14 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 10/ 



religion into Greenland. Here is a man, if we are to trust the Saga, 

 with a soul above skittles, and, more remarkable still, he is the son of 

 that same man who brought about a mass migration to the second 

 largest block of ice in the world by naming it Greenland. How the 

 old man must have fumed at this degenerate son of his who spent his 

 time caring for shipwrecked mariners and spreading the gospel of a 

 spiritual world instead of becoming the father of a great material 

 one ! That helps to explain Eric's stubborn adherence to paganism. 

 He belonged to the Order of the Main Chance. If the Saga is correct, 

 Leif did not even take enough interest in his Land of Wine to visit 

 it a second time. Except for his affair with the woman Thorgunna 

 in the Hebrides, he would deserve sainthood and, as one who pre- 

 ferred "Greenland's icy mountains" to the fertile empire of Yankee- 

 dom, he would naturally become Greenland's patron saint. As things 

 are, he should stand second only to Eric in the affections of Green- 

 landers and have his own monument in Ericsdall. 



However, when we remember that Biarni Heriulfson would not 

 even land in America because he was anxious to get home to his 

 father, we have to admit that these rugged Northmen had virtues 

 to put us to shame. We have credited them overmuch with a lust 

 for rapine and skull cracking, but here are two glittering exceptions, 

 a man who to the riches of America prefers rescuing mariners and 

 preaching religion, and another who turns all mainland America down 

 in favor of his father. 



Speaking more seriously, however, does not this visit of Leif to 

 Wineland after a nonstop passage of the entire North Atlantic, 

 cavalier dismissal of the whole experience, and subsequent utter 

 indifference, seem a bit fishy even when told by our "most reliable" 

 authority? Or does it mean that Karlsefni had the better press agent? 

 Upon the whole does it not seem rather probable that Leif should 

 have made an extended visit to Wineland, whether from the sugges- 

 tion of a previous explorer or an earlier chance landfall by himself ? 



We will consider Leif 's supposed expedition from Greenland later, 

 but there is one item which apparently must be assigned to it or else 

 to his landfall in a voyage from Norway as the Saga has it. That is 

 the story of the discovery of grapes, of which we have two versions. 

 The one contained in the Saga places the event at Streamfirth con- 

 siderably north of the true Wineland and gives it as an event in the 

 voyage of Karlsefni, but it has long been recognized that this is an 

 interpolation and it is almost universally held that Streamfirth was 

 well north of the land of grapes. According to this story the discovery 



