The Flat Island Book consists of transcripts of various sagas made by the
Icelandic priests Jon Thordsson and Magnus Thorhallsson. Very little of
their lives is known, but there is evidence to show that the most
important portion of the copying was completed about 1380. There is,
however, no information concerning the original from which the
transcripts were made. From internal evidence, however, Dr. Storm of the
University of Christiania thinks that this original account was a late
production, possibly of the fourteenth century.[4-1] It is, moreover,
evident that this original account was quite different from the one from
which the existing "Saga of Eric the Red" was made, so that we have two
distinct accounts of the same set of events, both separately derived from
oral tradition, a fact which, on account of the lack of harmony in
details, has been the source of much confusion, but which nevertheless
gives strong testimony concerning the verity of the Vinland tradition in
its general outlines.

The saga which has best stood the test of modern criticism, namely the
"Saga of Eric the Red," has beyond this fact the additional advantage of
having come down to us in two different vellums. The one is found in
Hauk's Book, No. 544 of the Arne-Magnæan Collection in Copenhagen, and
the other is in No. 557 of the same collection. These two narratives (in
vellums 544 and 557) tell the same story. They are so closely allied that
the translation which appears in this volume has been made from a
collation of both texts, that of Hauk's Book (544) having been more
closely followed.[5-1] The Hauk's Book text is clearly legible; No. 557
is not in such good condition.

Many facts in the life of Hauk Erlendsson, who with the assistance of two
secretaries made Hauk's Book, are known. He was in 1294 made a "lawman"
in Iceland, and died in Norway in 1334. There are reasons for believing