Page:Legendaryislands00babcuoft.djvu/134

 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 8) 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.