Note 45 — Chapter I

The traditions of the voyages of Bjarni, the son of Herjulf, and of Leif, the son of Eric the Red, are contained in a large folio of manuscripts found in the seventeenth century, in a monastery on the island called Flatö, north of Breidafjörd, in Iceland. This book of Flatö was purchased, about the year 1660, by Bishop Brynjulf Sveinson of Skalholt, in Iceland, and was sent by him as a gift to King Frederic III. of Denmark, and is now in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. A part of the inscription on the first page of the volume bears this translation: “This book, Jónn, the son of Hakon, owns.... The priest, Jónn, the son of Thord, wrote out the narrative concerning Eric, the traveller, and the histories of each of the Olafs; and the priest, Magnus, the son of Thorhall, wrote out that which follows, also that which precedes, and illuminated the whole. God Almighty and the Holy Virgin Mary bless those who wrote and him who dictated.”

It is supposed that these traditions, which are finely engrossed in Icelandic on vellum, contained in the Codex Flateyensis, were compiled between the years 1387 and 1395.—Antiq. Amer. pp. 1-4.