other saga, namely, the observation concerning the length of the day in
Vinland, and the reference to finding "three skin-canoes, with three men
under each." The improbabilities of the Flat Island Book saga are easily
detected, if one uses as a guide the simpler narrative of the "Saga of
Eric the Red," the only doubtful part of which is the "uniped" episode, a
touch of mediaeval superstition so palpable as not to be deceptive.

Aside from such things as picking grapes in the spring, sipping sweet dew
from the grass, and the presence of an apparition, the Flat Island Book
account, when read by itself, with no attempt to make it harmonize with
the statements of the "Saga of Eric the Red" or other facts of
Scandinavian history, is a sufficiently straightforward narrative. The
difficulty begins when it is placed in juxtaposition to these facts and
statements. It should not be and need not be discarded, but in giving an
account of the Vinland voyages it must be used with circumspection. From
an historical standpoint it must occupy a subordinate place. If Rafn in
his _Antiquitates Americanæ_ had given emphatic precedence to the saga as
found in Hauk's Book and AM. 557, had left to American scholars the
Dighton Rock and the Newport Tower, and had not been so confident in the
matter of identifying the exact localities that the explorers visited, he
might have carried conviction, instead of bringing confusion, to American
scholars.

The general results of the work of the Norwegian scholar Dr. Storm,
together with a unique presentation of the original narratives, are
accessible in _The Finding of Wineland_ (London, 1890 and 1895), by an
American scholar, the late Arthur Middleton Reeves. This work contains a
lucid account of the important investigations on the subject, photographs
of all the vellum pages that give the various narratives, a printed text
accompanying these, page by page and line by line, and also translations