﻿28 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



as presenting very ancient material, we find a parallel use of the name 

 " Great Sweden " for an immense region, the nearest to Sweden 

 southeastward across the Baltic sea ; just as Great Ireland was 

 conceived to be nearest to Ireland across the ocean, southwestward. 

 This Great Sweden was peopled with myths and monsters no less 

 uncanny and disturbing than the deadly Uniped which drove an 

 arrow into Thorvald Ericsson, or the big-eyed apparition of menace 

 or warning which inflicted herself on Gudrid beside the cradle 

 and the baby, as the Flateybook story will have it ; a region obviously 

 little known and open to doubt, yet occasionally reached by Swedes. 

 There is no question now concerning the reality of this Great Sweden, 

 nor that the references to it are historic in a way, for it is simply 

 Russia. Dr. Storm x also observed this coincidence and added 

 Magna Graecia as another example ; but somehow he remained of 

 the opinion that Great Ireland was a myth or a mistaken remembrance 

 of Iceland. 



An old manuscript (codex 770 of the Arne Magnean collection), 

 quoted by Rafn's Antiquitates x\merican3e, is fairly explicit as to 

 locality : 



Now there are, as is said, south from Greenland, which is inhabited, deserts, 

 uninhabited places and icebergs, then the Skrellings, then Markland, then 

 Vineland the Good. Next, and farther behind, lies Albania, which is White- 

 men's Land. Thither was sailing formerly from Ireland; there Irishmen and 

 Icelanders recognized Ari, the son of Mar and Katla of Reykjaness, of whom 

 nothing had been heard for a long time and who had been made a chief there 

 by the inhabitants. 



This appears to have been prompted by the following brief narrative 

 in the Landnamabok of Ari the Wise (a descendant of the vanished 

 man) who died in 1148. His Islendingabok says the same, only 

 omitting the sources of information: 



Their son was Ari. He was driven out of his course at sea to White-Men's 

 Land, which is called by some persons Ireland the Great. It lies Westward 

 in the sea near Wineland the Good. It is said to be six doegrs sail west of 

 Ireland. Ari could not depart thence and was baptized there. The first 

 account of this was given by Rafn, who sailed to Limerick and remained for 

 a long time at Limerick in Ireland. 



Ari the Wise adds that Thorkell Gellison, his own uncle, had heard 

 the same story from Earl Thorfinn of the Orkneys. 



There is a parallel episode in the Eyrbyggja Saga (perhaps a 

 fragment of the lost saga of Biorn the Broadwickers' champion) 

 which has sometimes been thought a mere elaborated echo of the 



1 G. Storm : Studies on the Vineland Voyages. Memoires Societe Royale des 

 Antiquaires du Nord (1888), pp. 307-370; also separately 1889. 



