Chapter IX: Wineland the Good, the Fortunate Isles, and the Discovery of America (2)

We may regard it as another feature of fairy tale that Eric the Red
has three sons who set out one after another, first Leif, then
Thorstein, and lastly Thorvald, who finds the land and takes part in
the attempt to settle it. But this feature is not conspicuous enough
to allow of our attaching much importance to it, especially as here it
is the first son who is the lucky one, while it is not so in fairy
tale.

[Sidenote: Sweet dew and manna]

In Leif's voyage in the "Grönlendinga-þáttr" (which voyage partly corresponds to Karlsevne's), when they came to a country south-west of Markland, they landed on an island, to the north of the country,

"looked around them in fair weather, and found that there was dew on
the grass, and it happened that they touched the grass with their
hands and put them in their mouths, and they thought they had never
tasted anything so sweet as it was."

This reminds one forcibly of Moses' manna in the wilderness, which appeared like dew [Exodus xvi. 14]. In the Old Norwegian free rendering of the Old Testament, called "Stjórn,"[317] of about 1300, therefore much earlier than the "Grönlendinga-þáttr," the account of this says that dew came from heaven round the whole camp, "it stuck like slime on the hands as soon as they touched it" ... "they found that it was sweet as honey in taste...." But here again we come in contact with Irish legendary ideas. In the tale of the Navigation of the Sons of Ua Corra (of the twelfth century) the voyagers come to an island with a beautiful and wonderful plain covered with trees, full of honey, and a grass-green glade in the middle with a glorious lake of agreeable taste. Later on they come to another marvellous island, with splendid green grass, and honeydew lay on the grass [cf. Zimmer, 1889, pp. 194, 195].

[Sidenote: Furðustrandir]

The name "Furðustrandir" (marvel-strands), as we shall see later (p. 357), may come from the "Tírib Ingnad" (lands of marvel) and "Trág Mór" (great strand) of Irish legend, far in the western ocean.

[Sidenote: Mythical figures: the Scottish runners]

When Karlsevne arrived off Furðustrandir he sent out his two Scottish runners, the man "Haki" and the woman "Hekja," and told them to run southwards and examine the condition of the country and come back in three days. This is evidently another legendary trait; and equally so the circumstance that King Olaf had given these runners to Leif and told him "to make use of them if he had need of speed, for they were swifter than deer." We know of many such features in fairy tale and myth. Then, after the traditional three days, the man and woman come running from the interior of the country, one with grapes, the other with self-sown wheat in their hands. We are tempted to think of the spies Moses sent into Canaan, with orders to spy out the land, whether it was fat or lean, and who came back with a vine-branch and a cluster of grapes, which they had cut in the vale of Eshcol (i.e., the vale of grapes).[318]

But there are other remarkable points about this legend. Professor Moltke Moe has called my attention to a striking resemblance between it and the legends of the two runners or spies who accompanied Sinclair's march through Norway in 1612. They are called "wind-runners" or "bloodhounds," or again "weather-calves" or "wind-calves"; others called them "Wild Turks."

"They were ugly folk enough. Sinklar used them to run before and
search out news; in the evening they came back with their reports.
They were swifter in running than the stag; it is said that the flesh
was cut out of their thighs and the thick of their calves. It is also
said that they could follow men's tracks."[319]

We are told elsewhere that "these 'Ver-Kalvann' ('wind-calves') were
more active than farm-dogs, swift as lightning, and did not look like
folk. The flesh was cut out of the thick of their calves, their thighs
and buttocks; their nostrils were also slit up. People thought this
was done to them to make them so much lighter to run around, and every
one was more frightened of them than of the Scots themselves. They
could get the scent of folk a long way off and could kill a man before
he could blow his nose: they dashed up the back and broke the necks of
folk."[320]

The trait that the wind-runners "did not look like folk" is expressed in another form in H. P. S. Krag's notes; he thinks that they

"were nothing else but Sinclair's bloodhounds, which we may assume
both from the description and from its being related of the one that
was shot at Ödegaard that it ran about the field and barked."

Something similar also occurs about the runners in Wineland in a late form of the legend of Karlsevne's voyage, where we read that

"he sailed from Greenland south-westward until the condition of the
country got better and better; he found and visited many places that
have never been found since; he found also some Skrælings; these
people are called in some books Lapps. In one place he got two
creatures ('skepnur') more like apes than men, whom he called Hake and
Hekja; they ran as fast as greyhounds and had few clothes." [MS. A.
M., old no. 77oc, new no. 1892, 3; cf. Rafn: "Antiquitates Americanæ,"
1837, p. 196.]

It may be mentioned in addition that in the Flateyjarbók's saga of the Wineland voyages no runners appear, but on the other hand, in the tale of Leif's voyage, which has features in common with Karlsevne's, there is a "Southman" ("suðrmaðr," most frequently used of Germans)[321] of the name of "Tyrker," who was the first to find the wild vine in the woods (like Karlsevne's runners) and intoxicated himself by eating the grapes.[322] As Moltke Moe observes, there is a remarkable resemblance between the rare name Tyrker and the fact that Sinclair's runners were called Wild Turks.

Both in the legend of Karlsevne and in that of Sinclair the two runners are connected with Scots or Scotland. One is therefore inclined to suppose that some piece of Celtic folklore is the common source of both. Now there is a Scottish mythical creature called a "water-calf"; and the unintelligible Norwegian name "weather-calf" or "wind-calf" ("veirkalv") may well be thought a corruption of this. It is true that this creature inhabits lakes, but it also goes upon dry land, and has fabulous speed and the power of scenting things far off. It can also transform itself into different shapes, but always preserves something of its animal form.

That the runners in Eric's Saga have become a man and woman may be due to a natural connection with Thor's swift-footed companions, Tjalve and Röskva. But there seems here to be another possible connection, which Moltke Moe has suggested to me. The strange garment they wore is called in one MS. "kiafal" and in another "biafal." No word completely corresponding to this is known in Celtic; but there is a modern Irish word "cabhail" (pronounced "caval" == "a body of a shirt"), which shows so much similarity both in meaning and sound that there seems undoubtedly to be a connection here. That "caval," corrupted to "kiafal" (through the influence of similar-sounding names ?), has been transformed into "biafal" may be due to the influence of the Norse "bjalfi" or "bjalbi" (== a fur garment without sleeves). As their costume plays such an important part in the description of the runners, and special stress is laid upon the Celtic word for it, it is probable that this word was originally used as a name for the runners themselves--in legend and epic poetry there are many examples of people being named from their dress. But gradually the Celtic word used as a name has been replaced by the corresponding Old Norse "hakull" (or "hokull" == sleeveless cloak open at the sides; cf. "messe-hagel," chasuble) and its feminine derivative "hekla" (== sleeveless cloak, with or without a hood). The use of these two words of masculine and feminine gender may be due to conceptions of them as man and woman, derived from Tjalve and Röskva. In course of time it was natural that a personal name formed from the costume, like Hakull, should easily be replaced by a real man's name of similar sound, like "Haki," specially known in legend and epic poetry as a name of sea-kings, berserkers and troll-children. Then "Hekja" was derived from "Haki," in the same way as "Hekla" from "Hakull." Hekja as a name is not met with elsewhere.[323]

That the whole of this story of the runners in the Saga of Eric the Red has been borrowed from elsewhere appears also from its being badly fitted in; for the narrative of the saga continues without taking any notice of the finding of the sure tokens of Wineland: the self-sown wheat and the vine; and in the following spring there is even a dispute as to the direction in which the country is to be sought. Furthermore, after the discoveries of the runners Karlsevne continues to sail southward, at first, the same autumn, to Straumsfjord, and then still farther south the following summer, before he arrives at the country of the wheat and grapes that the runners had reached in a day and a half in a roadless land.

[Sidenote: Mythical figures: Thorhall and Tyrker]

The description of the stay in Straumsfjord also contains purely mythical features, such as Thorhall the Hunter's being absent for the stereotyped three days ("dœgr"), and having, when they find him, practised magic arts with the Red-Beard (Thor), as the result of which a whale is driven ashore (see p. 325). There is further a striking resemblance between the description of Thorhall's state when found and that of Tyrker after he had eaten the grapes. When, in Eric's Saga, they sought and found Thorhall on a steep mountain crag,

"he lay gazing up into the air with wide-open mouth and nostrils,
scratching and pinching himself and muttering something. They asked
why he lay there. He answered that that did not concern anybody, and
told them not to meddle with it; he had for the most part lived so,
said he, that they had no need to trouble about him. They asked him to
come home with them, and he did so."

In the Flateyjarbók's "Grönlendinga-þáttr" Tyrker was lost in the woods, and when Leif and his men went in search and found him again, he too behaved strangely.

"First he spoke for a long time in 'þýrsku,' and rolled his eyes many
ways and twisted his mouth; but they could not make out what he said.
After a while he said in Norse: I did not go much farther, and yet I
have a new discovery to tell of; I have found vines and grapes
('vínvið ok vínber')."

This shows how features taken from legends originally altogether different are mingled together in these sagas, in order to fill out the description; and it shows too how the same tale may take entirely different forms. Of Tyrker we hear further that "he was 'brattleitr' (with a flat face and abrupt forehead), had fugitive eyes, was freckled ('smáskitligr') in the face, small of stature and puny, but skilful in all kinds of dexterity." Thorhall, on the other hand, "was tall of stature, dark and troll-like," etc. (see p. 320), but he was also master of many crafts, was well acquainted with the uninhabited regions, and altogether had qualities different from most people. Both had long been with Eric the Red. There can scarcely be a doubt that these two legendary figures, perhaps originally derived from wholly different spheres, have been blended together.

[Sidenote: The stranded whale]

The whale that is driven ashore and that they feed on resembles the great fish that is cast ashore and that the Irish saint Brandan and his companions live on in the tale of his wonderful voyage (see below). This resemblance is confirmed by the statement in the Icelandic story that no one knew what kind of whale it was, not even Karlsevne, who had great experience of whales. There are, of course, no whales on the north-eastern coast of America that are not also found on the coasts of Greenland and Iceland; the incident therefore appears fictitious. The great whale in the legend of Brandan, on the other hand, is a fabulous monster. There is this distinction, it is true, that Karlsevne's people fall ill from eating the whale,[324] while it saves the lives of the Irish voyagers; but in both cases it is driven ashore after God, or a god, has been invoked in their need, and disappears again immediately (in the tale of Brandan it is devoured by wild beasts; in the saga it is thrown over the cliff). This difference can easily be explained by the whale in the Norse story having been sent by a heathen god, so that it was sacrilege to eat of it. In the tale of Brandan the whale is perhaps derived from Oriental legends [cf. De Goeje, 1891, p. 63]; it may, however, be a common northern feature.

[Sidenote: Eggs in the autumn and egg-gathering]

When it is stated of Straumsfjord that there were places where eggs could be gathered, and of Straumsey that "there were so many birds that one could scarcely put one's foot down between the eggs," this is evidently an entirely northern feature, brought in to decorate the tale, and brought in so infelicitously that they are made to find all this mass of eggs there in the _autumn_ (!) when they arrive. If Straumsfjord was in Nova Scotia there could not be eider-ducks nor gulls either[325] in sufficient number to form breeding-grounds of importance, and among sea-birds one would be more inclined to think of terns, as Professor R. Collett has suggested to me. As the coast is not described as one with steep cliffs, and there is mention of stepping between the eggs, auks, guillemots and similar sea-birds are out of the question, even if they occurred so far south.

[Sidenote: Wineland the equivalent of Fortunate Isles]

But then comes the most important part of the saga, the description of the country itself, where grew self-sown fields of wheat, and vines on the hills, where no snow fell and the cattle were out the whole winter, where the streams and the sea teemed with fish and the woods were full of deer.

Isidore says [in the "Etymologiarum," xiv. 6, 8] of the Fortunate Isles:

"The Insulæ Fortunatæ denote by their name that they produce all good
things, as though fortunate ('felices') and blessed with fertility of
vegetation. For of their own nature they are rich in valuable fruits
('poma,' literally tree-fruit or apples). The mountain-ridges are
clothed with self-grown ('fortuites') vines, and cornfields ('messis'
== that which is to be cut) and vegetables are common as grass [i.e.,
grow wild like grass, are self-sown]; thence comes the error of the
heathen, and that profane poetry regarded them as Paradise. They lie
in the ocean on the left side of Mauritania [Morocco] nearest to the
setting sun, and they are divided from one another by sea that lies
between." He also mentions the Gorgades, and the Hesperides.

These ideas of the Fortunate Isles were widely current in the Middle Ages. In the English work, "Polychronicon," by Ranulph Higden, of the fourteenth century, Isidore's description took the following form:

"A good climate have the Insulæ Fortunatæ that lie in the western
ocean, which were regarded by the heathen as Paradise by reason of the
fertility of the soil and of the temperate climate. For there the
mountain ridges are clothed with self-grown vines, and cornfields and
vegetables are common as grass [i.e., grow wild]. Consequently they
are called on account of the rich vegetation 'Fortunatæ,' that is to
say, 'felices' [happy, fertile], for there are trees that grow as high
as 140 feet...."

The resemblance between this description and that of Wineland is so close that it cannot be explained away as fortuitous; the most prominent features are common to both: the self-sown cornfields, the self-grown vines on the hills, and the lofty trees (cf. Pliny, below, p. 348), which are already present in the narrative of Leif's voyage (see above, p. 317). If we go back to antiquity and examine the general ideas of the Fortunate Land or the Fortunate Isles out in the ocean in the west, we find yet more points of resemblance. Diodorus [v. 19, 20] describes a land opposite Africa, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, as fertile and mountainous, but also to a large extent flat. (Wineland also had hills and lowlands.) It invites to amusements and delights.[326] The mountainous country has thick forests and all kinds of fruitful trees, and many streams; there is excellent hunting with game of all sorts, big and small, and the sea is full of fish (precisely as Wineland). Moreover, the air is extremely mild (as in Wineland), and there is plenty of fruit the whole year round, etc. The land was not known in former times, but some Phœnicians on a voyage along the African coast were overtaken by a storm, were driven about the ocean for many days, until they came thither (like Leif).

It is said of Wineland, in the Saga of Eric the Red, that "no snow at all fell there, and the cattle were out (in winter) and fed themselves," and in the Flateyjarbók we read that "there was no frost in the winter, and the grass withered little." These, we see, are pure impossibilities. As early as the Odyssey [iv. 566] it is said of the Elysian Fields in the west on the borders of the earth:

"There is never snow, never winter nor storm, nor streaming rain,
But Ocean ever sends forth the light breath of the west wind
To bring refreshment to men."

In the early civilisation of Babylon and Egypt this fortunate land seems to have been imagined as lying in the direction of the rising sun; but the ideas are always the same. An ancient Egyptian myth puts "Aalu" or "Hotep" (== place of food, land of eating), which is the abode of bliss and fortune, far in the east, where light conquers darkness.

"Both texts and pictures bear witness to the beauty which pervades
this abode of life; it was a Paradise as splendid as could be
imagined, 'the store-house of the great god'; where 'the corn grows
seven cubits high.' It was a land of eternal life; there, according to
the oldest Egyptian texts, the god of light, and with him the
departed, acquire strength to renew themselves and to arise from the
dead."[327]

In the same colours as these the Odyssey describes many fortunate lands and islands, such as the nymph Calypso's beautiful island Ogygia, far in the west of the ocean; and again "Scheria's delightful island" [vii. 79 ff.], where the Phæacians, "a people as happy as gods," dwell "far away amid the splashing waves of the ocean," where the mild west wind, both winter and summer, ever causes the fruit-trees and vines to blossom and bear fruit, and where all kinds of herbs grow all the year round (remark the similarity with Isidore's description). The fortunate isle of Syria, far in the western ocean, is also mentioned [xv. 402],

"North of Ortygia, towards the region where the sun sets;
Rich in oxen and sheep, and clothed with vines and wheat,"

where the people live free from want and sickness. These are the same ideas which were afterwards transferred to the legend of the Hyperboreans (cf. pp. 15 ff.).[328] It is natural that among the Greeks wine and the vine took a prominent place in these descriptions. In post-Homeric times the "Isles of the Blest" (Μακαρων νησοι) are described by Hesiod (and subsequently by Pindar) as lying in the western ocean--

"there they live free from care in the Isles of the Blest, by the
deep-flowing Ocean, the fortunate heroes to whom the earth gives
honey-sweet fruits three times a year."

It is these ideas--perhaps originally derived from the Orient--that have developed into the Insulæ Fortunatæ.

These islands are described by many writers of later antiquity. Pliny says [Nat. Hist., vi. 32 (37)] that according to some authors there lie to the west of Africa

"the Fortunate Isles and many others, whose number and distance are
likewise given by Sebosus. According to him the distance of the island
of Junonia from Gades is 750,000 paces; it is an equal distance from
this island westward to Pluvialia and Capraria. In Pluvialia there is
said to be no water but that which the rain brings. 250,000 paces
south-west of it and over against the left side of Mauritania
[Morocco] lie the Fortunate Isles, of which one is called Invallis on
account of its elevated form, the other Planaria on account of its
flatness. Invallis has a circumference of 300,000 paces, and the trees
on it are said to attain a height of 140 feet."

But as usual Pliny uncritically confuses statements from various sources, and he here adds information collected by the African king Juba about the Fortunate Isles. According to this they were six in number: Ombrios, two islands of Junonia, besides Capraria, Nivaria, and Canaria, so called from the many large dogs there, of which two were brought to Juba. Solinus mentions in one place [c. 23, 10] that there are three Fortunatæ Insulæ, but in another place [c. 56] he gives Juba's statement from Pliny. That these islands were located to the west of Africa is certainly due to the Phœnicians' and Carthaginians' knowledge of the Canary Islands, and Ptolemy also places them here (see above, p. 117). Strabo [i. 3] thinks that the Isles of the Blest lay west of the extremity of Maurusia (Morocco), in the region where the ends of Maurusia and Iberia meet. Their name shows that they lie near to the holy region (i.e., the Elysian Fields).

In his biography of the eminent Roman general Sertorius ("imperator" in Spain for several years, died in 72 B.C.), Plutarch also mentions the Isles of the Blest. He tells us that when Sertorius landed as an exile on the south-west coast of Spain (Andalusia),

"he found there some sailors newly arrived from the Atlantic Isles.
These are two in number, separated only by a narrow strait, and they
are 10,000 stadia (1000 geographical miles) from the African coast.
They are called the 'Isles of the Blest.' Rain seldom falls there, and
when it does so, it is in moderation; but they usually have mild
winds, which spread such abundance of dew that the soil is not only
good for sowing and planting, but produces of itself the most
excellent fruit, and in such abundance that the inhabitants have
nothing else to do but to abandon themselves to the enjoyment of
repose. The air is always fresh and wholesome, through the favourable
temperature of the seasons and their imperceptible transition.... So
that it is generally assumed, even among the barbarians, that these
are the Elysian Fields and the habitations of the blest, which Homer
has described with all the magic of poetry. When Sertorius heard of
these marvels he had a strong desire to settle in these islands, where
he might live in perfect peace and far from the evils of tyranny and
war."

But this remarkable man soon had fresh warlike under-takings to think about, so that he never went there. It appears too from the fragments that have come down to us of Sallust's Histories[329] that Sertorius did not visit these islands, but only wished to do so. In fragment 102 we read:

"It is related that he undertook a voyage far out into the ocean," and
Maurenbrecher adds that a scholium to Horace [Epod. 16, 42] says: "The
ocean wherein are the Insulæ Fortunatæ, to which Sallust in his
Histories says that Sertorius wished to retire when he had been
vanquished."

But in L. Annæus Florus, who lived under Hadrian (117-138 A.D.), we read [iii. 22]:[330]

"An exile and a wanderer on account of his banishment, this man [i.e.,
Sertorius] of the greatest but most fatal qualities filled seas and
lands with his misfortunes: now in Africa, now in the Balearic Isles
he sought fortune, was sent out into the ocean and reached the
Fortunate Isles: finally he raised Spain to conflict."

It thus appears that by Florus's time the idea had shaped itself that Sertorius really had sought and found these islands; which, besides, in part at all events, were thought to be the same as those said to have been already discovered by the Carthaginian Hanno on the west coast of Africa about 500 B.C.

Of great interest is the description which Horace gives in his Epodes [xvi. 39 ff.] of the Fortunate Isles in the ocean, though he does not mention them by name. He exhorts the Romans, who were suffering from the civil wars, to abandon the coast of Italy (the Etruscan coast) and sail thither, away from all their miseries. Lord Lytton[331] gave the following metrical translation of the poem:

Ye in whom manhood lives, cease woman wailings,
Wing the sail far beyond Etruscan shores.
Lo! where awaits an all-circumfluent ocean--
Fields, the Blest Fields we seek, the Golden Isles
Where teems a land that never knows the ploughshare--
Where, never needing pruner, laughs the vine--
Where the dusk fig adorns the stem it springs from,
And the glad olive ne'er its pledge belies--
There from the creviced ilex wells the honey;
There, down the hillside bounding light, the rills
Dance with free foot, whose fall is heard in music;
There, without call, the she-goat yields her milk,
And back to browse, with unexhausted udders,
Wanders the friendly flock; no hungry bear
Growls round the sheepfold in the starry gloaming,
Nor high with rippling vipers heaves the soil.
These, and yet more of marvel, shall we witness,
We, for felicity reserved; how ne'er
Dark Eurus sweeps the fields with flooding rain-storm,
Nor rich seeds parch within the sweltering glebe.
Either extreme the King of Heaven has tempered.
Thither ne'er rowed the oar of Argonaut,
The impure Colchian never there had footing.
There Sidon's trader brought no lust of gain;
No weary toil there anchored with Ulysses;
Sickness is known not; on the tender lamb
No ray falls baneful from one star in heaven.
When Jove's decree alloyed the golden age,
He kept these shores for one pure race secreted;
For all beside the golden age grew brass
Till the last centuries hardened to the iron,
Whence to the pure in heart a glad escape,
By favour of my prophet-strain is given.

Rendered into prose, Horace's poem will run somewhat as follows:

"Ye who have manliness, away with effeminate grief, and fly beyond the
Etruscan shore. There awaits us the all-circumfluent ocean: Let us
steer towards fields, happy fields and rich islands, _where the
untilled earth gives corn every year, and the vine uncut_ [i.e.,
unpruned, growing wild] _continually flourishes_, and the
never-failing branch of the olive-tree blossoms forth, and the fig
adorns its tree, honey flows from the hollow ilex, the light stream
bounds down from the high mountain on murmuring foot," etc.

We thus find here in Horace precisely the same ideas of the Elysian Fields or the Fortunate Isles that occur later in Isidore and in the saga's description of the fortunate Wineland; especially striking are the expressions about the corn that each year grows wild (on the unploughed earth) and the wild vine which continually yields fruit (blossoms, "floret").

These myths of the Fortunate Isles--originally derived from
conceptions of the happy existence of the elect after death (in the
Elysian Fields), for which reason they were called by the Greeks the
Isles of the Blest--have also, of course, been blended with Indian
myths of "Uttara Kuru." Among the Greeks they were sometimes the
subject of humorous productions; several such of the fifth century
B.C. are preserved in Athenæus. Thus Teleclides says: "Mortals live
there peacefully and free from fear and sickness, and all that they
need offers itself spontaneously. The gutter flows with wine, wheat
and barley bread fight before the mouths of the people for the favour
of being swallowed, the fish come into the house, offer themselves and
serve themselves up, a stream of soup bears warm pieces of meat on its
waves," etc. Cf. also Lucian's description of the Isle of the Blest in
Vera Historia (second century A.D.): "The vines bear fruit twelve
times a year ... instead of wheat the ears put forth little loaves
like sponges," etc. [Wieland, 1789, iv. p. 196].

[Sidenote: Schlaraffenland and Fyldeholm]

In the Middle Ages the tale of the land of desire was widespread: in
Spain it took the name of "Tierra del Pipiripáo" or "Dorado" (the land
of gold), or again "La Isla de Jauja," said to have been discovered by
the ship of General Don Fernando. In it are costly foods, rich stuffs
and cloths in the fields and on the trees, lakes and rivers of Malmsey
and other wines, springs of brandy, pools of lemonade, a mountain of
cheese, another of snow, which cools one in summer and warms in
winter, etc. In the Germanic countries this took the form of the
legend of Schlaraffenland.[332] This mythical country has in Norway
become "Fyldeholmen" (i.e., the island of drinking),[333] which shows
that to the Norwegians of later days wine or spirits were the most
important feature in the description of the land of desire, as the
wine was to the ancient Norsemen in the conception of Wineland.

To sum up, it appears to me clear that the saga's description of Wineland must in its essential features be derived from the myth of the Insulæ Fortunatæ. The representations of it might be taken directly from Isidore, who was much read in the Middle Ages, certainly in Iceland (where a partial translation of his work was made) and in Norway (he is often quoted in the "King's Mirror"), or orally from other old authorities, who gave still more detailed descriptions of these islands. But the difficulty is that the name of Wineland, connected with the ideas of the self-grown vine and the unsown wheat, is already found in Adam of Bremen (circa 1070, see above, pp. 195 ff.). We might therefore suppose that it was his mention of the country which formed the basis of the Icelandic representation of it, although his fourth book (the description of the isles of the North) seems otherwise to have been little known in the North at that time; but here again the difficulty presents itself that the later description, that of the saga, is more developed and includes several features which agree with the classical conceptions, but which are not yet found in Adam of Bremen. I think therefore that the matter may stand thus, that "Vínland hit Góða" was the Norsemen's name for "Insulæ Fortunatæ," and was in a way a translation thereof; and oral tales about the country--based on Isidore and later on other sources as well--may have formed the foundation of the statements both in Adam and in Icelandic literature. In the latter, then, an ever-increasing number of features from the classical conceptions have crystallised upon the nucleus, when once it was formed, especially through the clerical, classically educated saga-writers.

[Sidenote: Irish happy lands and Wineland]

As Norway, and still more Iceland (cf. pp. 167, 258), were closely connected in ancient days with Ireland, and as Norse literature in many ways shows traces of Irish influence, one is disposed to think that the ideas of Wineland may first have reached Iceland from that quarter. This exactly agrees with what was said at the beginning of this chapter, that the statements (in the Landnámabók) from the oldest Icelandic source, Are Frode, point directly to Ireland as the birthplace of the first reports of Wineland. We read in the Landnámabók:

"Hvítramanna-land, which some call 'Irland hit Mikla' [Ireland the
Great], lies westward in the ocean near Wineland (Vindland) the Good.
It is reckoned six 'dœgr's' sail from Ireland."

Nothing more is said about Wineland.[334] As it is added that Are Mársson's voyage to Hvítramanna-land

"was first related by Ravn 'Hlymreks-farer,' who had long been at
Limerick in Ireland,"

we see that Ravn, who was an Icelandic sailor of the beginning of the eleventh century, must have heard of both Hvítramanna-land and Wineland in Ireland, since otherwise he could not have known that one lay near the other.[335] But as Hvítramanna-land or "Great Ireland" is an Irish mythical country (see later), it becomes probable that Wineland the Good, at any rate in this connection, was one likewise. The old Irish legends mention many such fortunate islands in the western ocean, which have similar names, and which to a large extent are derived from the classical myths of the Elysian Fields and the Insulæ Fortunatæ. Voyages to them form prominent features of most of the Irish tales and legends. In the heathen tale of the Voyage of Bran ("Echtra Brain maic Febail," preserved in fifteenth and fourteenth century copies of a work of the eleventh century, but perhaps originally written down in the seventh century)[336] there are descriptions of: "Emain" or "Tír na-m-Ban" (the land of women), with thousands of amorous women and maidens, and "without care, without death, without any sickness or infirmity" (where Bran and his men live sumptuously each with his woman);[337] "Aircthech" (== the beautiful land); "Ciuin" (== the mild land), with riches and treasures of all colours, where one listens to lovely music, and drinks the most delicious wine; "Mag Mon" (== the plain of sports); "Imchiuin" (== the very mild land); "Mag Mell" (== the happy plain, the Elysium of the Irish), which is described as lying beneath the sea, where without sin, without crime, men and loving women sit under a bush at the finest sports, with the noblest wine, where there is a splendid wood with flowers and fruits and golden leaves, and the true scent of the vine; there is also "Inis Subai" (the isle of gladness), where all the people do nothing but laugh.[338] It is said in the same tale that "there are thrice fifty distant islands in the ocean to the west of us, each of them twice or thrice as large as Erin."

That western happy lands in the Irish legends (even in the Christian "Imram Maelduin") should often be depicted as the Land of Women ("Tír na-m-Ban") or Land of Virgins ("Tír na-n-Ingen"), with amorously longing women, might be thought to have some connection with Mahomet's Paradise and the Houris; but the erotically sensuous element is everywhere so prominent in mediæval Irish literature that this feature may be a genuine Irish one.[339] It must, by the way, be this "Tír na-n-Ingen" that we meet with again in the Faroese lay "Gongu-Rólv's kvæði," where the giant from Trollebotten carries Rolv to "Möyaland" (cf. Småmöyaland); there Rolv slept three nights with the fair "Lindin mjá" (== the slender lime-tree, i.e., maid), and on the third night she lost her virginity. But the other maidens all want to see him, they all want to torment him, some want to throw him into the sea,

"Summar vildu hann á gálgan föra Some would carry him to the gallows,
summar ríva hans hár, some would tear his hair,
uttan frúgvin Lindin mjá, except the damsel Lindin the slender,
hon fellir fyri hann tár." she shed tears for him.

She sends for the bird "Skúgv," which carries him on its back for seven days and six nights across the sea to the highest mountain in Trondhjem. [Cf. Hammershaimb, 1855, pp. 138 ff.]

The "Promised Land" ("Tír Tairngiri") with the "Happy Plain" ("Mag Mell")[340] became in the Christian Irish legends the earthly Paradise, "Terra Repromissionis Sanctorum" (the land of promise of the saints). Other names for the happy land or happy isles in the west are: "Hy Breasail" (== the fortunate isle), "Tír na-m-Beo" (== the land of the living), "Tír na-n-Óg" (== the land of youth), "Tír na-m-Buadha" (== the land of virtues), "Hy na-Beatha" (== the isle of life). The happy isle of "Hy Breasail," which was thought to be inhabited by living people, was also frequently called the "Great Land" (which when translated into Old Norse might become "Víðland"); just as the "Land of the Living," where there were only enticing women and maidens, and neither death nor sin nor offence, was called the "Great Strand" ("Trág Mór").[341] There is also mention of "Tír n-Ingnad" (land of marvels) and "Tírib Ingnad" (lands of marvels). This Irish series of names and conceptions for the same wonderful land (or strand) may well be thought to have been the origin of the name "Furðustrandir."[342] The Irish often imagined their Promised Land, with "Mag Mell" and also the land of women, as the sunken land under the sea (cf. p. 355), and called it "Tír fo-Thuin" (== the land under the wave).

[Sidenote: Brandan's Grape-Island]

It is not surprising that a name like "Vínland hit Góða" should have developed from such a world of ideas as this. But Moltke Moe has drawn my attention to yet another remarkable agreement, in the Grape-Island ("Insula Uvarum"), one of the fortunate isles visited by the Irish saint Brandan. In the Latin "Navigatio Sancti Brandani"--a description of Brandan's seven years' sea voyage in search of the "Promised Land"--it is related that one day a mighty bird came flying to Brandan and the brethren who were with him in the coracle; it had a branch in its beak with a bunch of grapes of unexampled size and redness[343] [cf. Numbers xiii. 23],[344] and it dropped the branch into the lap of the man of God. The grapes were as large as apples, and they lived on them for twelve days.

"Three days afterwards they reached the island; it was covered with
the thickest forests of vines, which bore grapes with such incredible
fertility that all the trees were bent to the earth; all with the same
fruit and the same colour; not a tree was unfruitful, and there were
none found there of any other sort."

Then this man of God goes ashore and explores the island, while the brethren wait in the boat (like Karlsevne and his men waiting for the runners), until he comes back to them bringing samples of the fruits of the island (as the runners brought with them samples of the products of Wineland). He says: "Come ashore and set up the tent, and regale yourselves with the excellent fruits of this land, which the Lord has shown us." For forty days they lived well on the grapes, and when they left they loaded the boat with as many of them as it would hold, exactly like Leif in the "Grönlendinga-þáttr," who loaded the ship's boat with grapes when they left Wineland; and like Thorvald at the same place, who collected grapes and vines for a cargo [cf. "Grönl. hist. Mind.," i. pp. 222, 230].

[Sidenote: The river at Hóp and the Styx]

The fortunate island on which the monk Mernoc lived (at the beginning of the "Navigatio") was called "Insula Deliciosa." The great river that Brandan found in the Terra Repromissionis, and that ran through the middle of the island, may be compared to the stream that Karlsevne found at Hóp in Wineland, which fell into a lake and thence into the sea, and where they entered the mouth of the river. But the river which divided the Terra Repromissionis, and which Brandan could not cross, was evidently originally the river of death, Styx or Acheron in Greek mythology ("Gjǫll" in Norse mythology). One might be tempted to suppose that, in the same way as the whole description of Wineland has been dechristianised from the Terra Repromissionis, the realistic, and therefore often rationalising, Icelanders have transformed the river in the Promised Land, the ancient river of death, into the stream at Hóp.

Other passages also of the descriptions of the Wineland voyages present similarities with Brandan's voyage; and similar resemblances are found with other Irish legends, so many, in fact, that they cannot be explained as coincidences. The "Navigatio Sancti Brandani" was written in the eleventh century, or in any case before 1100[345] (but parts of the legend of Brandan may belong to the seventh and eighth centuries). The work was widely diffused in Europe in the twelfth century, and was also well known in Iceland; we still possess an Old Norse translation of parts of it in the "Heilagra Manna sǫgur" [edited by Unger, Christiania, 1877, i.]. Through oral narratives the mythical features which are included in this legend have evidently helped to form the tradition of the Wineland voyages.

[Sidenote: Wine-fruit and wine in Irish legend]

In the tale of the voyage of Maelduin and his companions ("Imram Maelduin," see above, p. 336),[346] it is related that they came to an island where there were many trees, like willow or hazel, with wonderful fruit like apples, or wine-fruit, with a thick, large shell; its juice had so intoxicating an effect that Maelduin slept for a day and a night after having drunk it; and when he awoke, he told his companions to collect as much as they could of it, for the world had never produced anything so lovely. They then filled all their vessels with the juice, which they pressed out of the fruit, and left the island. They mixed the juice with water to mitigate its intoxicating and soporific effect, as it was so powerful.[347] This reminds us of Tyrker in the "Grönlendinga-þáttr," who gets drunk from eating the grapes he found.[348]

Wine is, moreover, a prominent feature in many of the Irish legends of
sea-voyages. The voyagers often find intoxicating drinks, which make
them sleep for several days, and they are often tormented by burning
thirst and come to islands with springs that give a marvellously
quickening drink. In the tale of the voyage of the three sons of Ua
Corra (twelfth century ?) they arrive at an island where a stream of
wine flows through a forest of oaks, which glitters enticingly with
juicy fruits. They ate of the apples, drank a little of the stream of
wine, and were immediately satisfied and felt neither wounds nor
sickness any more. In the tale of Maelduin there is an island with
soil as white as a feather and with a spring which on Wednesdays and
Fridays gives whey or water, on Sundays and the days of martyrs good
milk, but on the days of the Apostles, of Mary and of John the
Baptist, and on the great festivals it gives ale and wine [cf. Zimmer,
1889, pp. 163, 189].

[Sidenote: Resemblances to Lucian]

Brandan's Grape-island, Maelduin who intoxicates himself by eating the
wine-fruit, and the stream of wine flowing through the oak forest, all
bear a remarkable resemblance to what the Greek sophist and satirist
Lucian (second century A.D.) relates in his fables in the "Vera
Historia" about the seafarers who came to a lofty wooded island. As
they wandered through the woods they came to a river, which instead of
water ran with wine, like Chios wine. In many places it was broad and
deep enough to be navigable, and it had its source in many great
vines, which hung full of grapes. In the river were fish of the colour
and taste of wine. They swallowed some so greedily that they became
thoroughly intoxicated. But afterwards they had the idea of mixing
these wine-fish with water-fish, whereby they lost the too-powerful
taste of wine and were a good dish. After wading through the river of
wine they came upon some remarkable vines, the upper part of which
were like well-developed women down to the belt. Their fingers ran out
into twigs full of grapes, their heads were covered with
vine-branches, leaves and grapes, instead of hair. "The ladies kissed
us on the mouth," says Lucian, "but those who were kissed became drunk
on the spot and reeled. Only their fruit they would not allow us to
take, and they cried out in pain if we plucked a grape or two off
them. On the other hand, some of them showed a desire to pair with us,
but two of my companions who complied with them had to pay dearly for
it; for ... they grew together with them in such a way that they
became one stem with common roots." After this strange experience the
voyagers filled their empty barrels partly with ordinary water, partly
with wine from the river, and on the following morning they left the
island. In the Isle of the Blest, at which they afterwards arrived,
there were, in addition to many rivers of water, of honey, of
sweet-scented essences and of oil, seven rivers of milk and eight of
wine. We even find a parallel in Lucian to Maelduin's white island
with the springs of milk and wine, as the travellers come to a sea of
milk, where there was a great island of cheese, covered with vines
full of grapes; but these yielded milk instead of wine [cf. Wieland,
1789, iv. pp. 150 ff., 188 f., 196]. A direct literary connection
between Lucian and the Irish myths can hardly be probable, as he is
not thought to have been known in Western Europe before the fourteenth
century; but he was much read in Eastern Europe, and oral tales
founded on his stories may have reached the Irish. The resemblances
are so pronounced and so numerous that it does not seem very probable
that they should be wholly accidental. Such an oral connection might,
for instance, have been brought about by the Scandinavians, who had
much intercourse with Miklagard (Byzantium), or by the Arabs, who in
fact preserved a great part of Greek literature, and who were in
constant communication both with Celts and with Scandinavians.

[Sidenote: Connection of the Brandan legend with northern waters]

That a mythical island like the Isle of Grapes--or perhaps others as well, such as the "Insula Deliciosa"--might be the origin of the "Vinland hit Góða" of the Icelanders, to which one sailed from Greenland (and of Adam of Bremen's Winland), appears natural also from the fact that many of the islands and tracts that are mentioned in the "Navigatio," and that for the most part are also mentioned in the older tale of Maelduin, are undoubtedly connected with northern and western waters. That this must be so is easily understood when one considers the voyages of Irish monks to the Faroes and Iceland. The Sheep Island, which was full of sheep, and where Brandan obtained his paschal lamb, must be the Faroes, where the sheep are mentioned even by Dicuil (see p. 163), just as the island with the many birds also reminds us of Dicuil's account of these islands; the island on the borders of Hell, whose steep cliffs were black as coal, where one of Brandan's monks, when he set foot ashore, was instantly seized and burnt by demons, and which at their departure they saw covered with fire and flames, may have some connection with Iceland.[349] But it also bears some resemblance to the Hell Island that Lucian's voyagers come to, surrounded by steep cliffs, where there were stinking fumes of asphalt, sulphur, pitch, and roasted human beings. When Brandan arrives at the curdled sea ("mare quasi coagulatum"), and has to sail through darkness before he comes to the Land of Happiness, or when we hear of a thick fog like a wall about the kingdom of Manannan, we again think of the northern regions where the Liver Sea lay, and where Adam of Bremen had his dark or mist-filled sea.

[Sidenote: Classical roots of the Brandan legend]

While thus many features connect the legend of Brandan with northern
waters, it has, on the other hand--like many other Irish myths--its
roots far down in the mythical conceptions of the classics. Above all,
Brandan's Paradise or "Promised Land of the Saints," Terra
Repromissionis Sanctorum, is nothing but the Greeks' Isles of the
Blest, blended with ideas from the Bible. As shown by Zimmer [1889,
pp. 328 ff.], the Imram Maelduin (which to a large extent forms the
foundation of the Navigatio St. Brandani) and other Irish tales of
sea-voyages have great similarity to Virgil's Æneid, and are composed
on its model. We have already said that Brandan's Grape-island may
have some connection with Lucian. From him is possibly also derived
Brandan's great whale, "Iasconicus," on whose back they live and
celebrate Easter. But similar big fishes are known from old Indian
legends, from the legends about Alexander, etc. It may also be
mentioned that in the Breton legend corresponding to Brandan's, that
of St. Machutus (written down by Bili, deacon at Aleth, ninth
century), the latter and Brandan came to an island where they find the
dead giant "Mildu," whom Machutus awakens and baptizes and who, wading
through the sea, tries to draw their ship to the Paradise-island of
"Yma," which he says is surrounded by a wall of shining gold, like a
mirror, without any visible entrance. But a storm raises the sea and
bursts the cable by which he is towing them. Humboldt already saw in
this giant the god Cronos, who, according to Plutarch, lay sleeping on
an island in the Cronian Sea to the north-west of Ogygia, which lay
five days' voyage to the west of Britain (see above, p. 156). It is
probably the same giant who in the tale of Brandan written in Irish
("Imram Brenaind") has become a beautiful maiden, whiter than snow or
sea-spray; but a hundred feet high, nine feet across between the
breasts, and with a middle finger seven feet long. She is lying
lifeless, killed by a spear through the shoulder; but Brandan awakens
and baptizes her. She belongs to the sea-people, who are awaiting
redemption. As, in answer to Brandan's question, she prefers going
straight to heaven to living, she dies again immediately without a
sigh after taking the sacrament [cf. Schirmer, 1888, pp. 30, 72;
Zimmer, 1889, p. 136; De Goeje, 1891, p. 69]. This maiden is evidently
connected with the supernaturally beautiful, big, and white king's
daughter from the Land of Virgins ("Tír na-n-Ingen") who seeks the
protection of Finn MacCumaill, and who is also pierced by a spear [cf.
Zimmer, 1889, pp. 269, 325]. Thus do mythical beings transform
themselves till they become unrecognisable. The same woman is found
again in Iceland as late as the seventeenth century.[350]

[Sidenote: The Brandan legend and Norse literature]

In many of its features the Brandan legend, or similar Irish legends,
may be shown to have had influence on Norse literature. The theft of
the neck-chain (or bridle ?) by one of the brethren, who comes to
grief thereby, in the Navigatio and in other Irish tales, is found
again, as Moltke Moe points out to me, in the story of Thorkel Adelfar
in Saxo Grammaticus, as a theft of jewels and of a cloak, through
which the thieves also come to grief. The great fish (whale)
"Iasconicus," of which Brandan relates that it tries in vain to bite
its own tail, is evidently the Midgardsworm of Norse literature. In
the same way the little, apparently innocent, but supernatural cat in
the "Imram Maelduin" which suddenly destroys the man who steals the
neck-chain may be connected with the cat that Thor tries to lift in
Utgard. It is doubtless the same little cat that three young priests
took with them on their voyage in another Irish legend [in the Book of
Leinster, of the beginning of the twelfth century]. In the "Imram
Brenaind" this little cat they took with them has grown into a monkey
as large as a young ox, which swims after Brandan's boat and wants to
swallow it [cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 139]. Again, quite recently Von Sydow
[1910, pp. 65 ff.] has shown that the Snorra-Edda's myth of Thor's
journey to Utgard is based on Irish myths and tales.

[Sidenote: The happy land in the west known in Northern Europe]

Legends of a happy land or an island far over the sea towards the sunset were evidently widely diffused in Northern Europe in those days, outside Ireland. In Anglo-Saxon literature there is a dialogue between Adrianus and Ritheus (probably of the tenth century), where we read:

"Tell me where the sun shines at night."... "I tell you in three
places: first in the belly of the whale that is called 'Leuiathan';
and the second season it shines in Hell; and the third season it
shines upon the island that is called 'Glið,' and there the souls of
holy men repose till doomsday."[351]

This Glið (i.e., the glittering land) is evidently the Land of the Blest, Brandan's Terra Repromissionis, that lies in dazzling sunshine, after one has passed through darkness and mist; but whether the myth reached the Anglo-Saxons from the Irish seems doubtful.

Pseudo-Gildas's description (twelfth century) of the isle of "Avallon" (the apple-island of Welsh myth) is also of interest; it is connected with exactly the same ideas as the Irish happy isles: