Schlaraffenland and Fyldeholm
In the Middle Ages the tale of the land of desire was widespread: in Spain it took the name of “Tierra del Pipiripáo” or “Dorado” (the land of gold), or again “La Isla de Jauja,” said to have been discovered by the ship of General Don Fernando. In it are costly foods, rich stuffs and cloths in the fields and on the trees, lakes and rivers of Malmsey and other wines, springs of brandy, pools of lemonade, a mountain of cheese, another of snow, which cools one in summer and warms in winter, etc. In the Germanic countries this took the form of the legend of Schlaraffenland.[332] This mythical country has in Norway become “Fyldeholmen” (i.e., the island of drinking),[333] which shows that to the Norwegians of later days wine or spirits were the most important feature in the description of the land of desire, as the wine was to the ancient Norsemen in the conception of Wineland.
To sum up, it appears to me clear that the saga’s description of Wineland must in its essential features be derived from the myth of the Insulæ Fortunatæ. The representations of it might be taken directly from Isidore, who was much read in the Middle Ages, certainly in Iceland (where a partial translation of his work was made) and in Norway (he is often quoted in the “King’s Mirror”), or orally from other old authorities, who gave still more detailed descriptions of these islands. But the difficulty is that the name of Wineland, connected with the ideas of the self-grown vine and the unsown wheat, is already found in Adam of Bremen (circa 1070, see above, [pp. 195 ff.]). We might therefore suppose that it was his mention of the country which formed the basis of the Icelandic representation of it, although his fourth book (the description of the isles of the North) seems otherwise to have been little known in the North at that time; but here again the difficulty presents itself that the later description, that of the saga, is more developed and includes several features which agree with the classical conceptions, but which are not yet found in Adam of Bremen. I think therefore that the matter may stand thus, that “Vínland hit Góða” was the Norsemen’s name for “Insulæ Fortunatæ,” and was in a way a translation thereof; and oral tales about the country—based on Isidore and later on other sources as well—may have formed the foundation of the statements both in Adam and in Icelandic literature. In the latter, then, an ever-increasing number of features from the classical conceptions have crystallised upon the nucleus, when once it was formed, especially through the clerical, classically educated saga-writers.
Irish happy lands and Wineland
As Norway, and still more Iceland (cf. [pp. 167], [258]), were closely connected in ancient days with Ireland, and as Norse literature in many ways shows traces of Irish influence, one is disposed to think that the ideas of Wineland may first have reached Iceland from that quarter. This exactly agrees with what was said at the beginning of this chapter, that the statements (in the Landnámabók) from the oldest Icelandic source, Are Frode, point directly to Ireland as the birthplace of the first reports of Wineland. We read in the Landnámabók:
“Hvítramanna-land, which some call ‘Irland hit Mikla’ [Ireland the Great], lies westward in the ocean near Wineland (Vindland) the Good. It is reckoned six ‘dœgr’s’ sail from Ireland.”
Nothing more is said about Wineland.[334] As it is added that Are Mársson’s voyage to Hvítramanna-land
“was first related by Ravn ‘Hlymreks-farer,’ who had long been at Limerick in Ireland,”
we see that Ravn, who was an Icelandic sailor of the beginning of the eleventh century, must have heard of both Hvítramanna-land and Wineland in Ireland, since otherwise he could not have known that one lay near the other.[335] But as Hvítramanna-land or “Great Ireland” is an Irish mythical country (see later), it becomes probable that Wineland the Good, at any rate in this connection, was one likewise. The old Irish legends mention many such fortunate islands in the western ocean, which have similar names, and which to a large extent are derived from the classical myths of the Elysian Fields and the Insulæ Fortunatæ. Voyages to them form prominent features of most of the Irish tales and legends. In the heathen tale of the Voyage of Bran (“Echtra Brain maic Febail,” preserved in fifteenth and fourteenth century copies of a work of the eleventh century, but perhaps originally written down in the seventh century)[336] there are descriptions of: “Emain” or “Tír na-m-Ban” (the land of women), with thousands of amorous women and maidens, and “without care, without death, without any sickness or infirmity” (where Bran and his men live sumptuously each with his woman);[337] “Aircthech” (== the beautiful land); “Ciuin” (== the mild land), with riches and treasures of all colours, where one listens to lovely music, and drinks the most delicious wine; “Mag Mon” (== the plain of sports); “Imchiuin” (== the very mild land); “Mag Mell” (== the happy plain, the Elysium of the Irish), which is described as lying beneath the sea, where without sin, without crime, men and loving women sit under a bush at the finest sports, with the noblest wine, where there is a splendid wood with flowers and fruits and golden leaves, and the true scent of the vine; there is also “Inis Subai” (the isle of gladness), where all the people do nothing but laugh.[338] It is said in the same tale that “there are thrice fifty distant islands in the ocean to the west of us, each of them twice or thrice as large as Erin.”
That western happy lands in the Irish legends (even in the Christian “Imram Maelduin”) should often be depicted as the Land of Women (“Tír na-m-Ban”) or Land of Virgins (“Tír na-n-Ingen”), with amorously longing women, might be thought to have some connection with Mahomet’s Paradise and the Houris; but the erotically sensuous element is everywhere so prominent in mediæval Irish literature that this feature may be a genuine Irish one.[339] It must, by the way, be this “Tír na-n-Ingen” that we meet with again in the Faroese lay “Gongu-Rólv’s kvæði,” where the giant from Trollebotten carries Rolv to “Möyaland” (cf. Småmöyaland); there Rolv slept three nights with the fair “Lindin mjá” (== the slender lime-tree, i.e., maid), and on the third night she lost her virginity. But the other maidens all want to see him, they all want to torment him, some want to throw him into the sea,