1831,[602] enumerates eight of the early manuscripts which mention Vinland and the voyages; but Rafn, in 1837, counted eighteen such manuscripts.[603] We know little or nothing about the recorders or date of any of these copies, excepting the _Heimskringla_,[604] nor how long they had existed orally. Some of them were doubtless put into writing soon after the time when such recording was introduced, and this date is sometimes put as early as A.D. 1120, and sometimes as late as the middle or even end of that century. Meanwhile, Adam of Bremen, in the latter part of the eleventh century (A.D. 1073), prepared his _Historia Ecclesiastica_, an account of the spread of Christianity in the north, in which he says he was told by the Danish king that his subjects had found a country to the west, called Winland.[605] A reference is also supposed to be made in the _Historia Ecclesiastica_ of Ordericus Vitalis, written about the middle (say A.D. 1140) of the twelfth century. But it was not until somewhere between A.D. 1385 and 1400 that the oldest Icelandic manuscript which exists, touching the voyages, was compiled,—the so-called _Codex Flatoyensis_,[606] though how much earlier copies of it were made is not known. It is in this manuscript that we find the saga of Olaf Tryggvesson,[607] wherein the voyages of Leif Ericson are described, and it is only by a comparison of circumstances detailed here and in other sagas that the year A.D. 1000 has been approximately determined as the date.[608] In this same codex we find the saga of Eric the Red, one of the chief narratives depended upon by the advocates of the Norse discovery, and in Rask’s judgment it “appears to be somewhat fabulous, written long after the event, and taken from tradition.”[609] [Illustration: _Environs of_ Julianehaab THE ÖSTER BYGD _or_ Eastern Settlement Reference: _Norse ruins or traces of them_ NOTE.—The above is a reproduction of a corner map in the map of _Danish Greenland_ given in Rink’s book of that name. The sea in the southwest corner of the cut is not shaded; but shading is given to the interior ice field on the northern and northeastern part of the map. Rink gives a similar map of the Westerbygd.] The other principal saga is that of Thorfinn Karlsefne, which with some differences and with the same lack of authenticity, goes over the ground covered by that of Eric the Red.[610] [Illustration: RAFN.] Of all the early manuscripts, the well-known _Heimskringla_ of Snorro Sturleson (b. 1178; d. 1241), purporting to be a history of the Norse kings down to A.D. 1177, is the most entitled to be received as an historical record, and all that it says is in these words: “Leif also found Vinland the Good.”[611] Saxo Grammaticus (d. about 1208) in his _Historia Danica_ begins with myths, and evidently follows the sagas, but does not refer to them except in his preface.[612] [Illustration: