﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK l6l 



fable of wine being produced there, contains nothing beyond what is found in 

 Isidore. 



Adam of Bremen wrote true things as well as marvels, just as 

 many writers from his time and long afterward have done. He may 

 be trusted within reason, as well as those. He is careful to insist that 

 this statement in regard to the wheat and wine is no marvel, but literal 

 truth. What he wrote would be true of the American coast and would 

 be especially true of its distinctive conspicuous food supplies in the 

 latitudes we have pointed out, before the coming of maize. The wine- 

 making fine large grapes have Strachey's corroboration, also Lescar- 

 bot's. They are here still. They make strongly for verisimilitude 

 and to the saga's credit. 



(2) The oldest Icelandic authorities that mention the name of " Vinland," 

 or in the " Landnama," " Vindland hit Gofta," say nothing about its discovery 

 or about the wine there; on the other hand, Ari Frode mentions the " Skrsel- 

 ings " (who must originally have been regarded as a fairy people). The name 

 of Leif Ericson is mentioned, unconnected with Wineland or its discovery. 



Full statements could not be expected in each relic of an ancient 

 fragmentary literature. Ari's lost Islendingabok probably set forth 

 the full account. Entries a little later present the above items to- 

 gether. Mere evidence by omission is rarely cogent. It cannot reas- 

 onably override the positive evidence referred to and the general 

 prevailing tradition. If it could, it would merely change the name 

 of the discoverer, for it is admitted that some one sailed from Norway 

 and found America by the direct passage. If not Leif, who shall be 

 named? And is there more evidence that an anonymous Norseman 

 did it rather than that Leif did it ? 



(3) It is not till well on in the thirteenth century that Leif's surname of 

 Heppni, his discovery of Wineland ("Vinland" or "Vindland"), and his 

 Christianizing of Greenland are mentioned (in the " Kristni-saga " and " Heim- 

 skringla "), but still there is nothing about wine. 



This fact may be unfortunate, but what does it disprove? His 

 father Eric was never called " Lucky " so far as we know, yet he 

 created Norse Greenland. It does not seem important that a man's 

 epithet should always be found with his name in the few surviving 

 pre-thirteenth-century manuscripts. 



(4) It is not till the close of the thirteenth century that any information 

 occurs as to what and where Wineland was, with statements as to the wine and 

 wheat there, and a description of voyages thither (in the Saga of Eric the Red). 

 But still the accounts omit to inform us who gave the name and why. 



In other words, the location of Wineland was not mentioned so 

 far as we know, till Hauk Erlendsson made the earliest copy of the 



