(14) The Irish happy lands peopled by the síd correspond to the Norwegian huldrelands out in the sea to the west, and the Icelandic elf-lands.
(15) Since the huldre- and síd-people and the elves are originally the dead, and since the Isles of the Blest or the Fortunate Isles of antiquity were the habitations of the happy dead, these islands also correspond to the Irish síd-people’s happy lands, and to the Norwegian huldrelands and the Icelandic elf-lands.
(16) The additional name of “hit Góða” for the happy Wineland and the name “Landit Góða” for huldrelands in Norway correspond directly to the name of “Insulæ Fortunatæ,” which in itself could not very well take any other Norse form. And as in addition the huldrelands were imagined as specially good and fertile, and the underground, huldre- and síd-people or elves are called the “good people,” and are everywhere in different countries associated with the idea of “good,” this gives a natural explanation of both the Norse names.
(17) The name “Vinland hit Góða” has a foreign effect in Norse nomenclature; it must be a hybrid of Norse and foreign nomenclature, through “Vinland” being combined with “Landit Góða,” which probably originated in a translation of “Insulæ Fortunatæ.”
(18) The probability of the name of Skrælings for the inhabitants of Wineland having originally meant brownies or trolls—that is, small huldre-folk, elves or pygmies—entirely agrees with the view that Wineland was originally the fairy country, the Fortunate Isles in the west of the ocean.
(19) The statement of the Icelandic geography, that in the opinion of some Wineland the Good was connected with Africa, and the fact that the Norwegian work, Historia Norwegiæ, calls Wineland (with Markland and Helluland) the African Islands, are direct evidence that the Norse Wineland was the Insulæ Fortunatæ, which together with the Gorgades and the Hesperides were precisely the African Islands.
(20) Even though the Saga of Eric the Red and the Grönlendinga-þáttr contain nothing which we can regard as certain information as to the discovery of America by the Greenlanders, we yet find there and elsewhere many features which show that they must have reached the coast of America, the most decisive amongst them being the chance mention of the voyagers from Markland in 1347. To this may be added Hertzberg’s demonstration of the adoption of the Icelandic game of “knattleikr” by the Indians. The name of the mythical land may then have been transferred to the country that was discovered.
(21) Hvítramanna-land is a mythical land similar to the wine-island of the Irish, modified in accordance with Christian ideas, especially perhaps those of the white garments of the baptized—as in the Navigatio Brandani in reference to the Isle of Anchorites or the “Strong Men’s Isle” (== Starkra-manna-land)—and of the white hermits.
(22) Finally, among the most different people on earth, from the ancient Greeks to the Icelanders, Chinese and Japanese, we meet with similar myths about countries out in the ocean and voyages to them, which, whether they be connected with one another or not, show the common tendency of humanity to adopt ideas and tales of this kind.