As to Tyrker’s drunkenness, the circumstance that he spoke German, which happened to be his native tongue, would not perhaps be considered conclusive at Bow Street, yet possibly the saga-writer may have meant to indicate intoxication. Nor is such intoxication necessarily a figment of the historian. We must remember that Thorhall the Hunter, as one gathers from his satiric verses, had evidently been promised a drink in Wineland, and it therefore seems likely that some crude sort of wine was actually made. This again calls for the presence of someone with experience of wine-making, an art for which the priest, one would think, would possess neither the capacity nor the inclination. The task would not, however, be difficult. As Mr. Babcock has reminded us (p. 93), the _Historie of Travaile into Virginia_ asserts that at a later date ‘twenty gallons at one time have sometimes been made, without any other help than crushing the grapes in the hand, which letting to settle five or six days hath in the drawing forth proved strong and heady.’ In further support of the theory that wine was made, one may refer to the words of Adam of Bremen,—‘producing the best wine.’ Who more likely to have tried the method alluded to above than Tyrker of the vineyards? And he may well have kept the experiment dark till he had put his brew to a practical test. But none of this really matters; the bare fact of the discovery of grapes, which is abundantly corroborated, is the important thing. _Thorvald._ Whether or no Thorvald Ericson was the leader of an independent expedition, as stated in the Flatey Book, or a companion of Karlsefni, as the rival versions make him, there can be no doubt that the voyage on which he met with his death is described in all the accounts in language which shows substantial agreement as to the topographical facts. It is therefore possible, and even advisable, to deal with Thorvald’s explorations as if no question of their connexion with Karlsefni’s expedition had in fact arisen.