INTRODUCTION xv 



people would all the more desire to colonize the new 

 country if it had an attractive name, and so he called 

 it the Green Land. 



When Eric returned to Iceland, he "sold" the new 

 country so attractively to his neighbors that he was 

 accompanied back to Greenland, in 985 or 986, by 

 fourteen ships carrying between four and five hundred 

 persons and with them horses, cattle, sheep, goats, 

 chickens, dogs, cats, and varied household goods. 



The colony had probably grown to a population 

 of a thousand, with the nucleus of a parliamentary 

 government resembling that of Iceland, by the year 

 999, at which point the author of the book we are 

 introducing takes up the story of Greenland in con- 

 nection with that of the discovery of the North 

 American mainland. 



