INTRODUCTION 



By ViLHjALMUR Stefansson 



A logical introduction to the discovery of the Ameri- 

 can continent by Icelanders or Greenlanders, as 

 related in this book, is a brief account of the steps by 

 which the discoverers reached the vantage points of 

 Iceland and Greenland. 



The striking upheaval of folk energy known as the 

 Viking Age is the background of our story. The books 

 about that period increase, but we grow thereby more 

 in wealth of theory than of fact. It is only a slight 

 overstatement to say that the more we know about the 

 doings of the time the less confident we are about the 

 theories that explain the way things were done. 



But it is clear that during half a dozen centuries 

 preceding looo A.D. the caldron of Norse energy 

 boiled over again and again. We have conceived that 

 age and that part of the world as swarming with rest- 

 less and brawling freebooters who made aimless if 

 joyous raids to south and west, the waves of them 

 ebbing in France or the British Isles, the energy dying 

 down slowly as they became civilized and Christian. 

 The picture as retained by learned Europe has been 



