IR 
BOUT thirteen or fourteen centuries had passed away since Pytheas from 
Massilia brought information as to Europe’s northern west coast 
to the civilized world of the Mediterranean. In the course of this time 
culture and technics had spread in streams towards the north across 
Central and Northern Europe. 
The northern countries had, however, as yet not shown themselves 
to be a fruitful seat for the prosperity of culture, but the dormant crea- 
tive power in the population revealed itself even through their audaci- 
ous undertakings in battles and on voyages. First the Celts, then the 
Norsemen, had found the North Atlantic Islands, the Shetland and Faroe 
Islands and Iceland. The Norsemen colonized all these countries, and 
from here they further found their way to the discovery and coloniza- 
tion of Greenland. 
One cannot summarily compare the Phenicean and Grecian colo- 
nies in the western part of the Mediterranean and the nearest part of 
the Atlantic ocean with the Norse colonies in the North Atlantic. The 
first were merchants’ colonies and the latter were farmers’ colonies. There 
is, however, a slight parallel, in so far as both sorts form a basis for new 
impulse and new discoveries, and in so far as navigation in both cases 
is a coastal navigation; the navigators, however, occasionally venturing 
out onto the open sea. 
With regard to the open sea navigation the Norsemen, in the mean 
time, far surpassed their classical predecessors. The Norsemen’s voyages 
in the northern Atlantic were so extensive and audacious that a scep- 
tical posterity hardly would have believed them, had not indisputable 
historical and geographical evidence been produced. 
Only the Norse traveller’s last link — the Wineland-voyages — of 
which there is no palpable proof to hand in the form of dwellings or 
house-sites, has in the present day been declared to be essentially 
fiction; although its correctness was not doubted in olden times. The 
fate of the Wineland tales was thus, to a certain degree the reverse 
of that which fell to the lot of Pytheas’ accounts; they were denounced 
in olden times but accepted in the present time. 
LVI. 11 
