﻿102 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



was a bleak coast, with long and sandy shores. They went ashore in boats, 

 and found the keel of a ship, so they called it Keelness there ; they likewise 

 gave a name to the strands and called them Furdustrandir (Wonder Strands), 

 because they were so long to sail by. Then the country became x fiord-cut and 

 they steered their ships into a bay. 2 



Here the interpolated unauthentic episode of Haki and Hsekia 

 occurs. " One of them carried in the hand a bunch of grapes, the other 

 wheat selfsown. Karlsefni said they seemed to have found goodly 

 indigenous products." The original narrative proceeds, beginning 

 with a repetition which is enough of itself to show the break made 

 by the foreign matter : 



Karlsefni and his followers held on their way, until they came where the 

 coast was fiord-cut (or indented with bays). They stood into a bay with their 

 ships. There was an island out at the mouth of the bay, about which there 

 were strong currents, wherefore they called it Straumey [stream island]. 

 There were so many eider ducks [" birds," Thorfinn Karlsefni] 3 on the island 

 that it was scarcely possible to walk for the eggs. They sailed through the 

 firth, and called it Straumfiord [stream firth] and carried their cargoes ashore 



from the ships, and established themselves there There were mountains 



there and the country round about was fair to look upon. They did nought 

 but explore the country. There was tall grass there. They remained there 

 during the winter, and they had a hard winter, for which they had not pre- 

 pared, and they grew short of food, and the fishing fell off. Then they went 

 out to the island, in the hope that something might be forthcoming in the way 

 of fishing or flotsam. There was little food left, however, although their live- 

 stock fared well there [i. e., on the island]. Then they invoked God, that he 

 might send them food, but they did not get response so soon as they needed. 

 Thorhall disappeared. They searched for him three half days and on the 

 fourth day Karlsefni and Biarni found him on a projecting crag [note, of the 

 island]. He was lying there and looking up at the sky, with his eyes, nostrils 

 and mouth wide-stretched, and was scratching himself, and muttering some- 

 thing. They asked him why he had gone thither; he replied that it did not 

 concern any one; he told them not to be surprised at this; adding that he had 

 lived sufficiently long to render it unnecessary for them to take counsel for 

 him. They asked him then to go home with them and he did so. Soon after 

 this a whale appeared there, and they went to it, and flensed it, and no one 

 could tell what manner of whale it was. Karlsefni had much knowledge of 

 whales, but he did not know this one. When the cooks had prepared it, they 

 ate of it, and were all made ill by it. Then Thorhall, approaching them, says : 

 "Did not the Red-beard prove more helpful than your Christ? This is my 



1 Olson substitutes " fiord-cut," as more exact, for Reeves' "indented with 

 bays." 



2 A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good, pp. 42-43. 



3 Compare Bird Island of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where Packard in 1864 

 found the whole top white with nesting birds. In i860 about 50,000 pairs of 

 gannets nested there, 5,000 in 1874; 50 in 1882, and their nests had been rifled 

 when found. Funk Island off Newfoundland on the Atlantic side was also 

 often called Bird Island for like reasons. 



