Note 664 — Chapter II

“The discovery of America,” says Laing (Heimskringla, i. 154), “rests entirely upon documentary evidence which cannot, as in the case of Greenland, be substantiated by anything to be discovered in America.” Laing and many of the commentators, by some strange process of reasoning, have determined that the proof of these MS. records being written before Columbus’ visit to Iceland in 1477 is sufficient to establish the priority of discovery for the Northmen, as if it was nothing in the case that the sagas may or may not be good history; and nothing that it was the opinion entertained in Europe at that time that Greenland and the more distant lands were not a new continent, but a prolongation of Europe by the north. It is curious, too, to observe that, treating of events after 1492, Laing is quite willing to believe in any saga being “filled up and new invented,” but is quite unwilling to believe anything of the kind as respects those written anterior to 1492; and yet he goes on to prove conclusively that the Flatoyensis Codex is full of fable, as when the saga man makes the eider-duck lay eggs where during the same weeks the grapes ripen and intoxicate when fresh, and the wheat forms in the ear! Laing nevertheless rests his case on the Flatoyensis Codex in its most general scope, and calls poets, but not antiquaries, those who attempt to make any additional evidence out of imaginary runes or the identification of places.