Wineland in mediæval literature
The name of Wineland occurs extremely rarely in mediæval literature and on maps outside Iceland, and as a rule it is confused with Finland, as already mentioned (vol. i. p. 198), or again with Vindland (Vendland). Ordericus Vitalis (1141) gives “The Orkneys and Finland, together with Iceland and Greenland” as islands under the king of Norway.[27] As the passage seems to be connected with Adam of Bremen, who also erroneously mentions these islands and Wineland as subject to the Norwegians (see vol. i. p. 192), this Finland may be Wineland. It was pointed out in vol i. p. 198, that the Latin “vinum” was translated into Irish as “fín.” Ordericus (1075-1143), who lived in England until his tenth year, and wrote in an abbey in Normandy, may well have had communication with Irishmen. In Ranulph Higden’s “Polychronicon” (circa 1350) the following are described as islands in the outer ocean (surrounding the disc of the earth): first the “Insulæ Fortunatæ” (see vol i. p. 346), immediately afterwards “Dacia” (== Denmark), and to the west of this island “Wyntlandia,” besides “Islandia,” which has Norway to the south and the Polar Sea to the north, “Tile” (Thule) the extreme island on the north-west, and “Noruegia” (Norway). As this “Wyntlandia,” which in the various editions of Higden’s map is called Witland, Wintlandia, Wineland, etc., is placed out in the ocean on the west, it is possibly connected with the old Wineland which was an oceanic island; but as it is mentioned together with Dacia, it may also be confused with Vindland (Vendland),[28] and the circumstance that the inhabitants are supposed to have sold winds to sailors who came to them may have contributed to this. This may be connected with what Mela [iii. 6] says about the island of Sena in the British Sea, off Brittany (see vol. i. p. 29), where the nine priestesses of the oracle of the Gaulish deity
“set seas and winds in motion through their incantations, change themselves into what animal they please, cure sickness ... know the future and foretell it, but they only assist those sailors who come to ask counsel of them.”
But the wind-selling wizards of the Polychronicon have also evidently been confused with the Finns (Lapps) of Finmark, whom Adam of Bremen had already described as particularly skilled in magic. The Polychronicon is a free revision of an earlier English work, the “Geographia Universalis,” of the thirteenth century. In this “Winlandia” (or “Wynlandia”) and its inhabitants, who sell winds, are described at greater length; it is there placed on the continent on the sea-coast and borders on the mountains of Norway on the east.[29] It is therefore Finland, or perhaps rather the country of the Lapp wizards, Finmark. Thus through similarity of sound three countries may have been confused in the Polychronicon: Wineland, Vindland, and Finland (Finmark). Evidently the “Vinland” to be found on the continent in the map of the world in the “Rudimentum Novitiorum” of Lübeck (1475) refers to Finland, and likewise the “Vinlandia” mentioned in a Lübeck MS. of 1486-1488, which is an extensive island reaching as far as Livonia.[30] Whether we regard Wineland as merely a mythical country, or as a country actually discovered to which the name of the mythical land was transferred, this limited dissemination of it in literature and on maps is striking. It shows that knowledge of the myth, or of the country with the mythical name, belonged to older times, was not very widely spread outside the Scandinavian countries and Ireland, and was afterwards forgotten, in spite of the frequent communication that existed between the intellectual world of the North and that of the South [cf. Jos. Fischer, 1902, pp. 106, ff.].
Wineland in Faroese lays
While probably the name of Hvítramanna-land is still preserved in the fairy-tale of Hvittenland, it is possibly the name of Wineland that has been preserved in that “Vinland” which is mentioned in the Faroese lay of “Finnur hinn Fríði”;[31] but if so, it is the only known instance of its occurrence in popular poetry. The Norwegian jarl’s son, Finnur hinn Fríði (Finn the Fair), courts Ingebjörg, the daughter of an Irish king; she is beautiful as the sun, and the colour of her maiden cheeks is like blood dropped upon snow.[32] She makes answer: “Hadst thou slain the Wine-kings, then shouldst thou wed me.” To Wineland is a far voyage, with currents and mighty billows. But Finn begs his brother, Halfdan, to go with him over the Wineland sea. They hoist their silken sail, and never lower it till they arrive at Wineland. There they found the three Wine-kings. Thorstein, the first, came on a black horse, but Finn tore him off at the navel; the second, Ivint, also came on a black horse. But the third transformed himself into a flying dragon; arrows flew from each of his feathers, and he killed many of their men. The worst was that he shot venom from his mouth under Finn’s coat of mail, who, though he could not be killed by arms, had to die. He then drew a golden ring from his arm and sent it by Halfdan to Ingebjörg, bidding her live happily. But Halfdan sprang into the air, seized the third Wine-king, and tore him off at the navel. Halfdan sailed back to Ireland, brought Ingebjörg these tidings and the ring, and slept three nights with her, but on the fourth she dies of grief, since she can love no chieftain after Finn. Halfdan had a castle built for himself and passed his years in Ireland, but all his days he mourned for his brother. Although the whole of this legend seems to have no connection with what we know about Wineland, it is most probable that it is the same name, but that—like the tale itself of the Irish king’s daughter whose cheek was as blood upon snow—it came from Ireland. The name may thus be a last echo of the Irish mythical ideas from which the Wineland of the Icelanders arose.
Map by the Icelander Jón Gudmundsson, born 1574 (Torfæus, 1706)
Helluland in legend
Curiously enough Helluland is the only one of the names of the western lands that has been widely adopted in Icelandic fairy-tales and legendary sagas. It has to some extent become a complete fairyland, with trolls and giants, and it is located in various places, usually far north, even to the north of Greenland, and sometimes on its north-east coast. In this fairyland was the fjord “Skuggi” (shadow); it is mentioned in Örvarodds Saga (circa 1300), where the hero departs to seek his enemy, the wizard Ǫgmund, in Helluland, and again in Bárðarsaga Snæfellsáss (fifteenth century), in the “Þáttr” of Gunnari Keldugnúpsfífl, in the Hálfdanarsaga Brönufóstra, in the Saga of Hálfdani Eysteinssyni, and in Gest Bárdsson’s Saga.[33]