[607] For texts, see C. C. Rafn’s edition of Kong Olaf Tryggvesons Saga (Copenhagen, 1826), and Munch’s edition of Kong Olaf Tryggvesön’s Saga (Christiania, 1853). Cf. also P. A. Munch’s Norges Konge-Sagaer of Snorri Sturleson, Sturla Thordsson, etc. (Christiania, 1859).
[608] The Codex Flatoyensis says that it was sixteen winters after the settlement of Greenland before Leif went to Norway, and that in the next year he sailed to Vinland.
[609] Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xviii. 21.
[610] These sagas are given in Icelandic, Danish, and Latin in Rafn’s Antiquitates Americanæ (Copenhagen, 1837). Versions or abstracts, more or less full, of all or of some of them are given by Beamish, in his Discovery of America by the Northmen (London, 1841), whose text is reprinted by Slafter, in his Voyages of the Northmen (Boston, 1877). J. Elliot Cabot, in the Mass. Quart. Review, March, 1849, copied in part in Higginson’s Amer. Explorers. Blackwell, in his supplementary chapters to Mallet’s Northern Antiquities (London, Bohn’s library). B. F. De Costa, in his Pre-Columbian Discovery of America (Albany, 1868). Eben Norton Horsford, in his Discovery of America by Norsemen (Boston, 1888). Beauvois, in his Découvertes des Scandinaves en Amérique (Paris, 1859). P. E. Müller, in his Sagabibliothek (Copenhagen, 1816-20), and a German version of part of it by Lachmann, Sagenbibliothek des Scandinavischen Alterthums in Aussügen (Berlin, 1816).
[611] When, however, Peringskiöld edited the Heimskringla, in 1697, he interpolated eight chapters of a more particular account of the Vinland voyages, which drew forth some animadversions from Torfæus in 1705, when he published his Historia Vinlandiæ. It was later found that Peringskiöld had drawn these eight chapters from the Codex Flatoyensis, which particular MS. was unknown to Torfæus. When Laing printed his edition of the Heimskringla, The Sea Kings of Norway (London, 1844), he translated these eight chapters in his appendix (vol. iii. 344). Laing (Heimskringla, i. 27) says: “Snorro Sturleson has done for the history of the Northmen what Livy did for the history of the Romans,”—a rather questionable tribute to the verity of the saga history, in the light of the most approved comments on Livy. Cf. Horn, in Anderson’s translation, Lit. of the Scandinavian North (Chicago, 1884), p. 56, with references, p. 59.
[612] J. Fulford Vicary’s Saga Time (Lond., 1887). Some time in the fifteenth century, a monk, Thomas Gheysmer, made an abridgment of Saxo, alleging that he “had said much rather for the sake of adornment than in behalf of truth.” The Canon Christiern Pederson printed the first edition of Saxo at Paris in 1514 (Anderson’s Horn’s Lit. Scandin. North, p. 102). This writer adds: “The entire work rests exclusively on oral tradition, which had been gathered by Saxo, and which he repeated precisely as he had heard it, for in the whole chronicle there is no trace of criticism proper.... Saxo must also undoubtedly have had Icelandic sagamen as authorities for the legendary part of his work; but there is not the slightest evidence to show that he ever had a written Icelandic saga before him.... In this part of the work he betrays no effort to separate fact from fiction, ... and he has in many instances consciously or unconsciously adorned the original material.” Horn adds that the last and best edition is that of P. E. Müller and J. Velchow, Saxonis Grammatici Historia Danica (Copenhagen, 1839).
[613] Humboldt (Crit. Exam., ii. 120) represented that Ortelius referred to these voyages in 1570; but Palfrey (Hist. New England, i. 51) shows that the language cited by Humboldt was not used by Ortelius till in his edition of 1592, and that then he referred to the Zeno narrative.
[614] See post, Vol. IV. p. 492.
[615] His account is followed by Malte Brun in his Précis de la Géographie (i. 395). Cf. also Annales des Voyages (Paris, 1810), x. 50, and his Géographie Universelle (Paris, 1841). Pinkerton, in his Voyages (London, 1814), vol. xvii., also followed Torfæus.
[616] J. J. Wahlstedt’s Iter in Americam (Upsala, 1725). Cf. Brinley Catal., i. 59.