Accepting the meaning ‘staves’ or ‘poles’, a recent writer[86] regards this as proof that the description is drawn from Eskimo, and Dr. Nansen makes a similar suggestion. To Mr. Gosling it is ‘evident that this is an attempt to describe the motion of the double-bladed paddle used by the Eskimos, and it will be seen that an Eskimo, sitting in his kayak, facing the direction towards which he is paddling, when going east or north, will appear to wave his paddle contrary to the motion of the sun in the heavens, but with it when travelling west or south’. I must confess that this attempt at an explanation is very far from satisfying me. In the first place it seems to me most unlikely, that the Norsemen could observe a large number of kayaks on three separate occasions without understanding that the waving paddle was merely the means of propulsion. In the next place, though nothing explicit is stated as to the direction from which the first visitors arrived, the second and third visits, one peaceable and the other hostile—one therefore in which the staves moved with the sun and the other in which they moved against it—both came ‘from the south’, so that the movement of the paddles would be the same in both cases. Again, a kayak paddle, having a blade at each end, does not move continuously in one direction, but from side to side, while, viewed broadside, the motion is that of a stave rotated forward. Finally, though perhaps of less importance, it may be pointed out that on one occasion the language used seems to imply more than one ‘trjóna’ to each boat (var veift á hverju skipi trjánum). Having regard to the prevalence in America, as in most other countries, of the ceremonial use of solar and contra-solar motion (cf. Brinton’s _Myths of the New World_), it seems to me a more probable explanation that we have here a genuine and interesting use of a sign correctly interpreted by the Norsemen, which further research into Indian customs and superstitions might succeed in elucidating. For my part, I am inclined to think that the ‘trjóna’ was a rattle-stick, such as is used by many Indian tribes. No other explanation hitherto suggested takes into account the ‘noise like threshing’ which is a circumstantial part of the description. Rattles, being normally an accompaniment to dancing, would be likely to be swung with or against the sun according to the significance of the ceremony of which they were a part.