The Discoveries of America to the Year 1525

by Arthur James Weise

[51] Narrative of an expedition to the east coast of Greenland, sent by order of the king of Denmark, in search of the lost colonies, under the command of Captain W. A. Graah, of the Danish royal navy. Translated from the Danish by the late G. Gordon Macdougall, F.R.S.N.A., for the Royal Geographical Society of London. London, 1837. pp. 106, 107.

[52] “Meira var thar jafndaegri enn á Graenlandi edr Íslandi, sól hafdi thar eyktarstad ok dagmálastad um skamdegi.”

“Dag-mál, n. (vide dagr), prop. ‘day-meal,’ one of the divisions of the day, usually about eight or nine o’clock, A.M.; the Latin hora tertia is rendered by ‘er vér köllum dagmál,’ which we call d., Hom. [Homiliu-bók], 142; enn er ekki lidit af dagmálum, Hom. (St.) 10. Acts 11, 15; in Glúm. [Viga-Glúms Saga], 342, we are told that the young Glúm was very lazy, and lay in bed till day-meal every morning, cp. also 343; Hrafn. [Hrafnkéls Saga] 28 and O. H. L. [Olafs Saga Helga Legendaria] 18—áeinum morni milli rismála ok dagmála—where distinction is made between rismal (rising time) and dagmál, so as to make a separate dagsmark (q. v.) of each of them; and again, a distinction is made between ‘midday’ and dagmal, Ísl. [Islenzkar], 11, 334. The dagmal is thus midway between ‘rising’ and ‘midday,’ which accords well with the present use. The word is synonymous with dagver darmál, breakfast-time, and denotes the hour when the ancient Icelanders used to take their chief meal, opposed to náttmál, night-meal or supper-time, Fms. [Fornmanna Sögur], viii, 330; even the MSS. use dagmál and dagverdarmál indiscriminately; cp. also Sturl. [Sturlunga Saga] 111, 4 C; Rb. [Rimbegla], 452 says that at full moon the ebb takes place ‘at dagmá-lum.’ To put the dagmál at 7:30 A.M., as Pál Vidalin does, seems neither to accord with the present use nor the passage in Glúm or the eccl. hora tertia, which was the nearest hour answering to the Icel. calculation of the day. In Fb. [Flateyjar bók] 1,539, it is said that the sun set at ‘eykd’ (i. e. half-past three o’clock), but rose at ‘dagmál,’ which puts the dagmal at 8:30 A.M. Compds. dagmála-stadr, m. the place of d. in the horizon, Fb. [Flateyjar bók].”

“Eykt, eykd, f. three or half-past three o’clock, P.M.; many commentaries have been written upon this word, as by Pál Vidalin Skyr, Finn Johnson in H. E. [Historia Ecclesiastica Islandiæ] 1. 153 sqq. note 6, and in Horologium, etc. The time of eykd is clearly defined in K. Th. K. [Kristinnrettr Thorláks ok Ketils], 92 as the time when the sun has past two parts of the ‘utsudr’ (q. v.) and has one part left, that is to say, half-past three o’clock, P.M.: it thus nearly coincides with the eccl. Lat. nona (three o’clock, P.M.); and both eykt and nona are therefore used indiscriminately in some passages. Sunset at the time of ‘eykd’ is opposed to sunrise at the time of ‘dagmal,’ q. v. In Norway ‘ykt’ means a luncheon taken about half-past three o’clock. But the passage in Edda—that autumn ends and winter begins at sunset at the time of eykt—confounded the commentators who believed it to refer to the conventional Icel. winter, which (in the old style) begins with the middle of October, and lasts six months. In the latitude of Reykholt—the residence of Snorri—the sun at this time sets about half-past four. Upon this statement the commentators have based their reasoning both in regard to dagmál and eykt, placing the eykt at half-past four, P.M., and dagmal at half-past seven, A.M., although this contradicts the definition of these terms in the law. The passage in Edda probably came from a foreign source, and refers not to the Icel. winter but to the astronomical winter, viz., the winter solstice or the shortest day; for sunset at half-past three is suited not to Icel., but to the latitude of Scotland and the southern parts of Scandinavia. The word is also curious from its bearing upon the discovery of America by the ancients, vide Fb. [Flateyjar-bók] l. c. This sense (half-past three) is now obsolete in Icel., but eykt is in freq. use in the sense of trihorium, a time of three hours; whereas in the oldest sagas no passage has been found bearing this sense,—the Bs. [Biskupa Sögur] 1, 385, 446, and Hem. [Hemings-thattr] l. c., are of the 13th and 14th centuries. In Norway ykt is freq. used metaph. of all the four meal times in the day, morning-ykt, midday-ykt, afternoon-ykt (or ykt proper), and even-ykt. In old MSS., Grág., K. Th. K. Hem. Heid. S. [Grágás, Kristinnrettr, Thorláks ok Ketils, Hemings-thattr, Heidarviga Saga], this word is always spelt eykd or eykth, shewing the root to be ‘auk’ with the fem. inflex. added; it probably first meant the eke-meal, answering to Engl. lunch, and thence came to mean the time of day at which this meal was taken. The eccl. law dilates upon the word, as the Sabbath was to begin at ‘hora nona’; hence the phrase, eykt helgr dagr....

“Eyktar-stadr. m. the place of the sun at half-past three, P.M.; meira var, thar jafndaegri enn á Graenlandi edr Íslandi, sól hafdi thar eyktar-stad ok dagmála-stad um skamdegi, Fb. [Flateyjar bók] 1, 539,—this passage refers to the discovery of America; but in A. A. [Antiquitates Americanæ], l. c., it is wrongly explained as denoting the shortest day nine hours long, instead of seven; it follows that the latitude fixed by the editors of A. A. [Antiquitates Americanæ] is too far to the south.”

“Dagr, m. ... a day, ... 5. the day is in Icel. divided according to the position of the sun above the horizon; these fixed traditional marks are called dags-mörk, day-marks, and are substitutes for the hours of modern times, viz. ris-mál or midr-morgun, dag-mál, há-degi, mid-degi or mid-mundi, nón, midr-aptan, nátt-mál.”

“Stadr, m., gen. stadar, dat. stad, and older stadi, pl. stadir: ... a ‘stead,’ place, abode.”—An Icelandic-English dictionary based on the MS. collections of the late Richard Cleasby, enlarged and completed by Gudbrand Vigfusson, M. A. Oxford, 1874.

[53] Thormod Torfason, or Torfæus, as his name is Latinized, in the addenda of his History of Ancient Vinland (Historia Vinlandiæ Antiquæ), printed at Copenhagen, in 1705, explains the meaning of the words, saying that the sun in Vinland, on the shortest day, was six hours above the horizon, which would imply that this land lay between the fifty-eighth and sixty-first parallels of north latitude. “Torfæus confirms his interpretation by the authority of Arngrim Jonas, a learned Icelander who flourished at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century, and who was deemed a profound astronomer. In his ‘History of Greenland,’ he thus renders the passage we are considering: ‘There is in Vinland no winter, no cold, no frost as in Iceland or Greenland; inasmuch as the sun, on the very day of the winter solstice (they had no dials there), passes about six hours above the horizon.’ Having cited this passage from Arngrim Jonas, Torfæus proceeds: ‘This meaning I had long ago given this passage, first on the authority (if I rightly understood him) of Bryniulf Sveinson, the most learned of all the bishops of Skalkholt, to whom I was sent, while yet a youth, in the year 1662, with royal letters from my gracious master, King Frederick the Third, for the purpose of learning the genuine signification of the more difficult ancient words and phrases; and, then, from the necessary correspondence of the time of sunset with that of sunrise.’”—(The Discovery of America by the Northmen. By E. Everett. North American Review. January, 1838. vol. xlvi. pp. 179-188. Vide Historia Vinlandiæ Antiquæ, seu partis Americæ Septentrionalis. Per Thormodum Torfæum. Havniæ, 1705. Addenda.)

Professor Charles C. Rafn, secretary of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, gives this rendition of the passage: “When the day is shortest the sun there has a place (is above the horizon) from half-past seven before noon till half-past four in the afternoon.”—Antiq. Amer. p. 436. Vide Discovery of America. Beamish. pp. 64, 65. According to Prof. Rafn, the Northmen built their winter-quarters on the shore of Mount Hope bay, Rhode Island; the day, nine hours long, indicating the latitude of 41° 24´ 10´´.

[54] The saga of Thorfinn Karlsefne and Snorro Thorbrandson (Saga Thorfinns Karlsefnis ok Snorra Thorbrandssonar). This legend is written on vellum, and is one of the valuable Icelandic manuscripts called the Arna-Magnœan collection, which is preserved in the library of the university of Copenhagen. The manuscripts were bequeathed to the university by Arne Magnussen, or, as his name is Latinized, Arnus Magnœus, an Icelandic scholar. The saga of Thorfinn is supposed to have been compiled in the fourteenth century.