SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

182 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
that Eirfk never returned from his voyage to Vinland.
The latest search for Vinland started in 1961: and it still
remains an undiscovered country, as far as conclusive
evidence goes.
Two old Icelandic sagas, Grcenlendinga saga (late
twelfth-century) and Eiriks saga rauoa (late thirteenthcentury)
tell how Vikings found lands to the west of
Greenland about the year 990, and how they made several
voyages of exploration to them.
According to the former, some forty-eight hours' sail to
the southwest of Greenland brought them to Helluland.
2\Jothing grew there, and the interior of the land consisted
of glaciers and "it was like one slab of rock from the sea to
the glaciers".
A day and a half further south lay Markland. "The
land was level and wooded ... with white sands in many
places and the coast not steep." Twenty-four hours
sailing to the southwest from Markland was Vinland.
There the sun was up for at least 6 to 7 hours at the time
of the winter solstice, and so it can be worked out that
Vinland lay south of 50° N, but it is not certain how far
south.
Such is the topography of the Grcenlendinga saga: it is
unpromising but, as will be seen later, it is not permissible
to infer anything about the Vinland voyages beyond what
is written in the text of this saga.
Those who discuss Vinland must remember that it
seems to have disappeared from history early in the twelfth
century. Not even the Greenlanders knew for sure what
had become of it. Icelandic annals mention s.a. 1347
that "a ship came from Greenland, smaller in size than
ones which ply to Iceland. It sailed into outer
Straumfjoror (i.e. on Snsefellsnes). It had no anchor.
There were seventeen men on board who had been to
Markland and been driven here by the sea." This was
hardly the only ship which went between Greenland and
Markland in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.