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supreme right to do so, but he never was dogmatic
like Nansen, who has no sovereign claim in this
matter.
When Dr. Nansen’s hook reaches us, I have no
doubt that it will appear that he has hit upon things
in the Vinland sagas that are fictional in character
and, to some extent, due to foreign influence; and,
moreover, that some things in Old Norse literature
that scholars have considered corroborative of the
Vinland narratives, may, upon exhaustive
examination, prove to be of less valuable evidence than
they have been considered to be in the past.
I have no doubt that Dr. Nansen got some impulse
in his investigation, from Dr. Gustav Storm’s
researches in this field, for he put his mark of
disapproval upon the Flat Island Book version of the
Vinland sagas, and his verdict has won the
approbation of competent scholars in the field. Then Dr.
Storm annihilated as historical evidence some of the
Irish traditions that, in the course of time had become
attached to the Icelandic literature relating to new
lands in the west, namely, the traditions relating to
Irland hit Mikla and Hvitra-manna-land. These
traditions, he plainly shows, relate to the early visits
of the Irish to Iceland before the discovery of the
island by the Norsemen.
* # *
And now, to say nothing in detail of the sagas in
general, let us admit, for the sake of getting at the
pith of the matter in hand, that there are fact and
fiction and foreign influence intermingled in the
Vinland sagas. The family sagas particularly are
not history in annalistic or chronicle form. The basic
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