NO. 12 THE WINELAND VOYAGES — S WANTON 37 



intervening lands, but we must suppose that he kept far enough to 

 the north to be in the neighborhood of Iceland and the east coast of 

 Greenland though apparently without sighting either. While such a 

 voyage was possible it is highly improbable, and I am inclined to 

 accept the story substantially as related in the Flat Island Book. All 

 this requires us to believe is that a navigator called Biarni sailing 

 west with the wind and ocean current in his favor was caught off 

 the southern end of Greenland by a north wind and carried within 

 sight of the Newfoundland coast and that, after sighting land in 

 two more places, he finally reached Greenland. It is not necessary to 

 accept all the details, but it is reasonable to suppose that Leif heard 

 of this voyage and the new lands to the west and undertook to visit 

 them himself, that he continued on farther south than Biarni to Nova 

 Scotia or the New England coast, and that the Saga of Eric the Red 

 has implanted a brief statement of the results of his expedition into 

 the account of his return from Norway to Greenland, the one expedi- 

 tion having followed closely upon the other. 



Leif 's propagandizing work in Greenland was probably before this 

 voyage. Whether he rescued the mariners at sea before or after it is 

 of secondary importance, but there would have been an additional 

 reason for calling him Leif the Lucky if he could report the discovery 

 of a land of wood and grapes. Whether Biarni's voyage is or is not 

 apochryphal, Leif was evidently the discoverer of Wineland, and to 

 that discovery belong the two myths of the finding of grapes. As 

 to the other events of Leif's voyage as told in the Flat Island Book, 

 they are apparently mixed up with those reported for the voyage of 

 Thorfinn Karlsefni except for the two first landfalls. It is quite cer- 

 tain that every Greenland navigator who visited Wineland carried 

 back wood with him, and we are told in the Saga that Leif also took 

 samples of self-sown wheat and vines. 



The Flat Island Book has evidently mixed up the story of Thor- 

 biorn's voyage to Greenland and subsequent settlement near Eric with 

 that of the shipwrecked mariners. Neither story of the naming of 

 Keelness is satisfactory. On one hand the drifting ashore of the keel 

 from a European vessel on this part of the American coast is in the 

 highest degree unlikely, and on the other, if the cape had been named 

 by an earlier Norse expedition, Karlsefni should have known of the 

 circumstances. 



Since there is no mention of the voyage of Thorvald in the Saga, 

 and since some of the events attributed to it are given by the latter 

 as having happened during the expedition of Karlsefni, I omit it 



