With regard to the first of these conclusions, it is perhaps as likely that Leif's booths were within the present limits of Cambridge as in any of the numerous places which different writers have confidently assigned for them, all the way from Point Judith to Cape Breton. A judicious scholar will object not so much to the conclusion as to the character of the arguments by which it is reached. Too much weight is attached to hypothetical etymologies.
With regard to the Norse colony alleged to have flourished for three centuries, it is pertinent to ask, what became of its cattle and horses? Why do we find no vestiges of the burial-places of these Europeans? or of iron tools and weapons of mediæval workmanship? Why is there no documentary mention, in Scandinavia or elsewhere in Europe, of this transatlantic trade? etc., etc. Until such points as these are disposed of, any further consideration of the hypothesis may properly be postponed.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 268: Laing, Heimskringla, i. 141. A description of the ruins may be found in two papers in Meddelelser om Gronland, Copenhagen, 1883 and 1889.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 269: Sometimes called Eric Uppsi; he is mentioned in the Landnáma-bók as a native of Iceland.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 270: Storm, Islandske Annaler, Christiania, 1888; Reeves, The Finding of Wineland the Good, London, 1890, pp. 79-81.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 271: Storm, in Aarbøger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed, 1887, p. 319.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 272: Reeves, op. cit. p. 83. In another vellum it is mentioned that in 1347 "a ship came from Greenland, which had sailed to Markland, and there were eighteen men on board." As Mr. Reeves well observes: "The nature of the information indicates that the knowledge of the discovery had not altogether faded from the memories of the Icelanders settled in Greenland. It seems further to lend a measure of plausibility to a theory that people from the Greenland colony may from time to time have visited the coast to the southwest of their home for supplies of wood, or for some kindred purpose. The visitors in this case had evidently intended to return directly from Markland to Greenland, and had they not been driven out of their course to Iceland, the probability is that this voyage would never have found mention in Icelandic chronicles, and all knowledge of it must have vanished as completely as did the colony to which the Markland visitors belonged."[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 273: Storm, Monumenta historica Norvegiæ, p. 77.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 274: Laing, Heimskringla, i. 147. It has been supposed that the Black Death, by which all Europe was ravaged in the middle part of the fourteenth century, may have crossed to Greenland, and fatally weakened the colony there; but Vigfusson says that the Black Death never touched Iceland (Sturlunga Saga, vol. i. p. cxxix.), so that it is not so likely to have reached Greenland.[Back to Main Text]
Footnote 275: Laing, op. cit. i. 142.[Back to Main Text]