The principal source for the identification of the ruins of Greenland is the work compiled by Rafn and Finn Magnusen, _Grönlands Historiske Mindesmærker_,[594] with original texts and Danish versions. Useful summaries and observations will be found in the paper by K. Steenstrup on “Old Scandinavian ruins in South Greenland” in the _Compte Rendu, Congrès des Américanistes_ (Copenhagen, 1883, p. 108), and in one on “Les Voyages des Danois au Greenland” in the same (p. 196). Steenstrup’s paper is accompanied by photographs and cuts, and a map marking the site of the ruins. The latest account of them is by Lieut. Holm in the _Meddelelser om Grönland_ (Copenhagen, 1883), vol. vi. Other views and plans showing the arrangement of their dwellings and the curious circular ruins,[595] which seems to have usually been near their churches, are shown in the Baron Nordenskjöld’s _Den andra dicksonska expeditionen till Grönland, dess inre isöken och dess ostkust, utförd år 1883_ (Stockholm, 1885), the result of the ripest study and closest contact. We need also to scan the narratives of Hans Egede and Graah. Parry found in 1824, on an island on the Baltic coast, a runic stone, commemorating the occupancy of the spot in 1135 (_Antiquitates Americanæ_; Mallet’s _Northern Antiquities_, 248); and in 1830 and 1831 other runes were found on old gravestones (Rink’s _Danish Greenland_, app. v.; Laing’s _Heimskringla_, i. 151). These last are in the Museum at Copenhagen. Most of these imperishable relics have been found in the district of Julianeshaab.[596] =E.= THE VINLAND VOYAGES.—What Leif and Karlsefne knew they experienced, and what the sagas tell us they underwent, must have just the difference between a crisp narrative of personal adventure and the oft-repeated and embellished story of a fireside narrator, since the traditions of the Norse voyages were not put in the shape of records till about two centuries had elapsed, and we have no earlier manuscript of such a record than one made nearly two hundred years later still. It is indeed claimed that the transmission by tradition in those days was a different matter in respect to constancy and exactness from what it has been known to be in later times; but the assumption lacks proof and militates against well-known and inevitable processes of the human mind. [Illustration: SAGA MANUSCRIPT. This is a portion of one of the plates in the _Antiquitates Americanæ_, given by Rafn to Charles Sumner, with a key in manuscript by Rafn himself. His signature is from a copy of his _Mémoire_ given by him to Edward Everett, and now in Harvard College library.]