234 COSMOS. 



by able commentaries.* The length of the voyage, the direc* 

 tion of its course, and the times of the rising and setting of the 

 sun, are all minutely detailed. 



Less certainty appertains to the traces which have been 

 supposed to be found of a discovery of America before the year 

 1000 by the Irish. The Skralinger related to the Northmen 

 settled in Vinland, that further southward, beyond the Ches- 

 apeake Bay, there dwelt " white men, who clothed themselves 

 in long white garments, carried before them poles to which 

 cloths were attached, and called with a loud voice." This 

 account was interpreted by the Christian Northmen to indi- 

 .cate processions, in which banners were borne accompanied 

 by singing. In the oldest sagas, the historical narrations of 

 Thorfinn Karlsefne, and the Icelandic Landnama book, these 

 southern coasts, lying between Virginia and Florida, are des- 

 ignated under the name of the Land of the White Men. 

 They are expressly called Great Ireland (Irland it mikla), 

 and it is maintained that they were peopled by the Irish. 

 According to testimonies which extend to 1064, before Leif 

 discovered Vinland, and probably about the year 982, Ari 

 Marsson, of the powerful Icelandic race of Ulf the squint- 

 eyed, was driven in a voyage from Iceland to the south by 

 storms on the coasts of the Land of the White Men, and there 

 baptized in the Christian faith ; and, not being allowed to de- 

 part, was recognized by men from the Orkney Islands and Ice- 

 land.f 



An opinion has been advanced by some northern antiqua- 

 rians that, as in the oldest Icelandic documents the first in- 

 habitants of the island are called " West Men, who had come 

 across the sea" (emigrants settled in Papyli on the southeast 

 coast, and on the neighboring small island of Papar), Iceland 

 was not at first peopled directly from Europe, but from Vir- 

 ginia and Carolina (Great Ireland, the American White Men's 

 Land), by Irishmen who had earlier emigrated to America. 



* The main sources of information are the historic narrations of Eric 

 the Red, Thorfinn Karlsefne, and Snorre Thorbrandsson, probably writ- 

 ten in Greenland itself as early as the twelfth century, and partly by 

 descendants of settlers born in Vinland (Rath, Antiquit. Amer., p. vii., 

 xiv., and xvi.). The care with which genealogical tables were kept was 

 so great, that that of Thorfinn Karlsefne, whose son, Snorre Thor- 

 brandsson, was bom in America, has been brought down from 1007 to 

 1811. 



t Hvitramannaland, the Land of the White Men. Compare the 

 original sources of information, in Rafn, Antiquit. Amer., p. 203-206, 

 211, 446-451; and Wilhelmi, Ueber Island, Hvitramannaland, &c.. * 

 75-81. 



