Hakon left two sons, Eric and Svein, often also mentioned in this Saga. On their father's death they fled to Sweden, to Denmark, and were busy stirring up troubles in those countries against Olaf Tryggveson; till at length, by a favorable combination, under their auspices chiefly, they got his brief and noble reign put an end to. Nay, furthermore, Jarl Eric left sons, especially an elder son, named also Eric, who proved a sore affliction, and a continual stone of stumbling to a new generation of Haarfagrs, and so continued the curse of Sigurd's murder upon them. Towards the end of this Hakon's reign it was that the discovery of America took place (985). Actual discovery, it appears, by Eric the Red, an Icelander; concerning which there has been abundant investigation and discussion in our time. _Ginnungagap_ (Roaring Abyss) is thought to be the mouth of Behring's Straits in Baffin's Bay; _Big Helloland_, the coast from Cape Walsingham to near Newfoundland; _Little Helloland_, Newfoundland itself. _Markland_ was Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Southward thence to Chesapeake Bay was called _Wine Land_ (wild grapes still grow in Rhode Island, and more luxuriantly further south). _White Man's Land_, called also _Great Ireland_, is supposed to mean the two Carolinas, down to the Southern Cape of Florida. In Dahlmann's opinion, the Irish themselves might even pretend to have probably been the first discoverers of America; they had evidently got to Iceland itself before the Norse exiles found it out. It appears to be certain that, from the end of the tenth century to the early part of the fourteenth, there was a dim knowledge of those distant shores extant in the Norse mind, and even some straggling series of visits thither by roving Norsemen; though, as only danger, difficulty, and no profit resulted, the visits ceased, and the whole matter sank into oblivion, and, but for the Icelandic talent of writing in the long winter nights, would never have been heard of by posterity at all. CHAPTER VII. REIGN OF OLAF TRYGGVESON.