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

With this grewsome tale ends all account of Norse attempts at exploring or colonizing Vinland, though references to Vinland by no means end here.[191] Taking the narrative as a whole, it seems to me a sober, straightforward, and eminently probable story. The whole story is eminently probable. We may not be able to say with confidence exactly where such places as Markland and Vinland were, but it is clear that the coasts visited on these southerly and southwesterly voyages from Brattahlid must have been parts of the coast of North America, unless the whole story is to be dismissed as a figment of somebody's imagination. But for a figment of the imagination, and of European imagination withal, it has far too many points of verisimilitude, as I shall presently show.