During the last score years the subject has been often made prominent by travellers like Kneeland[643] and Hayes,[644] who have recapitulated the evidence; by lecturers like Charles Kingsley;[645] by monographists like Moosmüller;[646] by the minor historians like Higginson,[647] who has none of the fervor of the inspired identifiers of localities, and Weise,[648] who is inclined to believe the sea-rovers did not even pass Davis’s Straits; and by contributors to the successive sessions of the Congrès des Américanistes[649] and to other learned societies.[650]
The question was brought to a practical issue in Massachusetts by a proposition raised—at first in Wisconsin—by the well-known musician Ole Bull, to erect in Boston a statue to Leif Ericson.[651] The project, though ultimately carried out, was long delayed, and was discouraged by members of the Massachusetts Historical Society on the ground that no satisfactory evidence existed to show that any spot in New England had been reached by the Northmen.[652] The sense of the society was finally expressed in the report of their committee, Henry W. Haynes and Abner C. Goodell, Jr., in language which seems to be the result of the best historical criticism; for it is not a question of the fact of discovery, but to decide how far we can place reliance on the details of the sagas. There is likely to remain a difference of opinion on this point. The committee say: “There is the same sort of reason for believing in the existence of Leif Ericson that there is for believing in the existence of Agamemnon,—they are both traditions accepted by later writers; but there is no more reason for regarding as true the details related about his discoveries than there is for accepting as historic truth the narratives contained in the Homeric poems. It is antecedently probable that the Northmen discovered America in the early part of the eleventh century; and this discovery is confirmed by the same sort of historical tradition, not strong enough to be called evidence, upon which our belief in many of the accepted facts of history rests.”[653]
In running down the history of the literature of the subject, the present aim has been simply to pick out such contributions as have been in some way significant, and reference must be made to the bibliographies for a more perfect record.[654]
Irrespective of the natural probability of the Northmen visits to the American main, other evidence has been often adduced to support the sagas. This proof has been linguistic, ethnological, physical, geographical, and monumental.
Nothing could be slenderer than the alleged correspondences of languages, and we can see in Horsford’s Discovery of America by Northmen to what a fanciful extent a confident enthusiasm can carry it.[655]
The ethnological traces are only less shadowy. Hugo Grotius[656] contended that the people of Central America were of Scandinavian descent. Brasseur found remnants of Norse civilization in the same region.[657] Viollet le Duc[658] discovers great resemblances in the northern religious ceremonials to those described in the Popul Vuh. A general resemblance did not escape the notice of Humboldt. Gravier[659] is certain that the Aztec civilization is Norse.[660] Chas. Godfrey Leland claims that the old Norse spirit pervades the myths and legends of the Algonkins, and that it is impossible not to admit that there must have been at one time “extensive intercourse between the Northmen and the Algonkins;” and in proof he points out resemblances between the Eddas and the Algonkin mythology.[661] It is even stated that the Micmacs have a tradition of a people called Chenooks, who in ships visited their coast in the tenth century.
The physical and geographical evidences are held to exist in the correspondences of the coast line to the descriptions of the sagas, including the phenomena of the tides[662] and the length of the summer day.[663] Laing and others, who make no question of the main fact, readily recognize the too great generality and contradictions of the descriptions to be relied upon.[664]
George Bancroft, in showing his distrust, has said that the advocates of identification can no farther agree than to place Vinland anywhere from Greenland to Africa.[665]
