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The Date of the Saga of the Greenlanders 65
the author of the Saga of Eirikr may have used other
written sources than the Saga of the Greenlanders, the
Saga of Oldfr by Gunnlaugr (or a related work) and the
Landndmab6k of Sturla :por6arson. It is by no means
impossible that some of them may have been older than
the Saga of the Greenlanders. The author of the Saga of
Eirikr was, no doubt, a learned man. His work shows
acquaintance with the bookish geographical lore of
southern Europe, such as the concept of the circle of
Iands-'' and the Land of the Unipeds, although ideas about
the former were also based on the experience of the Norse
seafarers. Such views as these never appear in the Saga
of the Greenlanders, another testimony to its age.
Previously, no one seems to have even entertained the
the thought that the author of the Saga of Eirikr may
have been acquainted with the Saga of the Greenlanders.
There are two reasons for this. Opinions about the
comparative age of the two sagas prevented such an
opinion from being advanced. Secondly, the style and
language of the two sagas do not indicate any such
connection between them. The wording of them is alike
only in one instance. ":Peir hof6u mec ser alls konar
fena6" (they had with them all kinds of domestic animals),
occurs in both sagas in the account of :Porfinnr Karlsefni
and his companions.s? It would be dangerous to assert
that this is pure coincidence. Again, one might point to
related works, where the wording shows little, or no more,
similarity than in our two sagas. For example, the author
of the C version of the Ljosvetninga saga seems to have
re-written an episode from the original version, which is
still extant, but the similarities of wording are very
slight. 21 There is thus no reason to reject the view that
the author of the Saga of Eirikr knew and used the Saga
of the Greenlanders even though evidence of similar
wording in the two sagas is slight.
19 Cf. "urn haf innan", Sagorna om V'inland I, 50; lslensk. [ornrit IV 213.
20 Islenzk [ornrit IV 224, 261; Sagorna om Vinland I, 64.
21 Bjorn Sigfusson, Um Lj6svetninga s6gu (Studia Islandica 3, 1937), and
Islellzk [ornrit X (1940), xxiv-xxvi.
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