did
not become a matter of notoriety in Europe until after the publication
of the celebrated book of Thormodus Torfaeus in 1705? Why did not the
news of the voyages of Leif and Thorfinn spread rapidly over Europe,
like the news of the voyage of Columbus? and why was it not presently
followed, like the latter, by a rush of conquerors and colonizers across
the Atlantic?

Such questions arise from a failure to see historical events in their
true perspective, and to make the proper allowances for the manifold
differences in knowledge and in social and economic conditions which
characterize different periods of history. In the present case, the
answer is to be found, first, in the geographical ignorance which
prevented the Northmen from realizing in the smallest degree what such
voyages really signified or were going to signify to posterity; and,
secondly, in the political and commercial condition of Europe at the
close of the tenth century.

[Sidenote: Ignorance of geography.]

In the first place the route which the Norse voyagers pursued, from
Iceland to Greenland and thence to Vinland, was not such as to give
them, in their ignorance of the shape of the earth, and with their
imperfect knowledge of latitude and longitude, any adequate gauge
wherewith to measure their achievement. The modern reader, who has in
his mind a general picture of the shape of the northern Atlantic ocean
with its coasts, must carefully expel that picture before he can begin
to realize how things must have seemed to the Northmen. None of the
Icelandic references to Markland and Vinland betray a consciousness that
these countries belong to a geographical world outside of Europe. There
was not enough organized geographical knowledge for that. They were
simply conceived as remote places beyond Greenland, inhabited by
inferior but dangerous people. The accidental finding of such places
served neither to solve any great commercial problem nor to gratify and
provoke scientific curiosity. It was, therefore, not at all strange that
it bore no fruit.

[Sidenote: Lack of instruments for ocean navigation.]

Secondly, even if it had been realized, and could have been duly
proclaimed throughout Europe, that across the broad Atlantic a new world
lay open for colonization, Europe could not have taken advantage of the
fact. Now and then a ship might make its way, or be blown, across the
waste of waters without compass or astrolabe; but until these
instrument