﻿l66 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



These mythical folk probably are not always nor usually the 

 " happy dead." Many different elements combine in the fairies and 

 people of the underworld, for example, traditional memories of real 

 aborigines who hid underground; fancies born of the play of light 

 and' shade; and ideals of gods fallen from their high estate. 



The Fortunate Isles of St. Brandan continued to be called so for 

 at least half a century after they were accurately mapped and well 

 known. Must we suppose that the Genoese and Norman skippers 

 persisted in regarding them as the abodes of the happy dead ? 



(16) The additional name of "hit Gofta" for the happy Wineland and the 

 name " Landit Gofta " for huldrelands in Norway correspond directly to the 

 name of " Insulse Fortunatse," which in itself could not very well take any other 

 Norse form. And as, in addition, the huldrelands were imagined as specially 

 good and fertile, and the underground, huldre- and sid-people, or elves, are 

 called the " good people," and are everywhere in different countries associated 

 with the idea of " good," this gives a natural explanation of both the Norse 

 names. 



Brazil Island, sometimes called the Fortunate Island of the Irish, 

 and St. Brandan's Fortunate Islands, one of which still bears its 

 fourteenth century name of Porto Santo, would influence the ideal no 

 doubt, but we cannot wipe Porto Santo off the map and Brazil prob- 

 ably was as real. 



(17) The name " Vinland hit Gofta" has a foreign effect in Norse nomen- 

 clature ; it must be a hybrid of Norse and foreign nomenclature, through " Vin- 

 land" being combined with "Landit Gofta," which probably originated in a 

 translation of " Insulae Fortunatae." 



The combination and translation may have happened. It is no 

 more surprising that Insuke Fortunatse should be transferred in this 

 way than that Markland should be shifted from one of them to 

 Newfoundland. Either name of the saga may commemorate such a 

 transfer ; and either may be a very natural coincidence. A name of 

 mythical association may well be applied, and often has been applied, 

 to a real region. Moreover, the saga is not accountable for this 

 phrase, nor does Adam of Bremen use it. What men reported in 

 the eleventh century should not bear the burden, however light, of 

 adjectives or fancies of the twelfth or thirteenth. 



(18) The probability of the name of Skrselings for the inhabitants of 

 Wineland having originally meant brownies, or trolls, that is, small huldrefolk, 

 elves, or pygmies, entirely agrees with the view that Wineland was originally 

 the fairy country, the Fortunate Isles in the west of the ocean. 



If so, the word was doubtless applied to the natives in the same 

 spirit that Icelandic men in fight sometimes abusively addressed their 

 opponents as " trolls " for example, see The Saga on the Heath-Slay- 



