Among the Irish the white colour again forms a conspicuous feature in the description of persons, especially supernatural beings, in ancient non-Christian legends and myths. The name of their national hero Finn means white. To Finn Mac Cumaill there comes in the legend a king’s daughter of unearthly size and beauty, “Bebend” (the white woman), from the Land of Virgins (“Tír na-n-Ingen”) in the west of the sea, and she has marvellously beautiful white hair [cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 269]. The corresponding maiden of the sea-people, in the “Imram Brenaind,” whom Brandan finds, is also whiter than snow or sea-spray (see vol. i. p. 363). The physician Libra at the court of Manannán, king of the Promised Land, has three daughters with white hair. When Midir, the king of the síd (fairies), is trying to entice away Etáin, queen of the high-king of Ireland, he says: “Oh, white woman, wilt thou go with me to the land of marvels?... thy body has the white colour of snow to the very top,” etc. etc.[41] [cf. Zimmer, 1889, pp. 273, 279]. A corresponding idea to that of the Irish síd-people, especially the women, being white, is perhaps that of the Norse elves being thought light (cf. “lysalver,” light-elves), or even white. The elf-maiden in Sweden is slender as a lily and white as snow, and elves in Denmark may also be snow-white (cf. also the fact that elves are described as white nymphs, “albæ nymphæ”).

It seems natural that these ideas—of whiteness as specially beautiful, and mostly applied to the “síd” or elves, to the garments of baptism, and to holy men and hermits—led to a name which, in conformity with the Strong Men’s Island of the Navigatio, would become the White Men’s Land, for the mythical western land oversea, where Are Mársson was baptized, but which he could not leave again, and where, according to the Eyrbyggja Saga, the language resembled Irish. This, then, is precisely the “Isle of Anchorites.” The country may have originated through a contact of ideas from the religious world and the profane, original conceptions from the latter having become Christianised. Doubtless the white garments, which were connected with the other world, and which became the heavenly raiment of the Christians, have also played a part. In Plato a white-clad woman (i.e., one from the other world) comes to Socrates in a dream and announces to him that in three days he is to depart. During the transfiguration on the mountain Jesus’ face “did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light” [Matt. xvii. 2], or “his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow” [Mark ix. 3]. On the basis of this Christian conception the image of the world beyond the grave has taken the form of a fair, shining land, as in the immense literature of visions; and thus too in the Floamanna Saga [Grönl. hist. Mind., ii. p. 103], where Thorgils’s wife Thorey sees in a dream a “fair country with shining white men” (“menn bjarta”), and Thorgils interprets it to mean “another world” where “good awaits her” and “holy men would help her.”

There is further a possibility that some of the conceptions attached to Hvítramanna-land may be connected with ancient Celtic tales which in antiquity were associated with the Cassiterides (in Celtic Brittany); in any case there is a remarkable similarity between the mention in Eric the Red’s Saga of men who went about in white clothes, carried poles before them, and cried aloud (see vol. i. p. 330), and Strabo’s description (see vol. i. p. 27) of the men in the Cassiterides in black cloaks with kirtles reaching to the feet, who wander about with staves, like the Furies in tragedy. That Strabo should see a resemblance to the Eumenides (Furies) and therefore make his men black, while the Northern author has the Christian ideas and in agreement with the name of Hvítramanna-land gives them white clothes, need not surprise us. Even if Storm [1887] is correct in his supposition that the white men’s banners, or “poles to which strips were attached” (see vol. i. p. 330), are connected with ecclesiastical processions, this may be a later popular modification, just as the white hermits out in the ocean may be a modification of pre-Christian, or at any rate non-religious, conceptions in Ireland.

Reference has been made ([p. 32]) to the resemblance between the accounts of the inhabitants of Wyntlandia (== Wineland), who were versed in magic, and of the Celtic priestesses in the island of Sena off Brittany. One might be tempted to think that here again there is some connection or other between these Breton priestesses and, on the one hand the Irishmen in Hvítramanna-land, on the other the men of the Cassiterides (near Sena) who were like the Furies. Dionysius Periegetes [510; cum Eustath. 1] relates that on this island of Sena women crowned with ivy conducted nocturnal bacchanals, with shrieks and violent noise (cf. the men in white clothes in Hvítramanna-land, who carried poles and cried aloud). No male person might set foot on the island, but the women went over to the men on the mainland, and returned after having had intercourse with them (cf. vol. i. p. 356). Exactly the same thing is related by Strabo [iv. 198] of the Samnite women on a little island in the sea, not far from the mouth of the Liger (Loire); inspired by Bacchus they honour that god in mysteries and other unusually holy actions. The druids had their sanctuaries on islands, and Mona (Anglesey) was their headquarters. Tacitus [Ann. xiv. 30] tells of their fanatical women who, in white clothes (grave-clothes), with dishevelled hair and flaming torches, conducted themselves altogether like Furies on the arrival of the Romans.

The circumstance of Hvítramanna-land being, according to the Eyrbyggja Saga, a forbidden land may correspond to that of men being prohibited from setting foot on the priestesses’ island, or again to the way to the Cassiterides being kept secret and to the precautions taken to prevent people from reaching them (cf. vol. i. p. 27). Something similar, it may be added, is told of the rich, fertile island which the Carthaginians discovered in the west of the ocean, and which, under pain of death, they forbade others to visit [Aristotle, Mir. Auscult., c. 85; cf. also Diodorus, v. 20]. That in late classical times there was a confusion between the Cassiterides and the mythical isles in the west appears further from Pliny’s saying [Hist. Nat., iv. 36] that the Cassiterides were also called “Fortunatæ,” and from Dionysius Periegetes making tin, the product of the Cassiterides, come from the Hesperides.

The name Great-Ireland

It was mentioned above (vol. i. p. 357) that the name of the promised land, “the Land of Marvels,” was also called in Irish legend the “Great Strand” (“Trág Mór”), or the “Great Land” (“Tír Mór”); “two or three times as large as Ireland” (vol. i. p. 355). It does not seem unlikely that the Icelanders, hearing from Ireland of this great land, should come to call it “Irland hit Mikla” (Ireland the Great); and this seems to be a more natural explanation than Storm’s [1887, p. 65] interpretation of the name as meaning “the Irish colony,” like “Magna Græcia” (the Greek colony in Italy) and “Svíþjód it Mikla” (the Swedish colony in Russia, the name of which may however have been derived from the name of the latter: “Scythia Magna”); on the other hand, he gives an obvious parallel in “Great Han,” the mythical land in the Great Ocean beyond China (Han).

In the Eyrbyggja Saga we read of Björn Asbrandsson, called Breidvikinge-kjæmpe, and his exploits. He bore illicit love to Snorre Gode’s sister, Thurid of Fróðá, the wife of Thorodd, and had by her an illegitimate son, Kjartan. Finally he had to leave Iceland on account of this love; but his ship was not ready till late in the autumn. They put to sea with a north-east wind, which held for a long time that autumn. Afterwards the ship was not heard of for many a day.

Gudleif’s voyage

Gudleif Gudlaugsson was the name of a great sailor and merchant; he owned a large merchant vessel. In the last years of St. Olaf’s reign he was on a trading voyage to Dublin; “when he sailed westward from thence he was making for Iceland. He sailed to the west of Ireland, encountered there a strong north-east wind, and was driven far to the west and south-west in the ocean,” until they finally came to a great land which was unknown to them. They did not know the people there, “but thought rather that they spoke Irish.” Soon many hundred men collected about them, seized and bound them, and drove them up into the country. They were brought to an assembly and sentence was to be pronounced upon them. They understood as much as that some wanted to kill them, while others wanted to make slaves of them. While this was going on, a great band of men came on horseback with a banner, and under it rode a big and stately man of great age, with white hair, whom they guessed to be the chief, for all bowed before him. He sent for them; when they came before him he spoke to them in Norse and asked from what country they came, and when he heard that most of them were Icelanders, and that Gudleif was from Borgarfjord, he asked after nearly all the more important men of Borgarfjord and Breidafjord, and particularly Snorre Gode, and Thurid of Fróðá, his sister, and most of all after Kjartan, her son, who was now master there. After this big man had discussed the matter at length with the men of the country, he again spoke to the Icelanders and gave them leave to depart, but although the summer was far gone, he advised them to get away as soon as possible, as the people there were not to be relied upon. He would not tell them his name; for he did not wish his kinsmen such a voyage thither as they would have had if he had not helped them; but he was now so old that he might soon be gone, and moreover, said he, there were men of more influence than he in that country, who would show little mercy to foreigners. After this he had the ship fitted out, and was himself present, until there came a favourable wind for them to leave. When they parted, this man took a gold ring from his hand, gave it to Gudleif, and with it a good sword, and said: “If it be thy lot to reach Iceland, thou shalt bring this sword to Kjartan, master of Fróðá, and the ring to Thurid, his mother.” When Gudleif asked him who he was to say was the sender of these costly gifts, he answered: “Say he sent them who was more a friend of the mistress of Fróðá than of the ‘gode’ of Helgafell, her brother....” Gudleif and his men put to sea and arrived in Ireland late in the autumn, stayed that winter at Dublin, and sailed next summer to Iceland [cf. Grönl. hist. Mind., i. pp. 769, ff.].