152 H. P. STEENSBY. 
Frrptsor NANSEN was the one who tried to start this doubt as to 
the genuineness of the Wineland accounts, and who said he was able 
to show that they were filled with medieval legend-passages, for ex. 
from the Irish St. Brandon’s wonderful sea-journey, and from the tale 
about /nsulae Fortunatae and others. In the meantime Fridtjof Nan- 
sen’s view was vigourously opposed from the northern-philological side, 
above all by Finnur Jönsson!. 
Even if all the different accounts are not of equal value, and even 
if some of the accounts are not free of mistakes or unreasonableness, 
they however contain a grain of truth, which is so large that we cannot 
get away from there having been Norsemen in the socalled Wineland. 
The real reason for this doubt and uncertainty is, when all is said, 
that no one, as yet, has been able even in a fairly convincing manner 
to localize this Wineland. Helluland and Markland’s cases are some- 
what different. The report on these countries, and their mutual position, 
are so well adapted to the north-eastern coast of Labrador and to the 
adjacent regions in the south, where forests are met with on the coast, 
that hardly any have doubted them to be the territories which the 
ancient Norsemen found and named. 
Even Nansen does not doubt the fact of the Norsemen really having 
knowledge of the coasts west and south-west of Davis strait, and that 
touches of this knowledge enter into the, according to his opinion, apo- 
eryphal saga tales. As CLEMENTS В. MARKHAM expressed it after a mee- 
ting of the Royal Geografical Society in London, in 1911, where Nansen 
had expounded his view on the ancient Norsemen and America: “It 
was impossible for the Norsemen to have been several centuries in Green- 
land without discovering America.” 
In the meantime it appears to me that by a geographical com- 
templation one is in a position to be able to localize the disputed Wine- 
land, and to follow the track leading to it, which is particularly des- 
eribed in Eric the Red’s saga. Before I start this geographical study, 
I will show how far the Wineland investigations have reached at the 
present moment. 
The source of our knowledge of the Wineland voyages is purely 
literary. The momentoes of a more immediate archeological nature, 
which formerly one thought to be able to indicate in New England, have 
proved to have nothing to do with the ancient Norsemen. The literary 
sources are divided into two groups, which are completely independent 
of each other, we can call them the erudite latin group and the saga 
group. The first group is represented only by one single author, namely 
Adam of. Bremen, whereas the other group owns several Icelandic re- 
cords. To these one must probably add the well known Ваше in- 
scription from Ringerike in Norway; meanwhile the interpretation of 
*Finnur Jonsson: “Erik den rodes saga og Vinland” in the Norwegian “НЕ 
storisk Tidsskrift” V, r. 1 [Kristiania 1911]. 
