The existing drawing of the runic stone from Hönen, Ringerike (S. Bugge, 1902)
In prose this verse may, according to Bugge, be rendered somewhat as follows:
“They came out [into the ocean] and over wide expanses (‘vîtt’), and needing (‘þurfa’) cloth to dry themselves on (‘þerru’) and food (‘áts’), away towards Wineland, up into the ice in the uninhabited country. Evil can take away luck, so that one dies early.”
Bugge regards this reading of this somewhat difficult inscription as doubtful; but if it is correct, this verse may be part of an inscription cut upon one or more stones in memory of a young man (or perhaps several) from Ringerike, who took part in an expedition by sea. According to his explanation, they were then driven far out into the ocean in the direction of Wineland, and were lost, perhaps in the ice on the east coast of Greenland (which in the sagas is generally called the uninhabited country, “ubygð”); they abandoned their ship and had to take to the drift-ice. He (or they) to whom the inscription refers thereby met his death at an early age, while at any rate some one must have made his way back and brought the tale of the voyage. Probably there was a commencement of the inscription, now lost, giving the name of the young man, who must certainly have been of good birth; for otherwise, as Bugge points out, a memorial with an inscription in verse would hardly have been raised to him. He or his family belonged to Ringerike, and to the neighbourhood in which the stone was put up.
The form of the runes makes it probable, according to Bugge, that the inscription dates from the eleventh century, and perhaps from the period between 1000 and 1050; scarcely before that, though it may be later. The inscription would thus acquire a value as possibly the earliest document in which Wineland is mentioned. What kind of expedition the inscription records we cannot tell; there is nothing to show that it was a real Wineland voyage; the words seem rather to point to their having been driven against their will out to sea in the direction of “Wineland,” whether we are to regard this as the Wineland of myth or as a historical country; it might well be used figuratively in an epitaph to describe more graphically how far they went from the beaten track. It may equally well have been on a voyage to Ireland, the Faroes, Iceland, or merely to the north of Norway that the disaster occurred, and they were driven by storms to the Greenland ice; but since it cannot be denied that, as the verse has been translated, the expressions appear somewhat unnatural, it is difficult to form any opinion as to this.[21]
If this runic inscription from Ringerike has been correctly copied and interpreted—which, as has been said, is uncertain—then this and Adam of Bremen’s information from Denmark would show that Wineland was known and discussed in various parts of the North in the eleventh century, long before Icelandic literature began to be put into writing. But strangely enough, in the Norwegian thirteenth-century work, “Historia Norwegiæ,” no mention is made of Wineland, although in other respects the author has made extensive use of Adam of Bremen’s work; he merely states that Greenland approaches the African Islands, by which, as pointed out above ([p. 1]), he shows clearly enough that Wineland was regarded as belonging to the African Islands, or Insulæ Fortunatæ. The “King’s Mirror,”[22] which gives a detailed description of Greenland, does not mention Wineland, although the author evidently held the view that Greenland approached the universal continent (i.e., Africa) on the south. The knowledge of it must soon have been forgotten in Norway, or it was regarded as a mythical country, while the tradition persisted longer in Iceland.
Bishop Eric seeks Wineland
The last time we meet with the name of Wineland in connection with a voyage is in the “Islandske Annaler,”[23] where it is related in the year 1121 that “Eirikr, bishop of Greenland [also called Eirikr Upsi], went out to seek (leita) Wineland.” But we are not told anything more of this expedition. The use of “leita” shows that Wineland was not a known country, it can only apply to lands about which legends or reports are current; just in the same way Gardar in the Sturlubók “went to seek (‘fór at leita’) Snælandz” on the advice of his mother, who had second sight (vol. i. p. 255), or Ravna-Floki “fór at leita Gardarshólms” (vol. i. p. 257), and Eric the Red “ætlaði at leita lands þess” which Gunnbjörn had seen, etc. (vol. i. p. 267). As soon as the way was known, it was no longer necessary to “leita” countries. If the voyage is historical, it may have been to seek for the mythical country, the happy Wineland that Bishop Eric set out, as St. Brandan in the legend sought for the Promised Land, and as, 359 years later, the city of Bristol actually sent men out to look for the happy isle of Brazil; but as the coast of America seems to have been known, it may apply to a country there, of which reports had come, and to which the name of the mythical country had been transferred. As Eric is called a bishop, it has been thought that this was a missionary voyage, which met with disaster [cf. Y. Nielsen, 1905, p. 8]; but who was there to be converted in an unknown land, for which one had first to “seek”? It would have to be the unknown Skrælings; but is this really likely, when we hear of no mission to the Skrælings of Greenland? There must have been enough of the latter to convert for the time being, if it had been thought worth the trouble. Nor do we know much more about this Eric Upsi.[24] Probably he was the same man who is called in the Landnámabók “Eirikr Gnupssonr Grönlendinga-byskup.” It is possible that the see of Greenland was founded as early as 1110,[25] and that Eric was the first bishop of Greenland, and went out there in 1112,[26] but he cannot have been solemnly consecrated at Lund, like later bishops after 1124. It is possible that Eric was lost, for we hear no more of him, and in 1122 and 1123 the Greenlanders made efforts to obtain a new bishop, who was consecrated at Lund in 1124; but it is curious that nothing is then said about any earlier bishop; moreover, the entry in the annals about Eric dates at the earliest from the thirteenth century.
Some years ago it was asserted that a stone with a runic inscription had been found in Minnesota, the so-called Kensington stone. On this is narrated a journey of eight Swedes and twenty-two Norwegians from Wineland as far as the country west of the Great Lakes. But by its runes and its linguistic form this inscription betrays itself clearly enough as a modern forgery, which has no interest for us here [cf. H. Gjessing, 1909; K. Hoegh, 1909; H. R. Roland, 1909; O. J. Breda, 1910].