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].
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.
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]