38 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



is Frisland, a huge island south of Iceland, identified by Mr. Lucas * 

 with the Resland of Edrisi apparently Estland or Shetland (some 

 say Iceland) ; though Mr. Major thought Frisland the Faroe-islands, 

 blended by misunderstanding into one and shifted to unfrequented 

 seas, where it might be credible (see note 7, p. 177). In fact it took 

 root there, to the confusion of explorers and cartographers for several 

 centuries. Sigurdr Stefansson makes it a very little one on his map ; 

 which bears the apologetic note : 



&quot; I do not know what island this may be unless the one that the 

 Venetian found.&quot; 



In getting back to the original communication, we are further 

 baffled by its unintended ingenuity of misunderstanding, a habit of 

 prodigious exaggeration and a genius for transforming words. When 

 we read that Zichmi, ruling in Frisland, made war against the King 

 of Norway, it means, according to Major, that Earl Sinclair of the 

 Orkneys had a skirmish with a forgotten claimant to a part of his 

 territory. Later, a warm spring on an island of a Greenland fiord, 

 beside which a monastery once stood, evolves a monastery and monk- 

 ruled village on an active volcanic mountain with commercially 

 profitable gardening, carried on by the aid of hot water pipes an item 

 borrowed, according to Lucas, from sixteenth century Norway or 

 Iceland. You soon can measure the value of such narrative and make 

 due allowance for its exaggerations. There is usually some germ of 

 truth to be found and the Greenland part of their map has an accuracy 

 in detail which appears to mark it as based on personal observation or 

 information (see Major) that Europe could not supply, although 

 even this argument in favor of the story has been undermined by 

 Lucas and the discovery of some ancient maps. 



It seems that an earlier Nicolo Zeno, being cast by chance on the 

 coast of Frisland about 1390, was saved from the rude inhabitants 

 by Zichmi, lord of the region, who took the Italian into his service. 

 Nicolo participated in the wars then and afterward carried on by 

 the Earl, and sent for his brother Antonio, who joined him in Fris 

 land, took part in the Shetland Campaign, and wrote letters to their 

 brother Carlo at home. A certain Faroese fisherman having brought 

 back after a long absence a tale of strange adventures in unknown 

 countries southwest of Greenland, Zichmi fitted out an expedition to 

 seek them. This expedition, however, found only &quot; Icaria,&quot; Iceland, 

 and Greenland, with some minor islands known and unknown. The 

 brothers Nicolo and Antonio accompanied Zichmi, perhaps about 



1 Op. cit., p. 105. 



