INTRODUCTION vii 



But even with an indigenous or at least non-Chris- 

 tian civilization postulated for the Norsemen, their 

 migrations and doings are still difficult to explain. 

 Having insisted on the difficulty, we give it up as a 

 bad job and pass to a rapid sketch of the things that 

 appear to have a significant bearing on American dis- 

 covery. 



With regard to that most striking, or at least most 

 advertised, of Viking abilities, the navigation of the 

 high seas, we may profit by the great antiquities that 

 are becoming popular in science and scholarship. Dur- 

 ing the last twenty years the twenty million years of 

 astronomy have grown to beyond two hundred mil- 

 lion. In sixty years the six thousand years of human 

 history have been stretched well beyond six hundred 

 thousand. Then why not add a good thousand years 

 to that schoolroom estimate of twenty years ago that 

 pictured the Phoenicians as pioneers in seamanship 

 when they were dodging cautiously north from bay 

 to haven along the coasts of Europe till they found 

 tin in Britain? 



According to that textbook view the sailing of the 

 high seas was unknown until the Vikings began swarm- 

 ing the ocean as well as the lands, somewhere around 

 700 A.D. Applying the general principle that a short 

 estimate of time is inherently improbable, we find a 

 key to Viking civilization in what may be inferred 



