Note 89 — PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERY.

This poem no longer exists. Its subject, the Hafgerdingar, is described as a fearful body of water, "which sometimes rises in the sea near Greenland in such a way that three large rows of waves inclose a part of the sea, so that the ship that finds itself inside, is in the greatest danger."—Grönland's Historiske Mindismærker, vol. i, p. 264. There does not appear to be any better foundation for this motion of the Hafgerdingar than of the old accounts of the Maelstrom, once supposed to exist on the coast of Norway. The Hafgardingar may have originated from seeing the powerful effect of a cross sea acting on the tide.