NORSEMEN IN NORTH AMERICA -BR0NDSTED 371 



material, how uncertain its statements and, consequently, how approxi- 

 mate the final conclusion must be. 



Any attempt at localization should start from, and base itself upon, 

 two different categories of statements in the old sagas: on the one 

 hand their astronomical and nautical information, on the other their 

 culture-geographical content (i. e., what they have to tell us about 

 Vinland's scenery, climate, vegetation, fauna, and inhabitants) . Are 

 we in a position to let all these different dicta convincingly indicate 

 just one incontestable part of the Atlantic coast of America? That is 

 the point. 



Within the astronomical sphere one oft-commented-upon remark 

 seems to be of special importance, namely the above-cited passage 

 in the Greenland saga about sunrise and sunset in Vinland. In this 

 land, so the saga says, the sun in the short days went down in "Eylvtar- 

 stad" and rose in "-Dagmalastad." Only a few scholars doubt the 

 trustworthiness of this statement; the majority regard it — no doubt 

 rightly — as a genuine reiteration of an actual observation made on the 

 spot. Subject to the condition that it is genuine, we now have a pos- 

 sibility of calculating the geographical latitude of the observation 

 place, Vinland, provided, be it noted, we know what is meant by 

 "Eyktarstad" and "Dagmalastad." 



For "Eyktarstad" two sources are available to us (apart from an- 

 cient usage among Norwegian peasants of our time: a passage in 

 Snorri's Prose Edda ("autumn lasts from the equinox till the sun sets 

 in Eyktarstad") , and a place in the Icelandic ecclesiastical law "Grey 

 Goose," where we read that it is "eykt" when "UtsuSrs iEt" is divided 

 into three parts and the sun has passed through two of them. But 

 what is "UtsuSrs ^t"? If we take this Old Norse term to be the 

 name for the octant of the compass card between 221^° and 67i/2°, 

 the situation of Leif's Vinland may be reckoned as being not more 

 northerly than latitude 50° N. (i. e., the Gulf of St. Lawrence and 

 Newfoundland). But if "UtsuSrs jJEt" is taken to mean the entire 

 quadrant between south and west, we get Vinland's northermnost 

 limit shifted more to the south, to latitude 38° N. (Chesapeake Bay, 

 Va.). The St. Lawrence position was postulated in the 1880's by the 

 astronomer Geelmuyden in Copenhagen and the historian Gustav 

 Storm in Christiania (Oslo) ; the Virginia identification is upheld 

 by the Norwegians Mjelde and Br0gger, among others. In neither 

 of these is any southern limit given for Leif's Vinland. 



"Dagmalastad" in the ecclesiastical sources is determined as "tertia 

 Iiora," the third hour when the sun is in the southeast (9 a. m.). 

 Renter, however, as a result of his researches, claims that the pagan 

 "Dagmalastad" is not southeast but east-southeast, and that "Eyktar- 

 stad" is simply the west-southwest point of the horizon. Thus, ac- 

 cording to Renter, the passage in the Greenland saga about Leif's 



