more, both from Iceland and Norway; and in a few years their number is said
to have increased so much, as to occupy both the eastern and western coasts
of Greenland.

This is the ordinary and best authenticated account of the discovery and
settlement of _Old_ Greenland, which rests on the credit of the great
northern historian, Snorro Sturleson, judge of Iceland, who wrote in the
year 1215. Yet others assert that Greenland had been known long before, and
ground their assertion on letters-patent from the Emperor Lewis the Pious
in 834, and a bull of Gregory IV. in 835, in which permission is given to
Archbishop Ansgar to convert the Sueones, Danes, Sclavonians; and it is
added, the Norwaehers, Farriers, Greenlanders, Halsingalanders, Icelanders,
and Scridevinds. Even allowing both charter and bull to be genuine, it is
probable that the copy which has come down to our time is interpolated, and
that for Gronlandon and Islandon, we ought to read Quenlandon and
Hitlandon, meaning the Finlanders and Hitlanders: Quenland being the old
name of Finland, and Hitland or Hialtaland the Norwegian name of the
Shetland islands. It is even not improbable that all the names in these
ancient deeds after the Sueones, Danes, and Sclavonians, had been
interpolated in a later period; as St Rembert, the immediate successor of
Ansgar, and who wrote his life, only mentions the Sueones, Danes, and
Sclavonians, together with other nations in the north; and even Adam of
Bremen only mentions these three, and other neighbouring and surrounding
nations[2]. Hence the authority of St Rembert and Snorro Sturleson remains
firm and unshaken, in spite of these falsified copies of the papal bull and
imperial patent; and we may rest assured that Iceland was not discovered
before 861, nor inhabited before 874; and that Greenland could hardly have
been discovered previous to 982, or 983, and was not inhabited before 985
or 986.--_Forst_.