Finn Magnusen among the Scandinavian writers, and De Costa and others among Americans, have thought it probable that Columbus landed at Hualfiord, in Iceland. Columbus, however, does not give sufficient ground for any such inference. He says he went beyond Thule, not to it, whatever Thule was, and we only know by his observations on the tides, that he approached dry land.
Bishop Magnus in Iceland.
Laing, in his introduction to the Heimskringla, says confidently that Columbus "came to Iceland from Bristol, in 1477, on purpose to gain nautical information,"—an inference merely,—"and must have heard of the written accounts of the Norse discoveries recorded in" the Codex Flatoyensis. Laing says again that as Bishop Magnus is known to have been in Iceland in the spring of 1477, "it is presumed Columbus must have met and conversed with him"!
A great deal turns on this purely imaginary conversation, and the possibilities of its scope.
The Norse in Iceland.
Eric the Red.
Greenland.
The listening Columbus might, indeed, have heard of Irish monks and their followers, who had been found in Iceland by the first Norse visitors, six hundred years before, if perchance the traditions of them had been preserved, and these may even have included the somewhat vague stories of visits to a country somewhere, which they called Ireland the Great. Possibly, too, there were stories told at the firesides of the adventures of a sea-rover, Gunnbiorn by name, who had been driven westerly from Iceland and had seen a strange land, which after some years was visited by Eric the Red; and there might have been wondrous stories told of this same land, which Eric had called Greenland, in order to lure settlers, where there is some reason to believe yet earlier wanderers had found a home.
Heimskringla.