onfidence 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.

[Footnote 191: The stories of Gudleif Gudlaugsson and Ari
Marsson, with the fanciful speculations about "Hvitramannaland"
and "Irland it Mikla," do not seem worthy of notice in this
connection. They may be found in De Costa, _op. cit._ pp.
159-177; and see Reeves, _The Finding of Wineland the Good_,
chap. v.]

[Sidenote: Voyage into Baffin's Bay, 1135.]

In the first place, it is an extremely probable story from the time that
Eric once gets settled in Brattahlid. The founding of the Greenland
colony is the only strange or improbable part of the narrative, but that
is corroborated in so many other ways that we know it to be true; as
already observed, no fact in mediaeval history is better established.
When I speak of the settlement of Greenland as strange, I do not mean
that there is anything strange in the Northmen's accomplishing the
voyage thither from Iceland. That island is nearer to Greenland than to
Norway, and we know, moreover, that Norse sailors achieved more
difficult things than penetrating the fiords of southern Greenland. Upon
the island of Kingitorsook in Baffin's Bay (72 deg. 55' N., 56 deg. 5' W.) near
Upernavik, in a region supposed to have been unvisited by man before the
modern age of Arctic exploration, there were found in 1824 some small
artificial mounds with an inscription upon stone:--"Erling Sighvatson
and Bjarni Thordharson and Eindrid Oddson raised these marks and cleared
ground on Saturday before Ascension Week, 1135." That is to say, they
took symbolic possession of the land.[192]

[Footnote 192: Laing, _Heimskringla_, i. 152.]

[Sidenote: A Viking ship discovered at Sandefiord, in Norway.]

In order to appreciate how such daring voyages were practicable, we must
bear in mind that the Viking "ships" were probably stronger and more
seaworthy, and certainly much swifter, than the Spanish vessels of the
time of Columbus. One was unearthed a few years ago at Sandefiord in
Norway, and may