailed beyond Norway, Greenland, Frisland, 

 penetrated the Northern Strait, under the very Arctic Circle, and arrived at 

 the country of Labrador and Estotiland." 



Estotiland is another fictitious country on the notorious 

 Zeno map (a fabrication from several earlier maps). Apart 

 from this introduction of the Zeno voyage the statement 

 contains nothing that has not already appeared in Gomara 

 and in the English document of 1575, with the exception 

 that Scolvus is called a Pole (Polonus), but this, as pointed 

 out by Storm [1886, p. 399], must be due to a misreading of 

 " Polonus " for " piloto." * As Norway is named first among 

 the countries beyond which the voyage extended, it may 

 have started from thence in Wytfliet's authority.^ 



On the L'Ecuy globe, of the sixteenth century, there 

 is written in Latin between 70° and 80° N. lat. and in long. 



1 Lelewel's conjecture [1852, iv. p. 106, note 50, 52] that Scolvus's name was 

 Scolnus and that he came from a little Polish inland town near the frontier of 

 East Prussia, is, as shown by Storm [1886, p. 400], improbable. 



2 Storm [1886, p. 399] thought that Wytfliet might have borrowed from 

 Gomara, and himself invented and added the date 1476, in order to disparage 

 the Spaniards and Portuguese as discoverers; but Storm was not aware that 

 this date, as we have seen, is mentioned in an earlier English source. 



