Note Back to Main Text — Chapter II · PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.

But this is not quite the only reference that Ari makes to Vinland. There are three others that must in all probability be assigned to him. Two occur in the Landnáma-bók, the first in a passage where mention is made of Ari Marsson's voyage to a place in the western ocean near Vinland;[249] the only point in this allusion which need here concern us is that Other references. Vinland is tacitly assumed to be a known geographical situation to which others may be referred. The second reference occurs in one of those elaborate and minutely specific genealogies in the Landnáma-bók: "Their son was Thordhr Hest-höfdhi, father of Karlsefni, who found Vinland the Good, Snorri's father," etc.[250] The third reference occurs in the Kristni Saga, a kind of supplement to the Landnáma-bók, giving an account of the introduction of Christianity into Iceland; here it is related how Leif Ericsson came to be called "Leif the Lucky," 1. from having rescued a shipwrecked crew off the coast of Greenland, 2. from having discovered "Vinland the Good."[251] From these brief allusions, and from the general relation in which Ari Fródhi stood to later writers, I suspect that if the greater Islendinga-bók had survived to our time we should have found in it more about Vinland and its discoverers. At any rate, as to the existence of a definite and continuous tradition all the way from Ari down to Hauk Erlendsson, there can be no question whatever.[252]