DANIEL BRUUN. 
or 
bo 
“He related further (i. e.: King Svend Estridsson), that another 
island had been found by many, in that ocean (the northern), called 
“Vineland” because vines grew there of themselves which made the 
best wine. I have heard there is also an abundance of corn, without 
being sown; not a groundless information, but through the positive 
accounts of the Danes.” Therefore there must have been a wide spread 
opinion or knowledge of “Vineland” amongst the Danes at the time 
of Svend Estridsson, probably grounded on the Northmen and Iceland- 
er’s accounts which again referred to the Greenland-Icelandic traditions. 
Amongst the accountants of the “Vineland”’s history of discovery, 
Art Fropi shall next be mentioned. In his before mentioned “Icelandic- 
book” he mentions “Vineland” in such a manner (Page 19) that — as 
FINNUR JONSSON says, — its discovery and existence was considered 
an unquestionable reality and universally known. 
Art Fropı was born quite fifty years after the discovery of Vine- 
land; but his father’s brother Thorkel Gellisson, who had got his infor- 
mation from a man who had visited Eric the Red in Greenland, heard 
about the Vineland expeditions, was as already mentioned, his informant. 
In the annals of Iceland, there are notes of Bishop Eric, who in 
the year 1121, undertook a journey, to discover (rediscover) Vineland, 
therefore about the same time as Ari’s composition, more of which we 
shall tell later. 
Now we come to the sagalike accounts of the voyages to Vineland. 
Eric the Red’s Saga, presumeably written about the year 1200 or the 
first quarter of the 13th century, les in two later manuscripts, 
which principally give the original Saga accounts about the voyages 
to “Vineland” in a — as already said — trustworthy form. On the 
other haad, other accounts are to be found about them, in the very 
unreliable so called “Greenlendingapättr” which are found in the Flatey- 
book’s Saga of Olaf Trygvason. It is far different from Erie’s Saga, al- 
though certain details are the same. In the latter saga five Vineland 
journeys are mentioned. The principal person mentioned in the tale, 
and the real discoverer of the western countries, is a certain BJARNI 
HERIOLFSSOn. Whether he was a real or a fictitious person is not certain, 
Gustav Storm thinks the latter to be the case. 
We shall recapitulate Bjarni’s story quite shortly, he was the son 
of Heriolf who went to Greenland with Eric the Red, and who estab- 
lished himself in Heriolfsness, the most southern settlement. Bjarni was 
a rich and worthy man, who owned a ship in which he sailed from Nor- 
way to Iceland, where he ascertained that his father had left, for Green- 
land, during that summer with Eric. He boldly decided to search his 
father in Greenland, he got damaged in a fog and north wind, and came 
to a tract of coast in the west, without fiords, but with small hills over- 
grown with woods. Bjarni did not think it could be Greenland, so sailed 
northwards for two days before seeing another country. This country 
was flat and also covered with woods. Bjarni said: “Neither this is 
