‘The great river that Brandan found in the Terra Repromissionis, and that ran through the middle of the island, may be compared to the stream that Karlsefni found at Hóp in Wineland, which fell into a lake and thence into the sea.... But the river which divided the Terra Repromissionis ... was evidently originally the river of death, Styx or Acheron in Greek mythology (Gjöll in Norse mythology). One might be tempted to suppose that, in the same way as the whole description of Wineland has been dechristianized from the Terra Repromissionis, the realistic, and therefore often rationalizing, Icelanders have transformed the river in the promised land, the ancient river of death, into the stream at Hóp.’[80] A striking parallel to this parallel leaps at once to the mind of the irreverent. ‘There is a river in Macedon, and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth: it is called Wye at Monmouth; but it is out of my prains what is the name of the other river; but ’tis all one, ’tis so like as my fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both’ (_Henry V_, Act IV, sc. vii). In so far as there were ‘salmons in both’, it must I think be conceded by the impartial reader that Fluellen’s analogy is more striking than Dr. Nansen’s. Before considering further examples of the resemblances which Dr. Nansen has sought to establish, a few words may be said which are of general application to the whole. As in the instance above cited, Dr. Nansen’s analogies are practically all drawn from the mythical ‘imramha’ or voyages which form a definite class in early Irish literature. This class merges gradually at a later period into vision literature, where a vision of Paradise takes the place of a voyage into the wonderlands of the unseen world. But in its earlier form, with which Dr. Nansen is mainly concerned, the imramh took the form of a kind of Odyssey, in course of which the voyagers discovered many new and wonderful countries. It is manifest therefore that many elements must necessarily be present from which analogies with any voyage of discovery, however genuine, can be deduced. Unless, then, the similarities to be found are more striking than anything which can be explained from these necessary coincidences, we should, I submit, attach but little importance to them. We should remember also that the Icelander, however realistic or rational, is not likely to have been a discriminating borrower or to have rejected fabulous elements quite credible in a superstitious age. Thus we should expect, if extensive loans were taken from a literature exceptionally rich in the monstrous and marvellous, to find at any rate a good many definite instances where these characteristics have been retained without much alteration.