Of course it is but seldom in passages where this expression is used that we have any data at all to enable us to say which meaning should be attached to the word. In the sagas of Wineland the word ‘dægr’ occurs perhaps with unusual frequency, and to my mind every passage where it is there employed might be prayed in aid of the argument that a ‘dægr sigling’ was frequently twenty-four hours. But to use these passages at this stage would be to argue in a circle, and we must be content to rest the assumption that the word was so used on the data of which use has been made in the foregoing argument, reserving to ourselves the right in subsequent investigation of the voyages to accept what is there stated with regard to distances sailed, even though on the hypothesis that a ‘dægr’ can only mean twelve hours the statements made are clearly incredible. _The ‘eyktarstad’ problem._ In the account of Leif’s sojourn in Wineland, contained in the Flatey Book, will be found a passage which has given rise to more acute controversy than any other in the story. It runs as follows: ‘Sol hafðe þar eyktarstad ok dagmálastad um skamdegi’—the sun had there eykt place and breakfast place on the shortest day, or, as rendered in our translation, p. 42, ‘on the shortest day the sun was up over the (Icelandic) marks for both nones and breakfast time’. Now one may note in passing that, whatever the significance of the words, they are evidently not the sort of thing which a romanticizing saga-writer would introduce from his own imagination. This is admitted by the most adverse critics of the authority which reproduces them. In view of the attitude taken up by some modern writers, it is important to point out their entire independence of anything to be extracted from the rival version. They go far to disprove, if disproof be necessary, the theory that the Flatey Book account is borrowed from the Saga of Eric the Red. But at this point in the inquiry we are less concerned with this than with the precise significance of the expression used, and though the question has finally been solved, and nothing new can be added, it is necessary, for the sake of readers unfamiliar with the subject, to devote some space to the matter. The Icelanders, possessing no clocks or scientifically constructed dials, were in the habit of estimating the time of day by the position of the sun above the horizon. With this object they marked eight points upon the horizon, utilizing hills and natural objects where such were conveniently situated, and erecting cairns in places which were otherwise undistinguished. This method of time-keeping, crude as it was, persisted down to very recent times, if indeed it is not still in use in some parts of the country. Henderson, who visited Iceland in 1814–15, describes the method in some detail (_Iceland_, vol. i, p. 186), and gives the names and time-equivalents of the various points as follows:—