[21] Gesta, 325.
[22] Wimmer, De danske Runemindesmærker, I., ii., 78 ff.
[23] The American shores were evidently too far distant for successful colonisation; but the visits to the far West clearly did not cease with the journeys of Leif and his associates. Vineland is mentioned in a runic monument from the eleventh century which records an expedition to the West that seems to have ended disastrously:
"They came out [upon the ocean] and over wide stretches [of land] and in need of dry clothes for changes and of food toward Vineland and over icy wastes in the wilderness. Evil may deprive one of good fortune so that death comes early."
This inscription, which is the earliest document that mentions the New World, was found at Hönen in South-eastern Norway. The original has been lost, but copies are extant. The translation is from Bugge's rendering into modern Norse. (Norges Historie, I., ii., 285.)
[24] Bugge, Vihingerne, i., 135 ff.
[25] "All along the Irish coast from Belfast to Dublin and Limerick there still remains an unbroken series of Norse place names, principally the names of firths, islands, reefs, and headlands, which show that at such points the fairway has been named by Northmen." Norges Historie, I., ii., 87; see also pp. 73-76. (Bugge.)
[26] Of this process and its results Normandy furnishes the best illustration. The population of Rollo's duchy soon came to be a mixture of races with French as the chief element, though in some sections, as the Cotentin and the Bessin, the inhabitants clung to their Scandinavian speech and customs for a long time. Steenstrup, Normannerne, i., 175-179.
[27] Simeon of Durham, Opera Omnia, ii., 393. The area varied at different periods; but the earlier Danelaw seems to have comprised fifteen shires. See Steenstrup, Normannerne, iv., 36-37.
[28] Steenstrup, Normannerne, iv., 40-43.