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],