Footnote 469: See above, p. [236].[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 470: See the graphic description of a voyage in these waters in March, 1882, in Nansen's The First Crossing of Greenland, London, 1890, vol. i. pp. 149-152.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 471: "E vidi tutto il Levante, e tutto il Ponente, che si dice per andare verso il Settentrione, cioè l'Inghilterra, e ho camminato per la Guinea." Vita dell' Ammiraglio, cap. iv.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 472: See Anderson's America not discovered by Columbus, Chicago, 1874; 3d ed. enlarged, Chicago, 1883.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 473: "Det er derfor sikkert, at Columbus ikke, som nogle har formodet, kan have kjendt Adam af Bremens Beretning on Vinland; vi kan gjerne tilføie, at havde Columbus kjendt den, vilde den ikke have kunnet vise ham Vei til Vesten (Indien), men kanske til Nordpolen." Aarbøger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed, 1887, ii. 2, p. 301.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 474: See above, p. [210].[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 475: In 1689 the Swedish writer, Ole Rudbeck, could not understand Adam of Bremen's allusion to Vinland. The passage is instructive. Rudbeck declares that in speaking of a wine-growing country near to the Arctic ocean, Adam must have been misled by some poetical or figurative phrase; he was deceived either by his trust in the Danes, or by his own credulity, for he manifestly refers to Finland, for which the form Vinland does not once occur in Sturleson, etc.:—"Ne tamen poetis solis hoc loquendi genus in suis regionum laudationibus familiare fuisse quis existimet, sacras adeat literas quæ Palæstinæ fæcunditatem appellatione fluentorum lactis & mellis designant. Tale aliquid, sine omne dubio, Adamo Bremensi quondam persuaserat insulam esse in ultimo septentrione sitam, mari glaciali vicinam, vini feracem, & ea propter fide tamen Danorum, Vinlandiam dictam prout ipse ... fateri non dubitat. Sed deceptum eum hae sive Danorum fide, sive credulitate sua planum facit affine isti vocabulum Finlandiæ provinciæ ad Regnum nostrum pertinentis, pro quo apud Snorronem & in Hist. Regum non semel occurrit Vinlandiæ nomen, cujus promontorium ad ultimum septentrionem & usque ad mare glaciale sese extendit." Rudbeck, Atland eller Manheim, Upsala, cir. 1689, p. 291.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 476: The source of such a confusion of ideas is probably the ridiculous map in Rafn's Antiquitates Americanæ, upon which North America is represented in all the accuracy of outline attainable by modern maps, and then the Icelandic names are put on where Rafn thought they ought to go, i. e. Markland upon Nova Scotia, Vinland upon New England, etc. Any person using such a map is liable to forget that it cannot possibly represent the crude notions of locality to which the reports of the Norse voyages must have given rise in an ignorant age. (The reader will find the map reproduced in Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., i. 95.) Rafn's fault was, however, no greater than that committed by the modern makers of so-called "ancient atlases"—still current and in use in schools—when, for example, they take a correct modern map of Europe, with parts of Africa and Asia, and upon countries so dimly known to the ancients as Scandinavia and Hindustan, but now drawn with perfect accuracy, they simply print the ancient names!! Nothing but confusion can come from using such wretched maps. The only safe way to study the history of geography is to reproduce the ancient maps themselves, as I have done in the present work. Many of the maps given below in the second volume will illustrate the slow and painful growth of the knowledge of the North American coast during the two centuries after Columbus.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 477: "The fault that we find with Columbus is, that he was not honest and frank enough to tell where and how he had obtained his previous information about the lands which he pretended to discover." Anderson, America not discovered by Columbus, p. 90.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 478: See below, p. [398], note.[Back to Main Text]