FIRST NORSE ACCOUNT, IN HAUK'S BOOK
The earliest manuscript of the first distinct account of the
Norse Markland is included in the compilation known as Hauk's
1 Portolano Laurenziano-Gaddiano, 1351; see PI. 5 of facsimile in Portfolio 5 of
Theobald Fischer: Sammlung mittelalterlicher Welt- und Seekarten italienischen
Ursprungs, i vol. of text and 17 portfolios containing photographs of maps, Venice,
1877-1886.
Catalan atlas, 1375. Pis. 11-14 in A. E. Nordenskiold: Periplus: An Essay on
the Early History of Charts and Sailing-Directions, transl. by F. A. Bather. Stock-
holm, 1897.
Pareto map, 1455, PI. 5 in atlas accompanying Konrad Kretschmer: Die Ent-
deckung Amerika's in ihrer Bedeutung fur die Geschichte des Weltbildes, 2 vols.
(text and atlas), Berlin, 1892 (our Fig. 21).
1 M. A. P. d'Avezac: Notice des decouvertes faites au Moyen Age dans 1'Ocean
Atlantique anterieurement aux grandes explorations portugaises du quinzieme
siecle, Paris, 1845, pp. 8-9. See "I de Madera" on Benincasa map, 1482, in Kretsch-
mer. atlas, PI. 4 (our Fig. 22).
THE ARNA-MAGNAEAN ACCOUNT 115
Book, 3 from Hauk Erlendsson, for whom and partly by whom it
was prepared, necessarily before his death in 1334, but probably
after he was given a certain title in 1305. Perhaps 1330 may
mark the time of its completion. Along with divers other
documents, it copies from some unknown original the saga of
Eric the Red, sometimes called the saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni,
an ancestor of the compiler, whose adventures as an early
explorer of northeastern North America constitute a conspicuous
feature of the narrative. Some parts of the saga of Eric the Red
as thus transcribed, especially toward its ending, cannot be
much older than the time of transcription, but verses embedded
in other parts have been identified as necessarily of the eleventh
century; and the body of the tale is, for the greater part,
manifestly archaic.
ANOTHER ACCOUNT, IN THE ARNA-MAGNAEAN MANUSCRIPT
Beside Hauk's Book, there is a corroborative, independent,
but almost identical manuscript copy of the saga No. 557 of the
Arna-Magnaean collection at Copenhagen.
This saga 4 tells us:
Thence they sailed away beyond the Bear Islands with northerly winds.
They were out two daegr (days); then they discovered land and rowed
thither in boats and explored the country and found there many flat stones
(hellur) so large that two men could well spurn soles upon them [lie at full
length upon them, sole to sole]. There were many Arctic foxes there.
They gave a name to the land and called it Helluland.
Thence they sailed two daegr and bore away from the south toward
the southeast and they found a wooded country and on it many animals;
an island lay off the land toward the southeast; they killed a bear on this
8 Fully set forth in A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good, London,
1890; summarized in W. H. Babcock: Early Norse Visits to North America, Smith-
sonian Misc. Colls., Vol. 59, No. 19, Washington, D. C., 1913, pp. 64 et seq.
4 Reeves, pp. 42 et seq. This work gives facsimiles of the pages in Hauk's Book
dealing with the saga of Eric the Red, as well as the printed text in Icelandic, also a
translation and notes distinguishing slight divergencies of Arna Magnaean MS. 557.
I have followed the latter as slightly preferable and equally authentic and archaic
in substance. William Hovgaard (The Voyages of the Norsemen to America, New
York, 1914. P- 103) translates a little differently from Reeves in details but gives
much the same purport.
ii6 MARKLAND
and called it Blarney (Bear Island) ; but the country they called Markland
(Forest Land).
When two daegr had elapsed they descried land, and they sailed off
this land. There was a cape (ness) to which they came. They beat into
the wind along this coast, having the land on the starboard (right) side.
This was a bleak coast with long and sandy shores. They went ashore
in boats and found the keel of a ship, so they called itKjalarness(Keelness)
there; they likewise gave a name to the strands and called them Furdu-
strandir (Wonder Strands) because they were so long to sail by. Then
the country became indented with bays [or "fiord-cut," as Dr. Olson trans-
lates] and they steered their ships into a bay. . . The country round
about was fair to look upon. . . There was tall grass there.
A very severe winter, however, drove them far southward to a
warmer bay, or hop, where they dwelt for nearly a year among
the characteristic products of Wineland; but at last withdrew
after an onslaught of the Indians.
Probably it was from this narrative that Arna-Magnaean
Manuscript 194, an ancient geographic miscellany, partly in
Icelandic, partly in Latin, derived the following statement,
generally ascribed 5 to Abbot Nicholas of Thingeyri who died
in 1159.
Southward from Greenland is Helluland, then comes Markland; thence
it is not far to Wineland the Good, which some men believe extends from
Africa, and if this be so there is an open sea flowing between Wineland and
Markland. It is said that Thorfinn Karlsefni hewed a "house-neat-tim-
ber" and then went to seek Wineland the Good, and came to where they
believed this land to be, but they did not succeed in exploring it or in
obtaining any of its products. 6
The foregoing view of the relative positions of these regions
along the coast is also illustrated in the well-known map 7 (Fig.
1
of Sigurdr Stefansson (1570, or 1590, according to Storm)
which was evidently based on surviving Icelandic traditions.
5 For example by Joseph Fischer: The Discoveries of the Norsemen in America,
With Special Relation to Their Early Cartographical Representation, transl. by
B. H. Soulsby, London, 1003, pp. 7-8.
6 Thus quoted in Reeves, p. 15. See also Hovgaard, p. 79, where the obscure
phrase in quotation marks above is rendered "Karlsefni cut wood for a house
ornament."
7 Thormodus Torfaeus: Gronlandia Antiqua, seu veteris Gronlandiae descriptio,
Copenhagen, 1706, Tabula II, after p. 20. See also footnote 20, Chapter VII.
LATER DERIVATIVE RECORDS 117
LATER DERIVATIVE RECORDS
