Peringskiöld's edition of the sagas.
Such, then, was the record which, if it ever came to the notice of Columbus, was little suited to make upon him any impression to be associated in his mind with the Asia of his dreams. Humboldt, discussing the chances of Columbus's gaining any knowledge of the story, thinks that when the Spanish Crown was contesting with the heirs of the Admiral his rights of discovery, the citing of these northern experiences of Columbus would have been in the Crown's favor, if there had been any conception at that time that the Norse discoveries, even if known to general Europe, had any relation to the geographical problems then under discussion. Similar views have been expressed by Wheaton and Prescott, and there is no evidence that up to the time of Columbus an acquaintance with the Vinland story had ever entered into the body of historical knowledge possessed by Europeans in general. The scant references in the manuscripts of Adam of Bremen (A. D. 1073), of Ordericus Vitalis (A. D. 1140), and of Saxo Grammaticus (A. D. 1200), were not likely to be widely comprehended, even if they were at all known, and a close scrutiny of the literature of the subject does not seem to indicate that there was any considerable means of propagating a knowledge of the sagas before Peringskiöld printed them in 1697, two hundred years after the time of Columbus. This editor inserted them in an edition of the Heimskringla and concealed the patchwork. This deception caused it afterwards to be supposed that the accounts in the Heimskringla had been interpolated by some later reviser of the chronicle; but the truth regarding Peringskiöld's action was ultimately known.
Probabilities.
Basing, then, their investigation on a narrative confessedly confused and unauthentic, modern writers have sought to determine with precision the fact of Norse visits to British America, and to identify the localities. The fact that every investigator finds geographical correspondences where he likes, and quite independently of all others, is testimony of itself to the confused condition of the story. The soil of the United States and Nova Scotia contiguous to the Atlantic may now safely be said to have been examined by competent critics sufficiently to affirm that no archæological trace of the presence of the Norse here is discernible. As to such a forbidding coast as that of Labrador, there has been as yet no such familiarity with it by trained archæologists as to render it reasonably certain that some trace may not be found there, and on this account George Bancroft allows the possibility that the Norse may have reached that coast. There remains, then, no evidence beyond a strong probability that the Norse from Greenland crossed Davis' Straits and followed south the American coast. That indisputable archæological proofs may yet be found to establish the fact of their southern course and sojourn is certainly possible. Meanwhile we must be content that there is no testimony satisfactory to a careful historical student, that this course and such sojourn ever took place. A belief in it must rest on the probabilities of the case.
Many writers upon the Norseman discovery would do well to remember the advice of Ampère to present as doubtful what is true, sooner than to give as true what is doubtful.
"Ignorance," says Muñoz, in speaking of the treacherous grounds of unsupported narrative, "is generally accompanied by vanity and temerity."
Did Columbus hear of the saga stories?
It is an obvious and alluring supposition that this story should have been presented to Columbus, whatever the effect may have been on his mind. Lowell in a poem pardonably pictures him as saying:—
"I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale
Of happy Atlantis; and heard Björne's keel
Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland shore,
For I believed the poets."